January 2010 Archives

Bruce Mau Design: Massive Change - This website is really cool, I love the design of it, with all the cool roll over changes and the roulette of words at the beginning to create different sentences. Also I really enjoyed the video on "How do you sustain the planet?" made for Arizona State University, it brought up a lot of good questions that might help me some design ideas.

Project M: I didn't really find anything useful from this site, for the project. However I didn't look through everything, and I really like this site and what they are doing.

Big Think Studios: :I like their studio philosophy #9, "Ads that emphasize despair are a turn-off. Humor, intelligence and truth will win the biggest audiences." This is right up my ally, I don't like to make depressing ads or works of art, I feel they for one a turn-off and also are cheesy.

When searching online I also found a cool idea that I might incorporate into my poster. It was a poster that said "coexistence," and where the "X" was, was also an "L" to also make it say "Listen."

I learned a lot about color theory last year in many of my classes, making it ingrained into my head. So I thought that his reading would be really boring, but I actually did learn a few thing about color theory that I did not know.

For Example:

• First color wheel was invented my Sir Isaac Newton.
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe observed the human perception of color, which allowed him to discover important aspects of color theory, including simultaneous contrast and color's relationship to emotion.
• Red is the most visually dominant color,
• Suggests speed or action.
• Stimulates heart rate, breathing and appetite.
• People appear heavier in red clothes.
• Red cars are stolen most often.
• Yellow is the first color the human eye notices
• It's brighter than white.
• Speed the metabolism
• Bright yellow is the most fatiguing color; can irritate the eyes
• Pale yellow can enhance concentration (used for legal pads).
• Blue food is rare in nature; unappetizing, suppresses hunger.
• Causes the body to produce calming chemicals; relaxing
• People are said to be more productive in blue rooms
• Blue clothing often symbolizes loyalty or trust
• Green is the easiest color on the eyes
• Green is a calming and refreshing color, often used in hospitals to relax patients
• Green means "go"; everything is in order
• Green is said to aid digestion and reduce stomachaches
• Purple has a feminine and romantic quality that is sometimes associated with male homosexuality.
• Rare in nature, seems artificial
• In ancient times, purple dyes were expensive and worn by royalty and the wealth only
• Said to enhance the imagination and thus is used in decorating children's rooms
• Orange is an appetite stimulant
• Orange rooms get people thinking and talking
• Orange rooms speak of friendliness and fun
• Orange is used for visibility enhancement.
• Black clothing makes people look thinner
• Black humor is morbid
• Black makes other colors look brighter
• In color therapy, black is supposed to boost strength
• Black is often associated with secret societies
• In some cultures, it's good luck to be married in a white garment
• White is the perfectly balanced color
• White is so brilliant that it gives some people headaches
• White light can be blinding
• White is associated with angels and gods
• Gray seldom evokes strong emotions
• Gray is a balance of black and white
• Gray is its own complement
• Grayscale means rendering an image in a range of blacks and whites, it also refers to a tonal scale.

What I want to learn most from Graphic Design 1, are new things I can do in Illustrator and Photoshop. Last year was the first time I've ever had Illustrator and Photoshop. So I consider myself still new and learning the software. I have come a long way and learned a lot, but I really want to learn more. As far as what I want to learn most about Graphic Design in general would probably how to make visually appealing designs. The type of designs that people want to look at, and find interesting.

I feel the biggest design inspiration, as far as, digital design for me is Psdtuts.com. This website contains numerous tutorials for Photoshop, to some people they wouldn't consider tutorials as inspiration, but I have used what I've learned from these tutorials in a number of project I've done. I've learned things from this website, I don't think anyone else could have taught me, and that is why Psdtuts is my biggest inspiration.

In reading this chapter I learned a lot about Graphic Design that never really occurred to me. I learned things that seemed so obvious I had over looked them in the past, but now I might find them useful for the future.

In the reading it showed that Graphic Design is always evolving, what was once new and revolutionary is now "a cliché into our visual language and now we want to move on to the next fifteen minuets of graphic fame." I've never really looked back on previous generations of Graphic Design, but that statement is very true. Graphic Design is always changing, which excites me for the future, know I will never get bored with this career and never knowing what will be the next big thing or style.

Tromp 'oil (trick the eye) remains a useful design tool and to some indispensable - I've learned about this before and thought is was interesting then, but have yet to use it in any of my works, and after reading more on it and seeing some examples, it has encouraged me to try it out in the future.

Devises and illusions only work when their use is entirely justified and supports the central premise of the campaign. This is helpful to know, not to force a cool new idea into a project that it doesn't fit into.

Shigeo Fukuda-
One of the world's finest exponents of optical graphic design. He creates simple graphic shapes that twist and turn right in front of our eyes.
He uses a restricted color palette on his works.
He also happy and willing return to previous themes and ideas and works on them again, sometimes decades later.
"Play is the essence of work."
I really enjoyed the section on Shigeo Fukuda, his work is amazing and I love looking at it. I wish there was more on him in the reading with more examples of his work.