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Good Read – POP by Steven Heller

Jan 18, 2012   //   by Devlin   //   Blog  //  No Comments


This week’s installment of good reads is one of my favorite collections of the ever thoughtful Steven Heller, POP: How Graphic Design Shapes Popular Culture.

The book is a collection of excellent essays detailing the cyclical relationship that graphic design has played in influencing popular culture and in turn being influenced by popular culture and then influencing… and so on and so on. This line from the introduction beautifully sums up the book and why it is important:

Pop culture is often maligned as fleeting. But history shows that sometimes what is pop in one culture has time-honored resonance in later ones… this book is a n attempt to show that pop culture, especially as seen through the lens of design, illustration, and satiric and political art (and other things), is integral to a broader understanding of who we are and where we are going. Oh yeah, and it is key to being literate in the twenty-first century. – Steven Heller

Typography Tuesday: “Ready, Typeset, Go!”

Jan 17, 2012   //   by Devlin   //   Blog  //  No Comments

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For this installment of Typography Tuesday I had to share Veer Presents: “Ready, Typeset, Go!” This clever ad mixes some of my favorite things, fonts, mid-century modern esthetic and clever production. Fantastic!

 ”Ready, Typeset, Go!” is the second in a series of retro science films about fonts, from Veer. In this installment, the narrator explains how simple adjustments like font size and technical tricks like kerning can make great fonts look even better.

 

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Jan 16, 2012   //   by Devlin   //   Blog  //  No Comments

It is time to honor the efforts of a great man, and what better way than with his own words.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

 

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-15

Jan 15, 2012   //   by Devlin   //   Blog  //  No Comments

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How They Did It – The World’s Smallest Model Railroad Edition

Jan 15, 2012   //   by Devlin   //   Blog  //  No Comments

This is amazing. Seeing the detail, hard work and imagination that David K. Smith put into this big little project is breathtaking. There are two great things to take away from the video, first the train layout and second, seeing the process of macro-photography. To learn the full story of how he did it, see: http://jamesriverbranch.net/detail_16.htm

 

 

A Random Design Quote

Jan 12, 2012   //   by Devlin   //   Blog  //  No Comments

A random quote from a famous graphic designer on design, culture and art.

Criticism is important because it gives us a language (indeed a lens) by which to discuss and view design.
- Steven Heller

Good Read – Graphic Design Theory

Jan 11, 2012   //   by Devlin   //   Blog  //  No Comments

Any graphic designer worth their salt should care as much about the “why” of design as they do about the “how.” To that end I highly recommend the great collection of theoretical essays, Graphic Design Theory edited by Helen Armstrong. The book is a fascinating collection of thought provoking essays by a wide range of designers including Steven Heller, Jan Tschichold, El Lissitzky, Paul Rand and dozens of others.

There is a LOT of great food for thought in this book, and it will take you on a long journey, highlighting many of the insights, arguments and controversies in graphic design over the last century. I particularly enjoyed seeing how design theory changes over time, and is influenced by the larger trains of thought that are happening in the wider culture. For example, notice how ideas of modernism and the machine turn up in the writings and theories of the Bauhaus then are challenged by later thinkers and designers.

For those who find theory boring, we’ll what can I say? You need to think about what you are doing or you are just tossing pixels and paint about. But for those who want to learn more, to dig deeper and to see how design fits into the larger cultural and artistic milieu then this book is a great starting point.

Great Stop Motion Animation – Blackboard War

Jan 9, 2012   //   by Devlin   //   Blog  //  No Comments

I am in awe of the creativity and hard work that people are capable of, case in point, check out these two amazing stop motion animations Blackboard War 1 and 2. It took a lot of work, in fact, according to Neatorama:

More than 2,500 still photos were taken to make this video. At first, you’ll wonder why they used stop-motion animation, but it soon becomes necessary. Then there are a few “how did they do that?” moments.

I sure hope we’ll get to see Blackboard War 3 sometime soon!

Blackboard War 1

Blackboard War 2

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-08

Jan 8, 2012   //   by Devlin   //   Blog  //  No Comments

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How They Did It (Photoshop Masking Edition)

Jan 8, 2012   //   by Devlin   //   Blog  //  No Comments

For this installment of How They Did It, Here are the 5 best free masking tutorials for Adobe PhotoShop on the web. There are many great sources for learning and mastering PhotoShop, I highly recommend watching and reading anything you can from Deke McClelland, Scott Kelby and the wonderful folks at Lynda.com.

Deke McClelland: The Essential Approach To Masking
If you watch any video on the essentials of masking images in PhotoShop, watch THIS one!

 
Photoshop CS5 Masking Tutorial
Masking, Mask Refinement and Non-Destructive image editing are vital components when compositing with Photoshop CS5. This is a pretty good tutorial. via http://shawnkent.net

Photoshop Tutorial: Masking Techniques, part 1
A good round up of masking technique using paths, also: Part 2.


How To Remove Background Around Lots Of Hair Photoshop
A decent beginning tutorial. A handy use of the burn tool to take out fringing after a mask is created.

How to Quickly Select Images – Cut Out Detailed Images in Photoshop CS5
I like the use of the refine edge command in this tutorial.

Video 5

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