RockBlog

I can't say I did anything spectacular to notice visual culture over spring break. I was completely ready to veg out and do nothing.

And so I did.

Though, I did visit with people – and in doing so, ended up looking at fashion magazines in coffee shops. Obviously this is the fun thing to do for the youth of suburbia.

I noticed 2 things:

1.) probably 75% of these magazines were ads. Maybe more. Though, considering the whole point of them is to introduce new & coming trends, it works in that context. Thought I thought it was strange how a lot of the ads matched the layout format of the actual magazine pages, which brings me to point 2.

2.) Bodoni + Helvetica Neue (particularly Helvetica Neue UltraLight). It was ridiculous how much of those I saw. All the ads were related to each other in this way, and matched the actual magazine articles, too.

This is all.

The last time I wrote about digital culture I became aware of how so many films are going digital and using green screens, like the film 300. In addition to that observation, I now notice how films are starting to go completely animated, like the movie Bewolf. I just saw a preview for a new contemporary version of the old cartoon Speed Racer which seems to be animated for the most part. With blue ray and high def options and better available imagery, it's really hard to tell if something is "real" or composed. It's interesting as well as sort of annoying that reality is shifting into a made up world.

Being in a class that opens up your eyes to the digital works around you is really intriguing to me. I pay attention to things I would have never noticed before. For example, over break my parents were watching the movie "Spirit of the Cimarron." I joined in because I had nothing better to do and was really amazed that a whole animated movie kept a color harmony throughout the entire production. I had never realized before how important color schemes were to making a piece (even one as big as a movie!) visually pleasing.

http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=spirit+of+the+cimarron&x=0&y=0

There’s good design and there’s bad design, and both have been around forever. Right now we are almost at the peak of good design, everyone is buying and owning these programs to make and sell good designs right from their home. There is no longer a need for schooling or education in this field. WRONG!!! I’ve recently been noticing bad and mediocre design everywhere, EVERYWHERE! I’m probably just noticing it more now because as graphic design students we are trained to critique design, and that’s exactly what I do. Every place I go I feel like I’m always looking for something, always noticing what I would do to rework a design and what I would do differently to make it better. I definitely notice bad design before good design, I haven’t yet decided if it’s because there simply is just more bad design, or if it’s just something I look for or if it’s the places I find myself looking. I do think it’s going to become more important in the near future for companies to start hiring better designers because it’s starting to become very apparent who’s had schooling and who hasn’t, and who is a good designer, and who is a TOP designer. This should be the most important goal at every company…because a company needs good advertising, they are selling something and if someone isn’t interested in the product, ect…it’s our job as designers to MAKE IT LOOK interesting…even if it really isn’t.

I was just browsing the web a little bit and stumbled on this web-page. I thought it was interesting and helpful for a quick overview of what we've been doing the last month or so.

I especially got a better feeling for the New Typography bit mentioned.

http://community.livejournal.com/design_history/12898.html