 Greetings -- thanks for subscribing. There are lots of opportunities coming in the near future. Have you noticed how much "formula" design is being produced these days? When organizations, and systems, and software solve problems, lots of folks are happy to adopt the solutions and run with them. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a good solution -- but if you're a true designer, ten minutes after you identify a solution, you begin looking for another, better way. Opportunities are always present for those who see herself, not as someone who carries out a task, but as a person who defines better ways of doing things. The first is a job -- the second is a calling.
Be well, Chuck
Check out my Adobe InDesign Ideabook: 315 template files in 19 different categories Everything from brochures, newsletters, and direct mail to packaging, calendars, and books (one CD works with both Mac and PC). Use two or three files and you'll pay for the entire book and disc...
The all-important difference between a fluid designer and a plodding designerLine By Line is a 12-part New York Times series on learning the basics of drawing, presented by the artist and author James McMullan. As McMullan explains it, "During the 12-week period of this column, I will be working on posters for Lincoln Center Theater as well as on a children's book, and I will share with you sketches from those processes if they seem to illuminate an aspect of drawing being discussed." My friend Jessica Jones pointed me to the series and shared this critical insight... "For those of us who are not artists/designers, it is actually quite comforting to see the many, many iterations that get discarded, but also disconcerting to see the nimbleness of the artist's move from one approach to several quite-different approaches. "I've just thought about what it reminds me of: long ago, when I was doing linguistics (the course was, 'The Theory and Practice of Writing,' a terrible title for a vivid and wonderful course), I came across research on the differences between fluid writers and plodding writers (or 'good' vs 'bad' writers). And it had to do with this 'nimbleness.' Both the fluid and plodding writers will produce, say, a draft or drafts of an essay/poem/novel/article. The plodding writer will go back and tweak a word here, a phrase there, move this paragraph from here to there. But the fluid writer will step back, scrap the lot, and rewrite from scratch. "In A. Scott Berg's wonderful biography of Max Perkins, the famous but reserved Scribners editor of Hemingway, Wolfe, Fitzgerald inter alia, Berg writes of Perkins' editorial process. Perkins would, say, receive hundreds and hundreds of pages from Wolfe, read them thoroughly, and then write to Wolf something like, 'There's a character who emerges in Chapter 2. I suspect that this character is the real voice of your book.' And Wolfe would dash off and rewrite, to much better effect, the whole caboodle. So the 'fluid' writers don't tweak; they rework, rethink, take a different approach. "I am better at this 'reworking' with my own (infrequent) writing, but in my wee forays into design,' I know I am definitely a plodding tweaker. I don't do what a journalist teacher once said: 'Don't agonize over your lead paragraph; write SEVEN different lead paragraphs, and go with the one that most energizes you.'" Someone who understands the processes that well cannot, in my opinion, claim status as a "non-artist/designer." Jessica points to one of the most critical talents a designer can possess - the ability to explore at will. A good designer (or writer) develops an ability to dig into a topic deep enough to find the treasure but no so deep that they can't climb back out of the hole. Here > The first in the series: Getting Back to the Phantom Skill...Here > James McMullan's Line By Line - all twelve parts...Here > James McMullan's website...Discuss this topic here...
There was a time when seeing was believing - those days are clearly gone. As you know, it's now possible to model, render, and animate fictional people, places, and things in ways that make them seem real.
But I lost track of how convincingly and affordably it can be done. I recently saw that my friend Chris Miller is consulting with a company called Pacificom Multimedia. As I looked through its portfolio, I was surprised how far this field has progressed. I see work here for big brands, but I also see work for projects that you wouldn't think have the budgets that renderings once cost. The marketing and design equation is ever-changing. I guess it's time we add 3D to our solution mix.
Here > Take a tour of a Northern Power Systems wind turbine...
Here > Here's how one of their animations is being used on the Holland America Line website...
Here > An interactive architectural rendering...
Here > The Pacificom Multimedia website...
Here > If you're interested, here are two of the tools used to produce this type of work... First, Autodesk Maya...
Here > And second, NewTek LightWave... Discuss this topic here...
Recent Tweets from http://twitter.com/ideabookand posts from http://www.facebook.com/ideabookfbHaha... How insulting is this? Someone I did a small job for invited me to participate in their "logo design contest" on LogoMyWay.com. This, believe it or not, was a marketing manager for what appeared to be a fairly substantial security company. My answer... Here > "Join my logo design process..."Jeff Klein at One Hero Creative shares his take on branding... Here > Interesting..."Chuck, can you suggest any reasonably priced alternatives to InDesign?" Here > The answer...I've said this before... we need some more good, extended/wide typefaces. Nice... The Horn Please typeface is Anton Hart's tribute to the flamboyant creativity of Bombay truck painters... Here > Horn Please
Three smart website design ideasThere are at least three things to like about this website design: First, the fact that the site is just one page. It gives me a sense that I can find what I'm looking for easily. Second, I like the light, delicate feel the designer achieved with the use of transparency and how it plays off the background texture. Third is the way the multiple layers interact. It provides lots of visual interest but its not so much that it's distracting. Here > Cultural Solutions...Here > The design is attributed to HoohaaDesign...Discuss this topic here...How else could you use this powerful idea? Compare the present to the pastOne of the things my wife and I did on our vacation recently was tour the Charles W. Morgan, an 1840s wooden whaling ship that is being restored at the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard in Mystic Connecticut. As we climbed through the narrow doorways and rooms I couldn't help but think of the long dead souls who had manned that ship and sailed it to faraway places. So my reflections were fresh when I came across a wonderful new website titled Dear Photograph. It captures, through photographs, the idea of matching up images from the present and the past. It is, in and of itself, a fascinating, touching way of drawing memories from the current reality but the designer in me wants to think of ways of using the same idea in other ways. It's easy to think how the same idea could be used to demonstrate the differences between old products and new products, to document the before and after of a location, and so on. Any other ideas of how this concept could be used? Here > Dear Photograph was created by Taylor Jones...Here > An article about Jones and his idea...Discuss this topic here...Bookmark this amazing resource: A chronicle of of American newspapersChronicling America is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers. It contains millions of pages (yes millions) including a mountain of interesting period advertisements. Here > Chronicling America...Here > Some event topics you might find interesting...Here > A sample of an illustrated advertisement...Discuss this topic here...About the briefing
I try to remain as objective as possible about the information I share here. Unless I tell you otherwise, I receive no compensation from the organizations and people mentioned except for occasional product samples. Comments? Suggestions? Write me at chuckgreen@ideabook.com
Chuck Green
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