Jakob Trollback

Watching these videos on a talk by Jakob Trollback was a great intro into our motion graphic project. I thought it was interesting how he started by saying that the difference between motion and print design is storytelling and that as a motion graphic designer you focus on the storytelling of the great design. As a self taught designer he told about how he started out by copying other work as a designer when he was trying to learn the basics. And much like learning a new language, at the beginning you're not really saying anything. But once we become better designers - we need to learn to say something through our designs.

"I believe that creativity is a positive driving force for mankind."
He talked about getting other people involved with your design or marketing - and I think this is something really important to motion graphic design. How is the design connecting with people, and what makes them a part of it or interested in it?

He also mentioned that for his company if their design or idea doesn't work in print then they don't believe in doing it. Which I thought was really interesting, since for our project we are starting out by designing a book in print.

I thought it was interesting to hear his thoughts and tips on design and connecting with people before seeing his work, because they totally reflected how he works and how his motion graphics and videos were designed. Great talk to watch before starting our motion graphic project.

colorado, I love you.

I went to Aspen, CO this last weekend and documented the trip through my hand lettering assignment.

handlettering is fun

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my latest assignment for my hand lettering class. enjoy.

Type Journal: Thinking Form

This week for type I explored the thinking form. Through their blog they: "salute the great artists, architects, designers, photographers, and typographers of the past and present, the remarkable individuals that have given great contributions to the world and to whom we owe so much. We would like to create a platform to remember all of our design heroes."

ROMAN CIESLEWICZ:
A graphic designer and illustrator from Poland, he was born in 1930. He graduated from Cracow Academy of Arts in 1955. Some of the places he worked includes WAG agency, Vogue, Elle, and he even taught at Ecole national superieure des arts graphisques. 

His bio opened with this quote: 'Posters need powerful occasions and significant subjects, which they can't find at the moment. As a means of communication they belong to another age and have very little future.'
I found this a very interesting and a good summary of poster design - little future but need powerful occasions. It made me think of well designed posters that I've kept that have no meaning after the event is over - but if its a beautiful design the receiver of the poster will want to keep it. 

Here are some of my favorite works from this portfolio:

WILL BURTIN:
"The creative person who can find himself or herself in this expanding universe is not only fortunate but indispensible."
Burtin was born in Germany in 1930. He was a typographer/graphic designer, and studied at Handwerkskammer in Cologne. His work was noticed by Adolf Hitler and was commissioned to do propoganda work, but instead him and his wife fled to the USA. He eventually served in the US army and even designed for them. He also was the art director for Fortune Magazine, and after worked in his own studio. He earned the medal of the American Institute of Graphic Arts which honored him recognition of their exceptional achievements.

My favorite part of his work, especially in these examples, is how he turns image into pattern. 

BRUNO MONGUZZI:

“Design is the intellectual and pragmatic process aimed at giving an appropriate form to a given function.”

A Swiss designer born in 1941, he studied typography, photography, and gestalt psychology and graphic design at Ecole des arts decoratifs in Geneva and also he studied in London. The author of the passage of him on the site said that he met him and he was nice, and you could see his passion for design. See some of his work below.

 I enjoy his use of sizing, and the contrast of very large elements vs very small elements on the page. You can tell from these few layouts he was a great designer, and knew how and where to place elements on a page.

KURT WIRTH:

A Swiss designer born in 1917. He studied graphic design, and after school worked at his own illustration studio designing for books newspapers and magazines.
He became the president of the Association of Swiss Graphic Designers from 1956 to 1959. Throughout his career he designed everywhere: Paris, Greece, Thailand, Spain, and more.

You can tell he is an illustrator through the examples on the site. The houses posters has amazing detail, and it's one of my favorite of his works. I also really enjoy his abstract work and the emotion it evokes even though a clear picture cannot be seen.

GREGORY VINES:
An American designer who studied at the Massachusetts College of Art. He then studied graphic design at Basale, and was a teacher there until 2011. His teaching area embraced classes for Graphic Formulation, Poster Design, Imagery, Imagination, Word-Image, Verbal Communication and Time Based Media. His current work focuses on things like photography and drawing. See some of his work below.

 

When looking at his work I found it interesting that some of the posters were illegible because of the design, such as the third one down on the left. It seems to be a poster but you can't read all of the content. I also loved the simple yellow type over the messy dark collage like background magazine spread.

BRADBURY THOMPSON:
An American designer born in 1911, who graduated from Washburn University in Kansas. He started his career by working at Capper Publication and he promoted to be an Art Director with Rogers-Lellog-Stillson. After the war he started experimenting with CMYK design and prints, which are some of my favorite works by him. He uses type in a wonderful way.
"Type can be a tool, a toy and a teacher; it can provide a means of livelihood, a hobby for relaxation, an intellectual stimulant- and a spiritual satisfaction."

 

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.