What is graphic design?

New York Times article about type sensitivity

Rebecca Ross — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:30:42 +0000

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/arts/16iht-design16.html

by Alice Rawsthorn

Dirt. Noise. Crowds. Delays. Scary smells. Even scarier fluids swirling on the floor. There are lots of reasons to loathe the New York City subway, but one very good reason to love it — Helvetica, the typeface that’s used on its signage…

London Gift

vctilly — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:42:24 +0000

So this is my first project for this term and the pictures I took..

The poem quotes: ‘Thoughts are the shadows of our sensations – always darker, simpler, emptier than these.’ by Nietzsche

Let me know what you think!!

The last picture is painted with glow paint and says: ‘All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream’ by Edgar Allen Poe.
Unfortunately it glows during the day in the sunlight but not at night by the lamp post..

PS Crimes

patternalinstinct — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:14:24 +0000

Just for fun.

http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/

Banner image for this blog

Rebecca Ross — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:46:29 +0000

Hey, any ideas for a more meaningful banner image for this blog?

Refer to Manual

patternalinstinct — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:51:12 +0000

Hi!

Right now I’m doing Val’s brief, Refer to Manual, and while looking around I found some fun bits. If anyone else is doing that brief and want to talk about it that would be great:)

David San Miguel — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:58:39 +0000

Typography/Inform
I did Rathna’s language poster and I selected Spanish, my mother toungue.
So when I was around 17 and started learning other languages, I realized how Spanish was kind of strange in the fact that it has grammatical gender meaning things/objects/ideas/concepts have gender and they are preceded by a specific article or/and terminate with an a/0 depending on the gender. I started by grouping the material and organizing it and of course naturally I started to make a very academic and organized poster (as I have been trained to do) and when it got to a point where it felt finished I remembered my goals for this term and decided to let go and contrast the very academic explanation of the concept with a much more absurd and image-based one. The colour red is a recurring theme in the text and a key example of the text uses the red cup and red glass to explain how grammatical gender works.

Grids/Systems

I did book into building and choose Frankenstein and Grid Systems for the interim crit and brought in two mockups of 3D objects that I thought translated the book into a building. Frankenstien was a 2 part building representing the dichotomy in Dr. Victor Frankenstein and The Moster. Joseph Muller-Brockmann’s book was translated into a much more geometrical space with attention to detail and modularity. For the final crit I decided to do Frankenstein and worked on doing more refined spaces that showed the complexity of emotions that the Dr. feels in the novel and contrast it with the more basic and emotions that the monster does. The novel is set in all of these cold environments and I though that sandblasted glass would be a good way to show a frost in the building. For the mockup I used tracing paper.

I am trying really hard to get out of my comfort zone and do something that does not look slick and finished and ready to print/sell…

I am also trying to start to use the computer less and do things by hand and just stop thinking about what looks “good”or “beautiful”… and I’m having so much fun:

Experiencing typography….

khimael — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:11:02 +0000

This is what i’ve got so far, but actually i’m working on
something a step further from this so….
upcoming updates

For the minute, this is the response to Rebecca’s brief
which asked us, working close with details in typography,
to produce a piece built with the text from our e-mails.
What I’ve got here is a poster where I tried
to get my identity out from all my junk mail
(200 e-mails more o less).

Now I’m working on Rathna’s brief, which is really
interesting, and I’m trying to work really close with
grids for the first time in graphic design.
We’re asked to understand in depth two texts and
elaborate a grid to convey in a more clear way the
original meaning of the two texts and what we think
about that. This is what I presented at today’s crit.
Now, the two texts convey two points of view about
‘how typography should be used’, other than that
the two texts are not easy to read so I’m creating
sort of manual to get the reader easily into the text’s
meaning using a grid that underlines the important
parts and make comparisons (that is actually what
one of the texts is about: a similitude between
typography + its content and wine + the transparent
glass in which is served.)

This second brief is making me experience things
that could have been useful for the first brief
and actually I can use them now to complete
the first as I would like. I will post the further
experiment of Rebecca’s brief as soon as it will
be ready.

About Lectures:

Absolutely interesting the Lecture of Max,
which has been really useful.

But amazing the lecture of Paulus.
I think it has been so energetic that has
made me start thinking about lots of things.
It has given me another point of view on
Typography. Absolutely amazing.

Post

adriad — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:55:59 +0000

More writing later

RE: Tutorial 29/10/09

PTB — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:11:19 +0000

Brief 1; Make/Break: I worked with the symmetry of the rules and the letterform A. I used a mirror to show the rules existing; then I broke each rule individually by photoshopping the reflected image.

My outcome was sufficient but I have no great enthusiasm for it. The crit for this project was particularly enjoyable, quite a few people spoke and interesting things were discussed.

- – -

Brief 2; R-Kive: This brief is progressing ok, I am archiving my music by Bitrate (audio fidelity). I am doing this because I am interested in musical quality, and the often perversely negative effect on quality that the digitization of things is having. I am making a piece of software that creates a visualisation of the information from an itunes xml file. I want to software to be used not only for my collection but for others too.

I am finding the coding a reasonably steep learning curve, but not too impossible. The xml parsing is a bit of a challenge.

- – -

Brief links: I think the links between are minimal. I am interested in simplicity of visuals and that seems to come though. In terms of craft they are pretty different. I cannot think of any particular way in which the projects inform each other.

- – -

The lectures have been pretty rad. Phil’s was really good and it helped me appreciate his work much better. It is so impressive how he seems to exist almost totally outside fashions and just does his thing. In doing his thing he produces wonderfully creative and thoughtful work, but also with a mild sence of irreverence. He is on a higher plane of graphic design! Paulus was amazing as an individual; very amusing lecture and plenty to think about. Didn’t feel like I ‘learnt’ anything specific but felt like a lot went in. It was nice to see ideas reinforced about how the grid is a force of nauture, and one to be reckoned with. I liked how wide ranging and multidisiplinary his lecture was.

Response to term so far

cmariej — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:01:08 +0000

1/ The first brief I chose was Joshua Trees’ Typography for Kids. I had a really strong idea from the get go, which is how I usually base my decisions on which brief to choose. It was difficult getting into the mind frame of present day children and their level of understanding. Growing up my mother used food as a reward for learning, so I incorporated that into the project by using “chocolate beans.” Here’s a photo of the arrangement of the “chocolate beans” to make up text.

I thought the first brief went well and I enjoyed the thorough feedback from the tutor and peers, which I found to be lacking a bit last year. It still needs quite a bit of tweaking in regards to the arrangement on the pages. Here are the final spreads (not sure what happened to the second one, oh well!):

2/ The brief I am currently working on is R-Kive your tunes. I don’t have anything to show for this brief just yet. I am really struggling on coming up with an original grid. I wanted to organize my music collection based on what I was listening to during the trips I have been on. Sort of like making a mixed tape for each holiday. I have to rethink and research various grids that are somehow related to my idea. Or just scrap the idea and start again.

3/ As far as the relationship between the two briefs, both require a structure to display information. In the first brief the grid was sort of already assigned (Typography for Kids – booklet form) and this time we have to create the grid ourselves. As far as my process goes, it always begins with an idea.

4/ Phil’s lecture I found to be a bit dry. I liked finding out more about him and his work, however I wished he gave more indepth information on the title of his talk (Art, Religion and Politics).

Paulus I found more interesting because he spoke about something that wasn’t design specific and gave a great history on all sorts of grids. He had a lot of fascinating facts as well, for example where the names of days of the week come from and how our heartbeat changes. There was sort of something for everyone. The bit on rhythms in music was particularly stimulating because I play music. He also gave some useful advice on how to approach working with grids that came in handy for our current brief.