Fuel

Neat movie poster - with a message. Would this be considered conceptual art?

I had an idea...

If anyone ever actually reads this blog, do me a favor...in the comments section below this post, type in the name of one object (e.g., chair, tea cup) -- any object will do -- and I will do 50 sketches of it and will post them.  I need something to sketch and you can be my inspiration!

Sketching

Karly Barrett is a designer who was gracious enough to include sketches she did while developing a logo for bioTrekker - an interesting environmental campaign. I like reading her blog because she includes lots of info about the process of designing. She gives a great description of the process on her blog but I'm just including the images here. I've had a really hard time getting myself to sketch every day even though I know that by doing so, my graphic design work would improve. I've heard this from more people than I can remember. It just doesn't come so naturally to me. This will be good inspiration.

 

 

Great Danes

After watching Helvetica in class last week, I had a lot of fun doing web searches on the various designers the movie featured. I have dozens of blog posts in the wings now. For many of the sites I found, I have no idea what series of clicks led me there. The web is just a great thing. I found a site that allows you to create "word clouds." You can look at my Typography blog if you're interested or go here.

I also found a really interesting Danish design company called e-types. I have often thought of myself as a minimalist and was initially really excited about finding this company. As I went through the numerous projects they'd done, however, I began to get a little bored! Their aesthetic seems to be very much in line with the Swiss International style. To their credit, they put a little twist on it sometimes and don't align everything just perfectly. Here are a few of their designs I like.

The Danish Arts Council logo was my favorite. Their materials describe the Arts Council as supporting artwork that "pays tribute to art that goes against the grain of society." If you look at the logo, you can see there's one little line out of place to represent going against the grain. Very subtle. Too subtle?

The next image is from a fashion ad for a company named Noir. Love the logo that's readable upside down and downside up. Clever.























Finally, I picked their treatment of a series of DVD's about Denmark's history. I liked how the logo color was altered for each time period. As I look at these examples, I notice that they're all pretty dark. That was an unconscious process on my part. Dark thoughts.

e-types has a great website so check it out if you want to see some of their other designs.

Don't judge a book by it's cover...

...unless you're a graphic designer.

I was looking through AIGA's Design Archives book covers and found some that illustrate the design style we're learning about in Graphic Design History. The one on the left looks like the classic Swiss style to me: use of the grid, simple, straightforward communication. Le Corbusier book cover is interesting because he was a designer during the time period we're looking at so, no doubt, the book cover designer took concepts from that time period and modernized them somewhat.





These other two just caught my eye so I'm including them. The Beat the Reaper cover just seems really intense to me -- I like that. I'm not sure if this would follow the Swiss style because it's so jarring -- bright colors, jagged edges. Seems too energetic for the Swiss style. The L is for Lollygag is just a fun little cover that made me laugh. Apparently, this silliness continues throughout the book. I hope you enjoy it too!

Alvin Lustig

As I was preparing for my part of the presentation on the Late Modern period, I came across some of the designs of Alvin Lustig. The link here takes you to a great site about him. There was something about them I really liked so I thought I'd share. He was overshadowed by some of the bigger designers of the time and died very young. I especially like his book covers.


















I was surprised about how much I enjoyed learning about this time period in design history. I liked more of the artwork than I thought I would. Lustig's designs seem very clean to me. It looks like a lot of his pieces have either a strong vertical emphasis or a strong horizontal emphasis. I like his work because it seems very precise and visually interesting.

The more things change...

I was reading my history text last night (can't figure out why I keep leaving it for the last minute -- dumb, dumb, dumb)...Anyway, I was really interested to realize that when I was reading the section about Futurism, the way Futurists arranged type on the page looked very, very similar to a book I'd just found at the bookstore.

The book is called The Art of Reading Sideways by Alan Fletcher. I've scanned some pages here to show how it's similar to the examples in Megg's text. Interesting to think that we don't see this kind of layout as all that unusual but during the early modern era, it was revolutionary -- sometimes literally.

It's 533 pages of all kinds of stuff arranged in a variety of ways on the pages. I love it! Another snowy day book.