incomplete manifesto for growth

For our type journal this week we read the Incomplete Manifesto for Growth by Bruce Mau, which I absolutely loved. It's one of those simple, but inspiring articles that I want to read every week. Or when I'm feeling frustrated and uncreative. 

Bruce Mau is a designer, author, institute founder, and more. He is the founder of Bruce Mau Design, wrote many things such as this manifesto and The Third Teacher. He founded Institute without Boundaries which is a post-grad design program inspired by his conviction that the future is calling for a new breed of designers. These are just a few of many of things that Bruce Mau has done.

In Incomplete Manifesto for Growth, the whole list includes many inspiring mantras, but my chosen one from the week is this:
"Don't be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort."

This one popped out from the list to me because I thought the beginning was so clever: Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. I laughed to myself and loved it all at the same time because it's so true. "Cool" just means that a lot of people like it, which probably means its a little mundane and a little expected. This isn't true for all "cool" things, but I think its important to remember great design doesn't come from wanting to make something "cool". Which goes along with the second part of his advice, "free yourself from limits of this sort". Trying to make something that's "cool" is limiting yourself as a designer.  If you try to make something that a lot of people will like you might end up not making something to your full potential. Where is the creativity in making something popular among the masses? Probably not there most of the time. But these are just my thoughts after reading that quote. This week I'm going to not be cool.

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For our type project my mood board style is "bold free spirit" and I wanted to share some of the images and creativity that has been inspiring me for the project so far.

|| HAPPY FRIDAY, TO YOU. ||

type journal: jessica hische & louise fili

For this week's journal in typography class we were assigned to watch this video of Jessica Hische. Jessica is an illustrator, designer, hand-letterer, and creator of beautiful artwork. In the interview she went through a timeline of how she became the designer she is today (or up unto that point in the video) because she had stumbled into a niche profession of being a hand lettering designer. 
I have always loved and appreciated hand lettering, so it was interesting to hear about it from someone who knows whats up.

She talked in the video about how lettering and type are two very different things. Letting are word that exist for a specif location/application. Type, on the other hand, are designed to be type-able fonts or design of the whole alphabet. I thought this was a good take-away/thing to remember as a designer.

She also talked about how as a designer you have to have the patience of making new things every time. You can't just pull things from past work and think they'll fit into new projects. She was referencing how she makes new type and lettering for new projects, because it wouldn't be it's best/perfect if she didn't do so.

Near the beginning of the video, she talked about her time working for Louise Fili. She told about different lettering project she had done, and then that work has really impacted her free lance work. I noticed how she is continuing to learn and build off of everything she's done. That's an important thing to remember as  designer - that you're always evolving. She talked about how she really have to find her niche in illustration and design and learn to do that really well. 

Another interesting project she talked about was her Daily Drop Cap project. This was one of her side projects, but it made her well known as a designer. She decided when she stopped working for Louise Fili and went free lance full time she wanted to be sure to be working on lettering projects at all time, so she decided to make one drop cap a day until she made twelve fonts. It was exciting hearing her talk about this project and other projects she did on her own or for "fun" because you could tell they were things she was passionate about. It was these projects that kept her loving design when maybe she didn't have other fun projects that were paying the bills. It's inspiring to hear about those kind of projects as a designer. 

After watching the video I went through her website and pulled some of her work that I really loved for inspiration.

I also pulled some work from Louise Fili's website that I loved. I noticed when looking through her work what a wide range of styles she incorporates into her work. Even the hand lettering in each project has it's own twist. That is something I really appreciate about her work.

// type type type //

In type class we've been working on designing magazine layout spreads, and were encouraged to watch the following videos to help with our project.

First we watched this TED talk by David Carson. This video was interesting because I had heard about David Carson broke all these rules in magazine and graphic design by basically doing whatever he wanted with the pictures, text, etc. rather than following the "rules". His magazine Ray Gun broke all of the rules, such as making the text legible in some layouts, and it was funny hearing him talk about the work. In one example he was showing, he couldn't even read what it was suppose to say. But the design spoke to him and said something about what he thought the text should say, so isn't he still successfully displaying the type? I think so. Unless I was the writer, in which I would probably be upset. He presented a new way of seeing and designing information.

The second video we watched was this Vimeo displaying the first issue of Katachi Heroine.
 This magazine includes some REALLY cool animation that pulls the reader in and so many interactive ways to get through the information in the magazine. It was inspiring to figure out how to do all these cool things with my iPad layout, so I'm hoping I can figure some of those things out.

layout design

In type class last week, we spent a day looking through magazines for inspiration / ideas / examples of what we could do with our layout spreads. The following examples are spreads that I wanted to document for help in my own design process. Whether it be with how the designer dealt with the type, or the placement of the photos each of the following layouts I thought worked in some way.

typography

For typography we were asking to explore and blog the answers to the following questions:

_ What are the advantages of a multiple column grid.?
A: Multicolumn grids provide flexible formats for publications that have a complex hierarchy or that integrate text and illustrations. The more columns you create on your grid, the the more flexible your grid becomes.

_ How many characters is optimal for a line length? words per line?
A: A line should be approx 12 to 14 inches long. When working with a 9 pt to 12 pt font, a maximum of ten to twelve words or sixty to seventy characters per line would be acceptable.

_ Why is the baseline grid used in design?
A: Baseline grids serve to anchor all (or nearly all) layout elements to a common rhythm.

_ What are reasons to set type justified? ragged (unjustified)?
A: Justifying your text makes a clean shape on the page as well as uses space efficiently. Flush left and jagged right goes along with the organic flow of language and avoids awkward spacing that justifying sometimes creates.

_ What is a typographic river?
A: a typographic river is the space between words in paragraphs that form and connect between lines to form a river-looking space throughout the paragraph. This is distracting and awkward to the reader and should be fixed.

_ What does clothesline, hangline or flow line mean?
This is the imaginary line created on a page where the designer decides to "hang" the text from on that page.

_ What is type color/texture mean?
A: Type color is effected by the space in between the lines of text. Smaller lines = bolder type color. Thicker lines = less type color. Texture is created in typography by mixing bold typefaces with thin small ones; creating contrast with your use of type.

_ How does x-height effect type color?
A: Typefaces with larger x-heights need more interline spacing than those with smaller x-heights. Therefore, typefaces with smaller x-heights have denser color than those with larger x-heights.

_ What are some ways to indicate a new paragraph. Are there any rules?
A: Some ways to indicate a new paragraph are: indents, a space between lines, along with many different ways designers get creative with coming up with ways. The only rule I could find was to not indent the first line of the first paragraph, as it is the beginning and no separation mark is needed.

A key image:

I'm still trying to nail down exactly what I want to use for my key image for my typography project, but I want to do one similar to the picture above. I know it want it to be an image that captures how he photographs fashion as well as captures emotion through the photo.

 

Scott Schuman continued

In order to prepare for a presentation in class of our photographer, we were told to research and prepare the following.

SCOTT SCHUMAN // 1500 word essay

Scott Schuman is a world-renowned fashion photographer and blogger who created and runs his own fashion blog called “The Sartorialist”. This site has become one of the fashion industries most respected and visited sites. Time ranked The Sartorialist as one of the Top 100 Design Influences in 2007. But Schuman’s blog hasn’t been his only career success. Schuman has been asked to contribute to Saks Fifth Avenue, French Vogue and GAP, just to name a few collaborations throughout his career. While he started out as a boy from Indiana, he has certainly become a man that has taken the fashion world by storm.

Growing up Schuman says he was the average Midwest boy who played and was interested in sports. It wasn’t until he started seeing all of the things some of his favorite athletes were spending their money on like cars and fashion that he realized he instinctively gravitated toward fashion. After researching fashion more and dressing himself better he noticed he got more attention from the ladies, so he didn’t hate that aspect of the fashion world either. He began to see the world through pictures and see fashion of the world through pictures that he studied in fashion magazines. As a boy from Indiana, he said that looking at Vogue was like looking at a whole knew world he never knew existed.

After graduating from Indiana University Schuman moved to New York City where he landed marketing jobs for top designers like Jean-Paul Gaultier, Rudolph Valentino and Helmut Lang. He even served as the director of men’s fashion at Bergdorf Goodman. Around that same time he opened his own showroom specializing in sales and press for up-and-coming designers, which taught him the competitive aspects of the fashion industry. With his own showroom he basically assembled designer’s reputations from the ground up giving him a designers eye that would help him later on in his career. While he loved fashion, he also had an interest in photography. “I didn’t want to become a ‘fashion photographer,’” he says, “but I knew somehow that my loves of fashion and photography would eventually merge. I just never guessed it would be in the form of a blog.”

Schuman was in the fashion world for fifteen years doing fashion sales and marketing before he started his blog. Schuman’s now successful fashion journalism blog started out with the idea to “travel the world searching for people whos style define who we are today.” He wanted to mix photos of guys and girls who were stylish and who were fashionable, which he says are two different things, and put them online. At the time he only knew of websites, but thought that would take too many people to be able to create it. So after stumbling upon an interior design blog online and realize he could use that format for his photographs, The Sartorialist was born. The blog was created in 2005, a time when he didn’t know of any other street style blogs that were already happening. He saw the blog as a great way to share his work visually, while limiting text, which is something, blogs at that time weren’t doing. Schuman chose to create a photo driven blog, which he knew could make him successful all over the world. “One of the things that I knew about doing a photo driven blog was that you didn’t have to read English to enjoy the photographs.” And he was right because his readers are from all over and range from old to young and rich to poor. That’s one of the things he is most proud of, the diversity of his readers. The instant success of his blog allowed him to make it his full time job just a few months after the blog hit the internet.

He said he loves the idea of street fashion because you get to see how people actually wear the styles and trends. “There’s an element of new, there’s an element of previous season there’s your own history, your sweatshirt from high school, vintage pieces. Its that combination that I find so much more interesting than the runway.” The idea that the runway show is much abstract and more of the direction the designers want fashion and trends to go, while what people actually wear is much more enticing to Schuman. Schuman believes there is a different between fashion and style, and that’s something he documents through his photos. “The difference between fashion and style is that fashion is the sometimes, its the thing that’s happening at that moment…while style is something that’s always there in your personal wardrobe.” He says not everyone has fashion and style but its what makes things interesting. He doesn’t think of himself as a people person, so for him he finds it interesting to read people in that way.

He loves the romantic and classic style of Milan. But he loves the sexy and unique vibe of Paris, and the sport and different vibes of New York City. He has noticed how in Milan there are very narrow with few styles, but in America there’s a million different styles and he loves that variation. While Milan is his favorite city to shoot, he thinks all of these cities wouldn’t be as interesting without the variation of the others. So after he’s worked in Milan for a week, he’s ready to move on and see something new.

With his work, Schuman says that the photography is half of it and having an editing eye is the other half. “I learned to shoot something in the romantic way that I see it.” And that’s also why his blog has become so popular. His blog has taken off because he has a unique point of view. He isn’t just shooting the trends. He isn’t just shooting what people want to see, but what they aspire to. He is showing and displaying what he moves him and what he loves. His work is not documentation, its art. “I think it took off not because I was shooting something incredibly different but because I was shooting something people could relate to.”

Before his success in fashion blogging, Schuman had experience in the fashion business. He worked for fifteen years in fashion retail and marketing. His ex wife was a designer, and he has worked with many designers giving him the edge of knowing a designers eye. He knows that designers aren’t looking to the trends; they are looking to set the trends. So designers look for little bits of inspiration from the world such as a detail from a jacket or the attitude of a person, rather than copying a whole look. And because of his designer eye background, that’s exactly where he finds his own inspiration. And his background in tailoring gives him an appreciation for well-made clothes. “It’s the posture and the attitude of these guys” he says about the people he shoots and the inspiration they bring.

This unique point of view of fashion and style as well as the world around him is what has made Schuman’s fashion blog so successful. Schuman considers himself an artist not a journalist. A journalist documents the facts, and the facts are boring he said. He says to be successful you really have to have your own point of view and “shoot from the heart”.

While he loves fashion magazines like GQ and Vogue and has even worked with them throughout his career, he views them in a more abstract way. Rather than reading all of the stories he looks at the pictures. And as a young boy, it was really these photos in the fashion magazines that taught him about style and how to shoot. “Opposed to telling a story, I like to hope my photos start a story.”

Schuman’s success in the fashion blogging industry has led him to other opportunities in his career path. For instant in 2006 just one year after starting The Sartorialist, Vogue’s official website hired him to shoot a series of collections in cities such as London, Paris, and Milan. He also writes a monthly column for GQ and appears in videos on Style.com. He collaborated with Burberry for their project “The Art of the Trench” and most recently did a photo series for Art of Shaving to be featured in a show. He has also become an author, as he has published two books already throughout his career. Based upon his blog, the books display and organize these photos that are found on his blog that has made him a name in the fashion industry. Penguin publishing began printing his book “The Sartorialist” in 2009 and he has sold over 100,000 copies. He has also designed a book called “The Sartorialist: Closer” with a women’s and men’s cover. The books encompass the diverse styles that Schuman sees when photographing in Japan, Korea, London, Milan, New York, Paris, and many more. The books include some of Schuman’s favorite images as well as some exclusive images. He has also been interviewed and featured in many magazines such as Fantastic Man, British Vogue, GQ, New York Magazine, and many more. 

Source 1 // Source 2 // Source 3 // Source 4

Sources 1 & 2 from above are great video interviews by Intel and A Big Think Interview. Also, check out Scott Schuman on TED here.

We were also asked to create a word list about our photographer / their work / feelings you get when looking at their work / etc. I doodled mine in my sketch book and scanned it in:

 

Some of the key words defined,

SIMPLE: easy to understand, deal with; not elaborate or artificial

CLASSY: of high class, rank, or grade; stylish, admirably smart, elegant

ABSTRACT: thought of apart from concrete realities; expressing a quality or characteristic apart from any specific object or instance; theoretical

ROMANTIC: of or pertaining to the nature of romance; fanciful, impractical, unrealistic; imbued with or dominated by idealism, a desire for adventure

REFRESHING: pleasingly fresh or different

RELIABLE: that may be relied on; dependable in achievement, accuracy, honesty

compound words:

refreshingly genuine // simply bold // modern romantic // simply popular // freshly wistful // exhilarating minimal // refreshingly straightforward // trendy pioneer // refreshing romantic