I get excited when I see a pretty collection of images, but then get thrown the other way when I realise that’s all there is.

It’s kind of like getting hyped up to go to the movies, then watching the film on your phone. It kind of counts, but really doesn’t.

You see, I love graphic design. I’m wild about learning as much as I can about it, and would more than happily talk about it to anyone who would listen (and often those who won’t, but hey, I’m ok with that). I also believe that there are many more things  going on than superficial images being slapped onto a page with a bit of text.

I put my words together here on Retinart so we can both have a look at what those things are and why they work so damn well.

The (slightly) longer version

There’s something about design that just clicks for me.

It started to click for me when I was a teenager and in retrospect it’s easy to see why — it combines two things every nerdy adolescent boy loves — pretty things and nerdy things. Though now being that I’m all grown up, let’s call them art and science.

It’s this marriage of creativity and reason that probably sucked me in more than anything else. It’s might work because it looks good or it might work because it’s easy to read, but make it both and bam! You have something that seems inexplicably marvelous!

Herb Lubalin’s Mother & Child logo is a
piece of design that will forever elate my spirits

I tend to get obssessed by things, which normally might only last a few months. But with design I’m still a maniac. So much so that after I finished my studies in Graphic Design at Swinburne (in Melbourne, Australia) a little over three years ago, I was more eager than ever to understand how this bizarre beast ran.

So I jumped online and started to read. That didn’t work out too well.

The internet gives us a seemingly limitless stream of information that should answer any questions we could conjure up. But when it came to graphic design I found, as I’m sure you have too, that most sites are just devastatingly boring.

I grew tired of this quickly and
again went on the hunt

They piece together a mountain of images that fall under some random topic, then declare this non-curated bunch the best sampling ever produced! They’ll make you a better designer! They’ll inspire you! They’ll give you something to steal then apply to your work in a horribly inappropriate or childish way! You know, until the following month when they show a similar bunch of images and declare those the best ever.

I grew tired of this quickly and again went on the hunt, but only found a few sites that mixed beauty and intelligence. I found what I was after elsewhere.

While much has been written about graphic design, most of it has landed on pages of pulp and fibre, rather than on screens and in databases. So I started to read. A lot. I adore books and pull so much joy from sitting down with a tome of beauty and knowledge with a cup of tea.

With Retinart, what I’m doing is telling you about those things I read about. Those things that I’m still hungry to learn more about. Those things that give beauty to the science and science to the beauty.

To the right is an example of brilliant design that, once better understood, blossoms. I came to realise that a single piece of good design, when properly understood and considered, can open up and offer us a spectacular feast, far superior to the brief bites of candy we have when we devour fifty images tied together with no real commentary in less than a skimmed-minute.

My goal is to write about anything that ticks both boxes of beauty and intelligence. Design theory and history and philosophy doesn’t have to be boring and dull and dusty. There are so many wonderful images to go ga-ga over, clever ideas that make us smile and powerful ways to pluck at our emotions. All I want to do is for us to understand why while we look at those pretty pictures and talk about it with others who want to dig deeper.

Let’s discuss

I’m always happy to talk to people about all these beautiful things, so feel free to drop me an email directly or via the contact page. I can also be found on Twitter under @retinart.