Sunday, July 22nd, 2007
Grids, guides, and a giant poster. Bootcamp continued with Week 3 being all about grids.
No real surprises, some good discussions, and a really interesting project. Only two of us chose to do a poster (30″ x 72″). The rest of the class chose to do the 8″ x 8″ book or a website.
Definitely the most fulfilling project so far.
Notes on Grids, for later reflection:
- Don’t be a slave to a system that doesn’t work. Adhere to rules when it makes sense. But there are always going to be places where the rules must be changed, bent, or broken. It’s so easy to get caught up in your own rules – stay loose.
- Understand the content first. Good organization is a key driver in good design, and this only happens when the designer understands the content. This becomes especially true with large amounts of content – and when the author isn’t the most organized writer.
- Large-scale posters require different information be readable at different distances. Get the readers attention, bring them in closer, and give them the nitty-gritty. Not having one of these can mean nobody reads your poster, or that some of your audience will just pass on by.
- Josef Muller-Brockmann was right, grids are the organizing principle that makes civilization work. I know this seems very self aggrandizing, but I truly believe the designers highest calling is to organize for all.
Posted in CMU, Design, Grids, Summer | 2 Comments »
Monday, July 16th, 2007
Drawing and rapid ideation with Eric Anderson. Working towards building models over the weekend. Nice to get a pencil back in my hand. Eric also showed us his tablet PC, and I have to admit that if Apple starts making a tablet I’ll be saving my pennies to be first in line to buy one.
Some drawing lessons:
- Prisma pencils work so much better than graphite because they don’t smear.
- Start light! I’ve known this since middle school, but drawing light keeps you light on your feet and lets you move between ideas so much faster than heavy lines.
- Don’t worry about erasing, just keep drawing. When things get to messy start another sheet and trace what you’ve done.
- Drawing should “communicate effectively and efficiently”. Amen.
Note: Posts with images should return soon.
Posted in CMU, Design, Drawing, Summer | No Comments »
Monday, July 16th, 2007
Mo photo on our seventh day of class. Dylan was a great instructor and was able to answer everyone’s technical and non-technical questions and do so without everyone getting lost or falling asleep.
Everyone showed their one day photo narrative assignment today, and there were some sets that really impressed me. I was generally unhappy with the work I put together. As usual I began by overthinking the project. In the end I took pictures of the dinner Gretchen was putting together.
Spent the afternoon working in Illustrator. Fun with the pen tool and bezier curves.
Some lessons from the day:
- One day assignments are just that, and you really need to maintain perspective about how much should be accomplished in an evening – especially with no advance warning of what you will be doing.
- Poor planning is one thing, tight deadlines are another. Learn the difference.
Posted in CMU, Design, Drawing, Photography, Summer | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007
Photographic basics, and a brief assignment for creating a narrative.
It’s amazing how I seem to forget this stuff every 3 years or so. F-stop what?
Also, I knew when purchasing my digital point-and-shoot that I was dealing with mediocre tools. Being asked to take expressive pictures with it makes the limitations even more apparent.
Spent the afternoon on a poster for my cell phone. Pretty happy with it considering it’s two hours of work and that includes the photography, done while sitting in class, and the headline.
Posted in CMU, Design, Summer | No Comments »
Monday, July 9th, 2007
Today was our last day with Karen Moyer who was a great teacher. We covered our final exercises and discussed the benefits of different formats and some general rules on establishing page margins. The morning ended with a brief discussion on legibility, line length, kerning, and how leading affects legibility.
Some general notes
- Let the content drive the design and organization. Don’t attempt to apply meaning – let the content’s inherent information come through. Design to expose the greatest amount of information the easiest way.
- Always try to do more with less. The fewer moves you make, the more efficient and elegant the solution.
- Some things are logical, some things are visual. Good solutions find the middle ground of remaining logical and being visually interesting and elegant.
- Don’t always seek to only find the solution. Sometimes wrong moves are more valuable and inform your decisions more than right moves.
We also began descending into the depths of Photoshop today. We begin working with photography tomorrow (or at least learning about photography).
Some of us went to see Sicko tonight. Everyone should see this movie. If nothing else, it might change who you vote for in 2008. The United States must change how it handles healthcare and that change must come from the bottom up.
Posted in CMU, Design, Elections, Living, Summer, Typography | No Comments »
Saturday, July 7th, 2007
Another successful morning critique on Friday, along with some additional discussion about typography and typographic/visual variables with Karen Moyer.
Typographic Variables to Remember
- Structure
- The forms of the letters. Think one-story “a” vs two-story “a”.
- Proportion
- Height to width ratio.
- Shape
- The nuances that give typefaces their flavor. Serif vs sans, stem to crossbar transitions, etc.
- Weight
- Stroke weight, defines the min & max of strokes within the same (optical) proportion. Light, Roman, Bold, Black.
- Size
- The amount of area the type occupies. 8pt, 12pt, 24pt, 60pt.
- Tone
- Variation within one color. Grayscale, duotone.
- Color
- Hue, Value, Saturation.
- Texture
- Variation or pattern of an element. Different printing methods can add texture (mezzotint, different line screens).
- Position
- Where on the format the element is placed.
- Orientation
- How the baseline orients to the format
Alex also brought everyone up to speed on typefaces and type families and why all typefaces are not created equal. Overall a very successful afternoon.
Looking back on the first week I’d declare it an immensely successful beginning to my graduate school experience.
Just a note: This idea for documenting my CMU experience comes directly from Dan Saffer’s blog about his time at CMU. In tribute, here is Dan’s Week 1 Wrap-Up from 2003.
Posted in CMU, Design, Summer, Typography | No Comments »
Thursday, July 5th, 2007
In Design Fundamentals
Back from the break and a busy day in class today. The first critique went well and everyone had good feedback and helpful questions.
Lots of similar answers were up on the board, but some definitely worked better than others. Subtle changes ended seeming much larger from far away, an issue I haven’t dealt with for the better part of a year.
We continued on our journey through basic typographic hierarchy and began exercises utilizing two variables instead of one – leaving a lot more room for exploration and clarification.
In Software Boot Camp
The afternoon was spent working with quotes from Pulp Fiction. It’s amazing to see how everyone interprets things differently. I had forgotten how much fun school can be when everyone has good input and good work that shows genuine thought and problem solving.
I’m fairly happy with my revised layout. Though I think the original layout is much busier than most of my work which intrigues me.
Posted in CMU, Design, Summer, Typography | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007
Worked on a new project today, the typographic hierarchy project, which CMU students have been doing for a while now.
It’s interesting going back to the basics of working with typography and being really constrained with what variables you can play with. It is simultaneously constraining and liberating. We’ll be adding variables throughout the rest of the week, so it will be interesting to see where we are in the end.
Everyone else seems to be having similar thoughts about the summer courses so far, even despite our varied backgrounds and design skill levels.
At the end of our six week session we will be creating a process portfolio to document everything we did. It seems like many of these are going to be websites, so I think I’m going to start exploring what I can do. This is a linear progression in lots of ways, though, so a book or some similar exploration might be better.
Posted in CMU, Summer | No Comments »
Monday, July 2nd, 2007
First day of Design Fundamentals class today, met a lot of cool people.
Great to see how diverse everyone’s backgrounds are and to finally put faces with names/email addresses.
A few of us met up this evening at Doc’s for beer and lively discussion – hopefully the first of many such outings. I’m excited about the program based mainly on who I’ll get to be around.
Got to organize some tools today as well, a good exercise in what designers actually do:
- Make Decisions
- Categorize
- Organize
I’ve also included my first project at CMU: using type to display song lyrics. Could be better, but I think I got some ideas across in the small amount of time we had to complete the project. Worked on connecting the lyrics to what I was dealing with at the time and exposing what Ben Folds was thinking when throughout the song, since we didn’t have a whole of direction as far as interpreting things. Also some references to starting again as a designer, hoping to get back to where design really comes from and what its power is.
View the Army PDF.
Posted in CMU, Living, Pittsburgh, Summer | No Comments »