It’s been awhile

So, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted, but I’ve been busy.

At the beginning of the summer I took a study abroad trip to Greece and Italy. What an amazing experience! Not only did I get to see a lot of the great works of art I’ve been studying my past three years here at Ferris, but I also got so much inspiration from the everyday life and day to day exposure to another culture’s graphic design. The first thing I noticed when arriving at the airport in Athens, Greece was an advertisement, although I has and still have no idea what it is for, I think that it will be a great source of inspiration, especially for the upcoming Fifth River Bank Run campaign. I love the hand drawn, fun feeling the advertisement portrays.

Advertisement in Athens Airport

Of course there was so many more interesting things that I experienced and saw while abroad I just don’t have the time to talk about it all.

The week after returning I started a sort of internship at the HRCC (House Republican Campaign Committee) in Lansing. Next week is my last week there, and although it wasn’t what I expected, a little boring, and in a way disappointing, I’m happy I was able to get the experience in the “real world”. When it’s all said and done, I know that I don’t want a career in the political field, but knowing what you don’t want is just as important as knowing what you do want.

what must graphic designers know?

Today I read an article called: Graphic Designers, What Must They Know

In the article the author talks about having to listen to prepress people complain about graphic designers not checking their files before sending them off to the printer. He tells that most of their complaints are font, color management, and transparency issues. His reasoning for this happening is that maybe the graphic designers don’t care enough about the output and don’t want to take advantage of having the ability to take full control of what the final image looks like.

When I finished reading the article, I has a new appreciation for my production classes. I always knew they we’re important, but the article made me want to continue learning about production processes so that I can produce the best possible product and be one of those designers who gets talked about and accused of not caring about their work.

TheDieLine

Tonight while taking a break from color matching and prototyping, I was reading my friend Megan’s blog. One of her posts referenced the website TheDieLine.com, she had mentioned this site to me before, but I never checked it out until tonight. Wow was I missing out! The site is full of great design and needless to say, I bookmarked it and it will be a great source for inspiration for future projects.

I especially liked the SEI Water bottle design. The simplicity marvelous. Sorry, there isn’t a picture . . . technical difficulties.

“The structure resembles a hip flask, with one side slightly curved to fit in pockets or bags with greater comfort than typical round bottles. The only branding is the debossed logo. It is stunning in it’s simplicity. Considering it is water, you really don’t need to clutter the packaging with much more information. The product speaks for itself.”

BTW: If you love the art of hip-hop . . . you should check out the T.V show, America’s Best Dance Crew. I recently started watching it and am watching it now, the dancing is amazing!

Web Typography . . . it’s not what it used to be!

It is becoming easier for web designers to create sites with good typography and that makes me happy! I Love Typography, has some really good examples of good typography being applied in web design. As technology improves, so does the designer’s ability to chose the perfect typeface and arrangement of elements on the page, we are starting to see the grid being applied (i.e A List Apart). The grid is also used on The Big Noob, another site that I found through I Love Typography. Besides applying a grid and having good typography, I really like the writing style and the changing banner. I think that entire look and feel of this site would possibly work for the GRDE site that we are redesigning in my Interactive Design Studio class. It is fun and young, but still looks professional. And the changing banner picture, would be a great way to display featured work.

Letting Go.

The other night while checking out Veer’s website, I found a desktop wallpaper that really inspired me.

“You don’t have to be an artist to know there’s magic in letting go and throwing down lines, letting you subconscious drive for awhile. It’s an ideal way to discover ideas, be playful, and quash that inner critic.”

So many times I find my self editing my ideas before I even get them down on paper. And that is NOT how it should be, it actually hinders the creative process. Every idea has the potential to either become a viable solution to the problem at hand or at the vary least spark a new idea. I made this my wallpaper on my laptop, so that every time I’m on it (which is A LOT!) I will be reminded to quash my inner critic by letting losing.

Control

Control, is what Khoi says is the biggest difference between print and interactive design. I agree, in print design the designer can control everything that goes into the printed piece. When designing for the web, designers lose a lot this control. Not only does the designer have limited typeface choices, the users can adjust the size of the browser window or increase or decrease the size of the text, and they want to be able to have some control over their own user experience. Interactive design also has multiple states and the designer must consider how the content is going to behave in each of those states. Khoi says, that since the beginning designers have been trying to take back some of the control. A couple examples he gives are, rendering text as images instead of HTML or requiring users to download specific fonts before using the site. These ideas have been mostly rejected, because they make it to difficult for the user to actually experience the site. This brings up another point Khoi made that I think is really important to keep in mind when designing for the web, “Users to don’t learn how to use a site over time”. I think that it is important to remember that we are developing sites that users must intuitively know how to navigate and discover the information that they are looking for.