So I wasn't really sure what I would focus my blog posts on but I figured the best thing to do for me and my fellow designers was to try and find helpful sites that could assist us in making some of the best work we can come up with. Sometimes you just don't have those creative juices flowing or maybe are just unsure about what to do in certain design situations and you need a little push or inspiration.
This site is called Fonts in Use
Fonts In Use helps designers like us choose the right typeface and what it would and could look like in certain designs. You can search a certain typeface or just go through the images until you find a typeface you like. It even shows other typefaces that were used in that design so you know what typefaces work well with each other. This site includes a lot of the most well known typefaces like Arial and Helvetica but also a few not so well known. However, The more common, the more images. You can also search based upon the type of design you are creating and what it will be used for. You can search by industries (like fashion or architecture) or even formats (like posters or magazines) to get a clear cut idea of what typefaces to use or ideas on how to use it.
Another cool feature is that if a design particularly interests you you can click on the image and it will give you a brief description of the image, maybe the designer and even a location of where they found the work. I think this is actually a decent site, even though pretty new, seems to have a lot of potential. I think it also could help come up with an idea or a better way of using any typeface and give you creative strategies. I've already started looking into fonts for some of my projects! You can visit the site at www.fontsinuse.com
Don't you hate it when either your television appears all fuzzy and glitchy? Or when your computer has a malfunction? Well I have recently discovered what the itch is about the art of glitch. In the last 10 years Glitch art has started to become popular all over America! It is where you take a digital file and distort the data or code in a way that manipulates the file to make it look like it is glitching on purpose. By controlling the way the file is altered, you create a visually interesting appeal as can be seen in the picture to the right. It usually consists of pixelated and of a wide variety of vivid, almost psychedelic-like colors. Glitch art can either be moving or static. Many designers and artists are starting to either replicate these happy accidents in either Photoshop or it can also be done in TextEdit. A lot of great examples can also be found on Tumblr.
As it can be seen, glitch art is not like your normal media. Today in magazines, photos are in high definition and altered in a different way so that the models (mostly women) are slimmed down, tanner, and longer hair; what is deemed to be attractive in today's society. Glitch art shows people that photos do not always need to appear "attractive" and is displayed in a new light where it can be thought of as beautiful and considered to be art. If you open your eyes and look around, you can see true glitches on a daily basis. This video below explains what glitch is, how you can make a glitch, and why it is considered to be art. Enjoy!
A designer and photographer, Uelsmann has created many works of art that both inspire and awe. He has an interesting style, a strong belief in his purpose in design, and a lot of renown in the creative industry. For someone like myself who is a designer and photographer, what he is able to do with photographs is something special. He basically did photoshop before photoshop was created, all of which was done in a dark room. Most of his photographs are black and white, but I think that that just adds to the drama of his work. I find his connection between objects and the things that he puts together to be really fascinating. I love nature, but also can appreciate the beauty in man-made structures, so his pictures of trees turning into houses, men having robotic attributes, and mixing human and nature are really fun to observe. I think that what I find most interesting about him is his process. To some people now it might seem old fashioned to still do work in the dark room, but I think that that just adds to his passion and mission in design. In the shorter video that I provide below, he expresses how he loves being able to take visuals and alter them because for him it creates an even better story.
To learn more about this amazing designer and photographer click on "Telling a Different Kind of Story" to go to his website or visit the links to videos below:
*Originally I was going to talk about another website that covers corporate and brand identity work, but I stumbled upon this website so that other one will just have to wait.
The Game Art Hub (www.gamearthub.net/) is an archive-like resource formed in 2012. It has around 80 posts and is continuously growing with new posts every week. The site is perfect for those who are interested in becoming a video game design artist because that's all this site has - concept arts and models for video games. The site has collected concept arts from many hit titles like The Last of Us, Call of Duty, HALO and more. Many of their posts start with a short paragraph introducing the artist(s) or the studio, the video game in question and their opinion about the video game. They might also go into detail regarding the creator's career history, technical aspect of the project, or some interesting facts about the game / project.
The video game industry has been growing steadily in recent years. In 2013 Grand Theft Auto V set a world record for having the highest revenue generated by an entertainment product in 24 hours., among other stunning records. Meanwhile, cheaper games offered on smartphones and tablets like Angry Bird is transforming the industry into an ultra-competitive, multi-billion dollars market of casual games and apps. Video game design is definitely a shining career path. For more info, visit www.gamearthub.net/ All images copyrighted to their respective owner.
Edward Gorey (pictured left) was an all around wonderful person. Not only was he an illustrator, but an author of 100 books and a poet as well. In addition to these amazing things, he had a pretty awesome life – that you can see here – where he was surrounded by cats doing what he loved most; creating. (Also check out that beard!)
Gorey's work was most of the time pretty comical and surreal; two things of which I enjoy myself and which only make works of art more beautiful pieces. All of these reasons are why I hold Gorey so high on a list of "Inspirational Artists".
Gorey's illustrations all have great design technique and style incorporated into them. As you can with this piece of his to the right, each part of the piece has something interesting in it. Whether it be the stroke itself, or the composition. The whole piece has also got a very successful color scheme. Most of the pieces you see from Gorey are usually just black and white, wherein he greatly uses his space to pull off a piece of work. You can also see a part of his humor in this piece. It definitely is not as grim as some of his work, but the humor is definitely there and his style helps highlight it.
I also take Gorey's work into affect when doing design work. I feel that Gorey liked to draw things that he found comical, or that he just enjoyed while putting major thought into his style as well as using his space successfully. When designing, I try to model this attitude as to produce something that is as successful as Gorey's work.
Design is a massive world. It influences the appeal of an advertisement and augments the width of margins in a book (hellloooo, grid system). One aspect of design that we as graphic designers get little to no exposure to is the design in animation and film.
To remedy that, I have three attached animated shorts that show the vast differences design choices make both in the visual appeal of the animation as well as the visual emotion of the story.
Whether you're willing to watch each short completely (which I would encourage, they're all pretty entertaining and/or mindboggling), skip through it and get the gist or just want to extrapolate from the given screenshot, I wanted to bring up the idea that the visual feel of a moving picture has just as great influence on the story as does the dialogue and plot.
This is the most lighthearted of the shorts. The color is saturated and bright and the textures remain subtle and unobtrusive. The use of color in this particular short is made to differentiate between death and life. Simple enough, colored = alive. The visual difference helps to explain the story when there is no actual dialogue throughout. Without dialogue, the audience is forced to pay attention to the visual. With successful design, the story is successfully told.
Heart also lacks dialogue and is, in many cases, the polar opposite to Death Buy Lemonade. Instead, 99% of the short is in black and white. The only source of color, instead of detailing joy and life, is the source of strife. As in Death Buy Lemonade, the visual difference in color helps draw the audience to that which is opposite the norm. The selective colorization grabs attention and the severe lack of backdrop forces attention (and tension) on the characters acting in this blank canvas. In a design aspect, the benefits of the use of white/negative space is evident in this (award-winning) animation. The organic shapes make the short feel malleable and fluid, objects constantly morphing and changing. The movement in the characters had me holding my breath, especially during the climax, and if there had been any background distracting me from the story, I don't think it would have had quite the same effect.
The final short takes a step away from anti-dialogue. In this story, the animation is sharp and jagged and gritty. Even with dialogue, the story wouldn't have nearly as much impact as it does if the animation and design were clean, light or saturated. Edgy shapes add visual tension and give even the human characters a stocky, splintered look. Space is separated by characters in detail in the foreground and the background containing undetailed and silhouetted buildings. Like Heart, the lack of detail in the background helps keep the audience interested in the foreground.
One interesting sequence in the animation is the massacre. Contrary to the rest of the short, the massacre has sharply contrasted silhouettes against a bold background. No one is in detail and shapes are contorted in gross ways. It provides an even greater tension than the rest of the short and, in my opinion, is more effective than if the massacre had been in the same style as the rest of the short.
My idea with this post was to bring awareness to the design in animations as well as live-action and stop-action films. As designers, we're used to seeing design in a static field that isn't changed by dialogue or music or plot. I wanted to only touch on the design aspects in each animation to give everyone free reign and I hope you all enjoy. :)
From the start of human existence design has become an essential part of life. We use it for function, fashion, and status. Design is forever changing to fit the lifestyle and needs of todays humans. With so many forms of design there are endless opportunities for new and improved ideas. From better functioning items to a more appealing appearance, design is the solution to endless opportunities. Design is vibrant and in use all around the world, but how often do you see the designs from other countries??? I recently discovered a website, Design of Europe, that highlights the new and happening design trends. From computer designed images to hand-drawn lettering, the site provides a look inside other cultures and new styles.
The site organizes the new designs and ideas by country. When you click on any of the links it takes you to a page that shows the popular designs and arts that are recognized in that country. The designs come from current and active designers.
Its wonderful because you can click on the artists or designers website to check out more of there stuff.
I have spent some time looking through the different pages of countries. I really enjoyed the designs coming from Sweden. They are clean, simple, and interesting.
On the right side of the archive page, the site offers up-dates on things such as books, events, and more that can keep you updated and engaged!
As designers, its important to stay up-to-date and aware of the new and upcoming designs/styles of America and other places in the world. This site is also an excellent resource to find new ideas for your own designs. Sometimes its hard to come up with an idea for a new design, this site is a great place to spark ideas and gain inspiration. I wanted to pass this on as something you can use as a tool. Keep on designing!
I discovered Kate Moross about
two years ago, and I thought that I would be fun to introduce her for my first
blog post. Moross is a London based designer, illustrator and art director.
When it comes to typography illustration, she’s a real pro! They are often very
chaotic, but that’s what makes her style so interesting. I think it works very
well in terms of catching people’s attention. They not only have vibrant
colors, but the way the composition is made with support of certain object
forms, lines, etc… it all just pretty
much screams out at you in an effective way.
So in the example to the left, you can see there are tons of
different typography illustrations that were used for each word of the sentences, and they’re
all unique in their own way. They are either tall, short, cursive-like, all
caps, all lower case letters and so on. Yet, even if it seems overwhelming you
get a sense of balance here by how compact they all are and how they fit next
to each other. Plus, each word is characteristically done to represent itself,
so for example ‘rain’ has a few emphasized lines around the letters that look
like rain drops, and it's in blue color which represents the water substance.
In 2012, Moross became the
director of her very own Studio, called Studio Moross. It mostly deals with
music based projects, but if you want to check it out there some cool designs; in the packaging tab you can find some neat CD covers. There are more of her personal works (mostly typographic illustrations) on her own website, Kate Moross.
Kate Moross Olympic Shoe for Adidas Consortium 2012
You can start to tell, after
seeing a couple of her works, that she has a kind of style that sometimes
repeat, such as the kind of lines she uses (squiggly, zigzag, vertical or
horizontal, straight lines) as well as shapes; she’s very into 3-sided or
triangular shapes. She has done many cover designs and illustrations for well
known brands and products, such as Converse and Adidas. In fact, some of her typography
and illustrations have been incorporated into the products themselves.
On top of that, she’s also designed for charitable
nonprofit organizations like the American Cancer Society. I think that she’s
really pushed herself up the ladder of success at quite a young age (26 I think)
and she serves as a great inspirationnot only me, but to many other aspiring designers... and hopefully
you guys too. If you want to buy a T-Shirt, necklace or any other products with
her designs on it, you can check out her webpage’s Shop. Hope you liked it!
