Enjoy shuffling through
Creativity

Learn Theory, Practise Aesthetic

The most important thing you can do as a graphic designer is to practise as much as you can.

Practise with intention and thought and careless abandon.

Learn theory but realise that it doesn’t help you become a better designer, merely a more knowledgeable one. All the theory in the world won’t make a page more interesting to look at unless you understand how to marry the theory with aesthetic.

Aesthetic is the craft of our profession. I’ve heard some designers say that aesthetic is like the bastard child of design, it’s there but it shouldn’t matter as long as the functionality is solid or the design serves its purpose as a communicative artifact.

These designers are idiots.

Aesthetic matters more than anything else. Our profession is largely built on craft and gut feeling and knowledge that can be learned but rarely taught. This makes some uncomfortable as it suggests that any ol’ creative hipster could walk into our studios and do what we do. But like I said, designers who think this are idiots. We are not part of an industry done by rote, nor willy-nilly mark-making.

Continue on to read more »

Paula Scher, Herbert Matter & Swatch: Was it Plagiarism or Parody?

After the flames of modernism became mere embers, the design community started to turn to something with more warmth.

People were after something comfortable — a song buried in memory.

So designers of the eighties began looking back to move forward.

Digging through the archives and history books, designers searched for visual languages which had more romance wrapped in their tones than that of the clean lines and bold type of modernism.

Philip B. Meggs, Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, 4th edn., pg 481.Should a designer sit down and find novelty in a historical style, they wouldn’t set out to copy any exact piece. They would learn the language it spoke and use its “vocabulary of forms and form relationships, reinventing and combining them in unexpected ways.”

Looking Back with Paula Scher

By the mid-eighties, Paula Scher had become known as a designer producing original and clever work that sometimes spoke with the tongue of the past, emulating style and feel in interesting and new ways.

Doing this, Scher and her business partner Terry Koppel put together a promotional booklet entitled Great Beginnings.

Compiling the opening paragraphs of well known novels, the booklet served as a great introduction to how one can reappropiate design styles long gone in fitting and interesting ways.

~~~

~~~

The poster that got everyone thinking

Continue on to read more »

Photoshop Has (Almost) Nothing To Do With Graphic Design

Think of the photographer who captures a fraction of time or the illustrator who tells a story. Will these moments not exist if it weren’t for the camera or the pencil?

They exist in spite of the tools used to capture them.

The ideas that we develop for our clients, the messages we wish to communicate, exist in spite of Photoshop or any other piece of software. The lines of code wrapped in an interface do nothing but hold a (virtual) expression of our ideas. Much like the photographer’s moment, the ideas exist whether captured or not.

But so many insist on calling Photoshop mishmash pieces design, when they are nothing of the sort as they hold no idea, just stylistic nonsense. A hammer can help build a house, does that mean hammering two planks of wood together is good enough to be a home?

Oh Photoshop, Your Crown Is Too Heavy

Yes, Photoshop is, today, an essential tool of graphic design. Yes, knowing our tools well make our jobs easier and can help our work become beautiful — there is no denying that.

But it isn’t enough to know the tools well without an idea to which they can be applied. The expressions these tools craft will be without soul, meaning or story.

The idea is not validated by the tools used to craft its expression. But the tool does find validation in the expression. The tool relies on it to be considered valuable. Photoshop is no different than any other tool.

In 100 years, discussions about what version of Photoshop was used to produce the wonderful work today will not be held. It will call it a tool. It might be an wonderful tool to wield, but it is only a tool. It may have changed the way we express our ideas, but it shouldn’t change the way we conceive them.

Continue on to read more »

Tomorrow's Cool

Making your design look cool puts a date on it.

Cool is a temporary thing, based on emotions and thoughts and ideas of the time in which it was made. More often than not, what’s cool is a taste of what people guess tomorrow will bring.

But tomorrow hasn’t happened yet. What we guess will look cool tomorrow is an assumption based on how we feel today.

Continue on to read more »

Going to the Next Level

Improvements can always be made. Always. It is not possible to go through your career without having every single piece of work you do needing an improvement of some sort. The trick is knowing that the improvements need to be made.

Imagine sitting down at a table with a designer whose work you admire passionately. This person is a living-god in your world and their word is gospel.

Now imagine your sliding a piece of your work across the table.

Think about it for a moment. Really do it. I’ll wait, I’m in no rush.

So, how was it?

I hope for your sake it wasn’t terrifying. I hope you were proud and waiting to hear what advice they had to offer. I hope you were confident in the work you were showing them. I hope you believed in the work.

If this isn’t the case, then why not? It’s time to do something about it.

The work doesn’t have to be as good a theirs, it doesn’t have to be as clever as theirs – after all, isn’t this why you admire them so, because they’re able to think differently to you?

You should be confident in your work. You should be able to say “with this I give you the finest of my skills”. Hell, it doesn’t even need to be good. Just the best that you are capable of.

There is nothing stopping you from moving to the next level

If the idea of showing your work to the person across the table fills your soul with fear? Many consider this a lack of confidence a trait well worth dispensing with. I think the opposite. It is something that you can take amazing advantage of.

You are in an enviable position because you know your skills are lacking. You would be wise to realise that there is nothing stopping you from moving to the next level.

Continue on to read more »

Take a Journey of Inspiration

Inspiration should serve as a motivator and guide.

Much more than superficial beauty can be found within the depths of that which you find intriguing. A beautiful piece before you shouldn’t be looked at and seen as pretty then discarded completely—it should be explored.

Yet most seem to just look. They scour through a hundred beautiful images by this designer or pertaining to that theme and are somehow able to get through it all in minutes and consider themselves inspired.

Is this a real, luscious inspiration that has been found or is it something superficial? Has no more than an idea that can be lifted from the beauty before them been recorded in their mind? An idea which they can remember for their own projects?

This isn’t inspiration. It’s plagiarism.

Inspiration should be seen as a journey.

Enter the train station and buy a ticket to a far away destination. A destination deeper that most dare venture.

Inspiration can be found in almost anything if we are willing to give up a bit of time and look at more than just the surface. When we’re willing to break things down and look at each individual piece, something great can always be found. Sometimes the journey can be tricky and unexpected turns can present themselves and other times it’s smooth sailing. Either way, you will be a better creative for the travels taken.

First Stop – Pretty Pictureville

The train leaves from the station. We look at beautiful things along the way, until one ignites a fire within our souls. Then we stop.

Think about this piece that burns a white flame inside you. Perhaps it is an image that causes an illustrator’s heart to ignite a wild beat. Or a single sentence that causes the writers cheeks to dampen.

Second Stop – Blood Stained Falls

Take what was found at the first stop and pull it apart. Spill its blood upon the floor and dissect what is left.

Look at the beautiful work. Ask yourself why your heart pounded when you took it in. Was it the way this juxtaposed with that, or was it because it was an echoing of something you’ve experienced?

The key here is to constantly be asking your self why. Why did it do this to me? Why did I feel a flutter?

Continue on to read more »

That Damned Wall

Oh, don’t we hate that wall with such spite?

We smash into it and it stops us dead in our tracks.

We’re working away, working hard to give beauty to the problem before us and then … arch! Dried up! Tired! Bored! Sick of it! Sick of it all! Throw it all in!

I hate the wall. I hate it with all the lustful anger I can muster.

I hate hitting it, I hate staring at it. I hate that it makes me swear and cry foul as I wish upon it a destruction.

But we all know the truth — the wall is only in our minds. Our minds are what hold tight, not some outside force, so it is my self that I call a ‘fucking pain in the ass’. Such awful words on the tongue, aimed at my own mental anguish! Dreadful! Horrible!

When what is stopping us is our own minds,
we are trapped in an unbreakable bubble.

A joy in destruction

But I love bashing the wall — smashing it, destroying it. And because the wall doesn’t exist outside the confines of my consciousness I am the only one capable of obliterating it, so the bashing and smashing is ever more enjoyable as it’s a triumph over the self.

Continue on to read more »

Pushing "Wrong" Out of the Picture

Worrying about whether what you’re right or wrong means you are evaluating the ideas before they truly exist.

You’re judging before the work can be judged. It’s a dam to your creative flow that you need to learn to smash through.

While many of the decisions we make are made from experience, knowledge and plain-old instinct, we sometimes put too much effort into not making the wrong decision that no interesting ones are made at all.

Maybe it’s better to hold-off on deciding if something is right or wrong?

Why not just have some fun instead? Learn all the rules you can and then throw every idea out there in a wild haze of expression? Race after fun and excitement and enjoy the process for what it is, not what it could be. Let the bizarre and odd and unexpected into the development stages and forget about if any of it is right.

It’s often best to just forget about whether your ideas are right or wrong.

Before there is right or wrong

Before there is even a chance for you to make the right or wrong decision, dedicate your efforts to learning everything you can about your the problem you’re trying to solve. If you are working on a client’s brochure, then understand their words, their meaning and their goal as best you can.

If you’re writing a blog post, then understand exactly what it is you want to say. Try to grasp the angles from which you will fire your ideas.

Or if you’re a photographer or illustrator, think about the scene you’re wanting to capture and express. Think about the actors, the props, the stage.

Understand all that you can about the questions being asked.Understand all that you can about the questions being asked.

You do this so that when things are flowing, you can just go with it. You can follow the tracks this education lightly set. Not all the information will be remembered word-for-word, but enough to direct you in the right direction will.

Continue on to read more »

Valuable Ideas and TED

The most valuable of all that we can ever own costs us nothing. When it is passed from one person to another, it does not diminish in quality or quantity. In fact, what happens to this possession is quite the opposite – it grows. It develops and becomes strong, frightening the closed minded and exciting the willing. Let’s have a look at few video presentations on this special little something at the Technology, Education & Design conference – TED.

The most valuable of all that we can ever own is an idea. A thought.

An idea is the start of everything. most of everything is, obviously, ultimately worthless. Which means many of the ideas that come to us through the ether are, you guessed it, ultimately worthless.

Yet once in a while, an idea grabs hold. It latches on and infects the host with curiosity and passion. It pushes those in its path to discover something new. To do something great.

It may be something as simple as the ball-point pen or as complex as a thought as to how the human brain functions.

In a nutshell, the TED conference is about clever ideas. Creative, awe-inspiring ideas that help to shape worlds – be it the world of science, the world of the hungry, a third-world nation or the world of business.

An annual conference (or should I say because of recent expansions, conferences) TED runs for three days, as fifty people share their ideas, 18 minutes at a time.

It is for reasons like TED that I hold reverence for the power of the internet. A few years ago, those behind the conference began to share some of the moments of what happens on stage online. The popularity and spread of these videos is extraordinary. It shows that we are all curious and interested in how to better ourselves and the worlds around us.

The collections is now at over 400 videos, and it’s growing.

What you’ll find below are a few videos which I find to be fascinating and in relation to what you are here for—what it is we love—graphic design, creativity and beauty.

Stefan Sagmeister.

… much, much more difficult is, this,
where the design actually can evoke happiness.

There are two lessons that are to be learned from Stefan Sagmeister‘s talk at TED.

The first is about happiness. It is about the importance of finding as much happiness as we can from the work on which our thoughts dwell. And more than merely finding happiness for our selves, the joy one can take when they can inject happiness into their work and have it show through to the point of the audience being able to connect and share in such feelings.

The second lesson, and one that is no secret to anyone to whom Sagmeister’s work and career holds some familiarity, relates to honest. Honesty and the ability to place a little part of your own mind and thoughts into the work.

It is perhaps because of this that many see Sagmesiter dancing upon the line that separates graphic design and art. It is definitely why his work is so engaging and entertaining. Through his work, which is all client requested, he makes it easy to appreciate what it is he is thinking, feeling and saying, because the messages are perosnal to him. And they are messages he wants to share.

Continue on to read more »

Natural Talent

Natural talent works well as a scapegoat and defense for one to protect themselves from the real world. To say someone is naturally talented is to say that no matter what efforts you exert, they will forever prove themselves better. Which is to say that they didn’t earn what they have. What utter idiocy. It’s a matter of being curious, answering questions which invoke inspiration and joyous hard work. That is where true natural talent lies.

I am not naturally talented. Nor are you. I’d say you’re better than that.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no doubt that you’re a talented, intelligent and creative person. What I do doubt, however, is the idea of such skills being given at birth. I doubt that our ability to draw like this or write like that is something that we don’t work for, but is something that just comes into us out of nothingness. I say you earned the skills you have. Hence you being better than that.

Curiosity

What I know though, is that you were given that which has been the driving force behind everything creative we, as a species, has ever done that is worth mention – curiosity.

All of those whose careers revolve around
creative thought are continuously curious

We’ve all curious about something. For some, to ask the question ‘why?‘ is to give ourselves happiness

We are born curious, this is what’s natural. Some of us are taught to stop asking questions because it’s annoying, others might not find the answers they want so give up. Either way, questions and probing becomes something of a lost art for some.

They are more curious and
are the ones who have an interest in a field

Those that may appear to be naturally talented are more likely to be those who are more inquisitive. They are more curious and are the ones who have an interest in a field that allows them to constantly ask questions. They haven’t forgotton how important they are.

To say a skill rather than curiousity comes naturally is to diminish the work those deemed naturally talented have done—and it demeans the work and effort you’ve put into your own craft, your own questions. It is saying that no matter how hard you work, they will always best you.

Continue on to read more »

Wish to delve deeper?

Hidden!Hidden!