Creative Shift» Designers

Designa Thought: Smoke & Mirrors

Jeromy — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 04:27:15 +0000

Bad design is smoke, while good design is a mirror.

~ Juan-Carlos Fernàndez

Toy Mirror
By Ryan McElhinney, 2007
Made of recycled toys sprayed in
polyurethane glass lacquer.

Designa Thought: Innovative Designers

Jeromy — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:30:51 +0000

The most innovative designers consciously reject the standard option box and cultivate an appetite for thinking wrong.

~ Marty Neumeier

Great Advice for a Graphic Design Student

Jeromy — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 20:11:02 +0000

I came across this blog post over at Frank Chimero’s site. It has some great advice for current graphic design students and those just entering the design/studio work force. As a MFA student at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, a lot of his words resonated with me and so I thought I’d pass it on.

For me, these gems stood out:

If you can’t draw as well as someone, or use the software as well, or if you do not have as much money to buy supplies, or if you do not have access to the tools they have, beat them by being more thoughtful. Thoughtfulness is free and burns on time and empathy.

The best communicators are gift-givers.

Think of every project as an opportunity to learn, but also an opportunity to teach.

Helvetica is nice too, but it won’t turn water to wine.

[read more]

Thanks Frank. Timely words.

Sprung Grid, By Lian Ng

Jeromy — Mon, 03 May 2010 21:19:54 +0000

Often times it is the simplest of designs and ideas that are the most powerful. This design, by Lian Ng (a professor I had at Academy of Art University), fits the bill. Fantastic. And this with only three strings broken:

I think what gets me is its personal meaning. The obvious meaning is a design grid that has been broken. The orderly disrupted by the disorderly. But the deeper meaning to me is very personal. It speaks of my old desire to keep my life clean, neat, orderly, simple, pure…square. And then all of a sudden it breaks. Order snaps. My neat, clean life and mindset gets sprung.

But isn’t it the broken pieces that create the beauty? Isn’t that were life is found? In acknowledging and accepting my brokenness and humanity.

You can see and buy a copy of this and other works by Lian here.

Brockmann’s “Musica Viva” Triple ReDesign

Jeromy — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:13:59 +0000

Remaking classics. A common task, but this time with a twist. The project was to take an existing poster and redesign it using the styles of three other unique designers. In other words, if the identical design task was given to three other prominent designers, how would they communicate and design the message?

The poster content I had to use was the above by Josef Müller-Brockmann from a series of posters he made entitled, Muica Viva. Brockmann’s ‘Musica viva’ poster series for the Zurich Tonhalle drew on the language of Constructivism to create a visual correlative to the structural harmonies of the music.

So here are my Musica Viva poster redesigns. The three designer’s styles I chose were Alexander Rodchenko, Stefan Sagmeister and Charles S. Anderson. Click to enlarge.

Mrs. Eaves, Meet Mr. Eaves

Jeromy — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:08:08 +0000

Ahhhh, marriage can be a beautiful thing. After saying “I do” something happens. Over the years the couple begins to act and think alike. Sure, they have their distinctions and uniqueness, but they also pick up each others mannerisms and quirky habits. If you spend any amount of time with a couple who have been married for many years you will witness this strange occurrence.

Well in typography, the Eaves couple is no exception.

Mrs Eaves is a serif typeface Designed by Zuzana Licko in 1996. It is inspired by John Baskerville’s work and “is named after Sarah Eaves, the woman who became John Baskerville’s wife. As Baskerville was setting up his printing and type business, Mrs. Eaves moved in with him as a live-in housekeeper, eventually becoming his wife after the death of her first husband, Mr. Eaves.”

But Mr. Eaves didn’t stay dead for too long. In 2009 he was reincarnated as a sans-serif typeface to compliment his serif counterpart. Talk about a match made in heaven. And he comes in two different styles: Sans and Modern. Mr. Eaves Sans is the closest in relation to the popular Mrs. Eaves. sharing common shapes and subtleties. Mr. Eaves Modern is just that, a stripped down, straighter version of Sans that sets very well with Mrs. Eaves. Here are the three of them dancing together:

If you are looking for a quirky and elegant serif and sans-serif font combination, look no further. I plan on spending a lot of time with this typeface couple, dancing and getting to know them more intimately. Personally, I find them to be fantastic fonts that add that little extra something.

One word of caution: Their X-heights are a little short in stature, so set them accordingly.

(Update: as of today, 1/26, they just released Mr Eaves XL which has a larger x-height for body text and matches Mrs. Eaves XL. Now the family is complete).

Tokyo and Munich’s Olympic Pictograms

Jeromy — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:16:10 +0000

For further fun and reference, here are the Tokyo (’64) and Munich (’72) Olympic Pictograms.

2012 Olympic Pictograms

Jeromy — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:25:09 +0000

Each Olympic host city gets the privilege of redesigning the pictographs of the various Olympic sports. London released their pictographs for the 2012 Olympic Games. Here they are:

Versions One and Two:

Compared to Beijing’s:

(ht We Made This)

Parliament Design Studio and Envy

Jeromy — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:35:35 +0000

Our design environment can have a big impact on our creative mood and outlook. When I see a studio like Parliament Design’s, I must admit, the sixth deadly sin sets in. (ht The Best Parts)

Johannes Itten, Master of Color

Jeromy — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:18:20 +0000

“He who wants to become a master of color must see, feel, and experience each individual color in its many endless combination with all other colors,” Itten once wrote. “Colors must have a mystical capacity for spiritual expression, without being tied to objects.”

Born in the late 1800′s Johannes was a painter, designer, teacher, writer and theorist from Switzerland. Itten, the author of The Art of Color and a color-theory teacher a Bauhaus, is most known for his theory of considering the subjective feelings associated with objective colors. Red being a “warm” color and blue being “cool” are examples of the effect Itten had on our understanding of color. Itten felt that we bring our own subjectivity to colors, apart from those commonly associated with them. He also discovered that color harmony is quite individual and subjective as well.

Feeling that the traditional color wheel was too short-sighted, he developed a new color “star” which took into effect more hues than the previous 12-hue wheel. When it was all said and done he concluded that the world of color and the influence it had on humanity, both collectively and individually, was a deep mystery.

“If it be imagined that this systematic classification of colors and contrasts banishes all difficulties, I should add that the kingdom of colors has within it multidimensional possibilities only partly to be reduced to simple order. Each individual color is a universe in itself. We must therefore content ourselves with an exposition of fundamentals.”