A Random Design Quote

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

A Random Design Quote

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

I appre­ci­ate the moral imper­a­tive that no task is so insignif­i­cant that it needn’t me accom­plished in keep­ing with the high­est stan­dard.
–Karl Gerstner

Random Design Quote

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

A logo derives its mean­ing from the qual­ity of the thing it sym­bol­izes, not the other way around.
– Paul Rand

Good Read: Presentation Zen Design

Pre­sen­ta­tion Zen Design: Sim­ple Design Prin­ci­ples and Tech­niques to Enhance Your Pre­sen­ta­tions is a great fol­low up to Garr Rey­onlds’ clas­sic Pre­sen­ta­tion Zen. The first book deals pri­mar­ily with the under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples for pre­sent­ing data and infor­ma­tion. Pre­sen­ta­tion Zen Design is also very good, but it focuses more of the nuts and bolts of design­ing Pow­er­Point slides.

At its heart, it is really a very quick sum­mary of the stan­dard rules of design, page lay­out, color the­ory and typog­ra­phy. It is a bit too basic if you are a pro­fes­sional designer, but a per­fect book for pro­fes­sion­als that have to cre­ate pre­sen­ta­tions and want them to rock.

Pro­fes­sional graphic design­ers can still learn a lot from this book, how­ever. Reynolds is a very good writer, and all design­ers can learn from how effort­lessly and elo­quently he explains com­plex ideas and prin­ci­ples to a wide and non-technical audi­ence. Learn­ing from his style of com­mu­ni­ca­tion will help any designer who finds them­selves in a pitch meet­ing and hav­ing to explain why their ideas will work.

Experiments in Digital Painting

I am a mem­ber of Lynda.com and it is one of my favorite sites. I recently fin­ished an excel­lent course, Trans­form­ing a Photo into a Paint­ing with Pho­to­shop taught by John Derry. It was an excel­lent class and I have been inspired to try my hand at his tech­nique. Let me know how these two dig­i­tal paint­ings turned out. They are based on some pho­tos I took on a recent trip to Port­land, Ore­gon. Click for larger versions.

Weird Port­land, Novem­ber 2011

Port­land Sky­line, Novem­ber 2011

Random Design Quote

A ran­dom quotes from famous graphic design­ers on design, cul­ture and art.

As a craft, typog­ra­phy shares a long com­mon bound­ary and many com­mon con­cerns with writ­ing and edit­ing on the one side and with graphic design on the other; yet typog­ra­phy itself belongs to neither.

–Robert Binghurst, The Ele­ments of Typo­graphic Style

Joel Bauer, Genius

Life is not about being liked it’s about being effec­tive.
The entire objec­tive is to get people’s atten­tion.” — Joel Bauer

This viral video is a clas­sic! Joel Bauer dis­cusses the best busi­ness card ever made, his nat­u­rally. It is funny in it’s macho absur­dity, yet it totally works. I am sure that Mr. Bauer got way more speak­ing gigs after this video hit the intertubes.

From a design per­spec­tive, Bauer’s point about get­ting noticed is extremely impor­tant to remem­ber. He said that he designed  a card that is so cool that “…even if they don’t like you they won’t throw away your card.” His busi­ness card is way over the top, but it is effec­tive. As design­ers we should take that les­son to heart, if you are try­ing to make a big splash, then some­times it is worth it to go all out! If you can cre­ate a design that is so unique and cool, they won’t for­get it. Just like Bauer, even if you don’t like Bauer or his video you won’t for­get it.

Here is a good inter­view of Joel Bauer. It is pretty reveal­ing, Bauer says that the per­son in the video is really more of a char­ac­ter than what he is like in real life. Which is good, I can’t imag­ine any­one liv­ing with some­one like in first viral video.

Random Design Quote

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

Good let­ter­forms are designed to give a lively, even tex­ture, but care­less spac­ing of let­ters, lines and words can tear this fab­ric apart.

–Robert Binghurst, The Ele­ments of Typo­graphic Style

How They Did It

I thought I’d share some more cool videos that show the behind the scenes process in some great design and art projects. Note these aren’t how to videos, they are more art­ful than hands-on, so sit back and enjoy, because they are still worth the time. They give you a greater appre­ci­a­tion of the skill and craft that goes into cre­at­ing these works, which will help us all a being bet­ter at graphic and motion designers.

Taras Lesko builds a 7FT Gun­dam Mk-2 out of paper.
This is fun, watch­ing Taras Lesko build his model of a 7FT Gun­dam Mk-2 (okay, I have no idea what that is, appar­ently some kind of robot) cre­ated with paper is pretty cool, I am not sure what you uses some­thing like this for, but I sure enjoyed this video. His paper model was made up of 1250 parts on 720 pages of paper, for a total paper weight of 10lb (4.5kg)!

“7FT Gun­dam” — Ulti­mate Paper­craft from Taras Lesko on Vimeo.

Tat­too artist Shawn Dees shows how he cre­ates his art
Shawn Dees does great work in this video. The Samu­rai is pretty sweet.

John C. Thurbin cre­ates a cool illus­tra­tion in time lapse/stop motion.
This is pretty fun, the song is awe­some and so is John C. Thurbin’s work. The illus­tra­tion reminds me of The Illu­mi­na­tus! Tril­ogy by Robert Anton Wil­son and Robert Shea.

Random Design Quote

A ran­dom quotes from famous graphic design­ers on design, cul­ture and art.

PREVIOUSLY — Engi­neers relaxed with art
NOW — Artists relax with tech­nol­ogy
– From the Man­i­festo of the Con­struc­tivist Group 1922; Alek­sandr Rod­chenko, Var­vara Stepanova and Alek­sei Gan