School Work

The posts have been slim as of late because I've been busy working to upgrade my skills. These are the 3 books I'm working from. Each one accesses a different part of my creative brain. Keys to Drawing, helps me improve my eye and my basic hand- eye coodination. Rapid Viz is more directed to imagination, play and mind-hand coodination. Design Basic Index is a full-on lesson book designed to get me thinking about Composition, Concepts and Components to good layout and design.

All these books have exercises to work through, and while I've been in the graphic field for a long time, I am approaching these books with The Beginner's Mind, and am already learning quite a bit.






Amazon.com: Keys to Drawing: Books: Bert Dodson


Amazon.com: Rapid Viz, Third Edition: A New Method for the Rapid Visualitzation of Ideas: Books: Kurt Hanks,Larry Belliston


Amazon.com: Design Basics Index (Index Series): Books: Jim Krause

A Very Swanky Typography Overview

via Todd Roeth is an Assistant Professor, Graphic Design. School of Fine Art.

Mr. Roeth has also provided overviews for his other courses, of which I fully plan to investigate. At his on-line suggestion , I've already aquired a copy of: Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Muller Brockmann and when I finish that I plan to read: Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout by Timothy Samara.

Some words from "Old School"

I'm currently freelancing at an Ad Agency and I had a discussion with a Senior Creative Director about layout and design.

The following monologue was something like this: "There is too much shitty design out there. The problem is no body wants to learn because they know everything already. They go to "Portfolio Factories" and they develop a style, and they come in here and look at their book. This is a menu, this is an ad for oil change, this is letter head. If they have enough different kinds of pieces, they all look they same even though they are all used for different customers and markets. Why? Because they have developed a style, but haven't learned the fundamentals of design. Design is a science: placement, balance, color and typography will always work, but todays New School is about breaking boundaries for the sake of breaking them, and it's sloppy and bad. I can tell at a glance whether that ad was done by a new school or an old school person.

I think that a particular style is sign that the artist has found a comfortable niche, but from there refuses to grow and and will stagnate.

Advertising is different from Fine Art. You do need an eye for aesthetic detail, but you aren't trying to capture the essence of a subject. You are trying to make your client happy, and for that you need to take yourself out of the equation, throw personal style away and have the ability do many different kinds of styles, whatever it takes to get the job done.

I was thinking to myself, maybe they should have monthly meetings where the old guys teach the new guys, and the suits the basic principles of design as refreshers. They can have beer and snacks.

Art, Design, and Visual Thinking On line Textbook

Art, Design, and Visual Thinking
By Charlotte Jirousek from Cornell University

The first section of this course is concerned with understanding the basic concepts of design; How to analyze and talk about visual material. These fundamental components are known as the principles and elements of design. The approach we are going to take has a strong cultural bias. However, since European and American design is the base from which we are operating here, it is in this culture we will begin. We will eventually look at other cultural approaches to aesthetics and design.

In this section, first we will define some basic terminology essential to the understanding of visual language. We will then look at the elements of design, or the components which form the structure of a work. Finally, we will consider the design principles, the concepts used to organize the structural elements. The principles and elements of design are the basic building blocks of visual composition, and in order to understand how visual images carry meaning, we need to understand this basic vocabulary of visual language.

Free Edumacation With Which To Wrinkle Yer Brain

I was looking around for a mind mapping application for a collaborative project that is trying to get off the ground and I found Mindomo with which people can post public maps they have constructed. Thanks to Lady Gray who took the time to lay out some resources. Just roll over the little globes for pop-up links.