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It never ceases to amaze me how selective we are when we communicate. Bury a critical thought in a sentence and, often, all the qualification and nuance surrounding it is lost. We can speak two or three paragraphs, and the listener only hears one point.
Or we hear a cue and begin to formulate a response only to miss a follow-on that completely changes the statement. Listening is an art.
Enjoy today.
Chuck
Meet illustrator and artist Cathie Bleck
In recent years Cathie Bleck is recognized more as a fine artist than an illustrator. But I still think of her as a graphic design oriented illustrator. She is adept at using her dreamy, swirling scratchboard compositions to evoke all types of moods.
Example 1...
Example 2...
Example 3...
Her Drawger page...
Bleck's website...
An interview with the artist by Irene Hardwicke Olivieri...
Website architecture: Shallow or deep?
Here's an interesting article from the Nielsen Norman Group addressing the two basic structures for organizing content.
Flat vs. Deep Website Hierarchies by Kathryn Whitenton...
Hortense Soulier tackles the same subject, from the SEO angle...
Some handy text tools that prove there IS a better way
There are lots of text tools online. Those that compare two different versions of your text and point to the differences, sort lists alphabetically, by word order, and length; that remove duplicate lines, that number each line, and so on.
That's just a glimmer of the possibilities. If you ever perform some form of tedious manual text edit and think, "There must be a better way, " these handy text tools prove there is.
TextMechanic.com includes a long list of basic text tools and so on...
DiffNow.com lets you compare two different blocks of text and highlights the differences...
Unit-Conversion.info does a little bit of everything...
"Is It Plagiarism Yet?"
That is the rather foreboding headline of an article on Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL). I point you to it because as we create materials for public consumption, we need to be aware of the rules of the game. And there are lots of rules a graphic designer should be aware
of--copyrights, trademarks, licenses, other intellectual property--and the ethics of giving credit where credit is due.
Let's start by reading Is It Plagiarism Yet? From the Purdue OWL...
The Citation Machine uses a three-step fill-in-the-form process to create citations to four different standards--the APA (American Psychological Association), the MLA (Modern Language Association), Chicago (Chicago Manual of Style), and Turabian (Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations). Here's the citation it created for its own page:
"Citation Machine Automatically Generates Citations in MLA, APA, Chicago, and Turabian." Citation Machine: Format & Generate Citations in APA, MLA, & Chicago. Accessed January 8, 2015. http://www.citationmachine.net/.
The Citation Machine...
And here's another good source piece on citing sources à la Wikipedia...
Here's the lead up to Newcastle Brown Ale's Call for Brands...
And the spot itself...
"By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you a wedding designer..."
I don't need to tell you how sophisticated wedding design has become. What gets's designed? Well, for starters: The invitations, the dress, the ring, the cake, the flowers, the photographs and videos, and that's just the obvious stuff.
The annual number of weddings in the United States is 2,077,000 (CDC, National Survey of Family Growth) and the wedding industry is measured in the tens of billions of dollars. That spells opportunity for folks who specialize in storytelling. And storytelling is what weddings are all about.
Have you considered how you might get your piece of the cake? Have a look at a few of these sites and think creatively.
Once Wed features "the world of unconventional weddings"--one of many wedding resource sites...
Lucky Luxe, among other pieces, designs and prints invitations in the vein of, what they term, "couture correspondence"...
Vogue Magazine named Mindy Weiss as one of the top wedding planners...
Another planner featured by Vogue is Easton Events...
Some recent stats...
After all this time, as many times as I've watched this video, I still get choked up by its pure happiness...
If you use InDesign (or QuarkXPress), you might find this useful
The idea is simple. Modifying a well-designed template is far easier than starting from scratch. My InDesign Ideabook includes 315 researched, designed, and meticulously formatted documents in a clean, simple style that it easy to build on.
The Ideabook lets you breeze through time-consuming document setup and get right to the important stuff. Instead of spending 15 minutes to create a simple layout, you'll spend 15 seconds. For complex projects-books, newsletters, catalogs, reports-you'll save HOURS.
"If you need to create winning design and your time is important to you, there is no better investment than Chuck Green's Idea Book. I write copy and create marketing materials for small business, and Chuck's world class layouts have me up and running in minutes instead of hours. I can't recommend this book enough!" Kory Basaraba, Copywriter and Consultant, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
For Adobe InDesign
For QuarkXPress
An amazing timeline of art history
There are at least two reasons to check out the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. First, because the craft of graphic design, in some ways, mirrors fine art--and this is a very interesting, comprehensive overview of art history.
And second, because of how the information is presented. There's an amazing mount of information here (300 timelines, 930 essays, close to 7,000 objects) and the UI makes it possible to view it in many different ways.
The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History is a reference, research, and teaching tool hosted by The Metropolitan Museum of Art--the largest art museum in the United States and one of the ten largest in the world.
The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History at The Metropolitan Museum of Art...
The timeline home page...
The Metropolitan Museum of Art website...
What can we learn from the everyday habits of the people we admire?
Generally speaking, I believe I tend to learn as much from the mundane, everyday rhythm of life as I do from its more dramatic events. So, if you were to ask me if I'd rather meet someone I greatly admire at a big, formal occasion or sit next to them on a train, you'd probably guess that I'd choose the train.
Andy Orin is the author of a series for Lifehacker titled, "How I Work" and "How We Work." Each article profiles an accomplished professional from any of many walks of life, and details the habits and gear they use to maximize their productivity.
What phone does that person use? How is their workspace set up? What are they reading? What's the best advice they ever received? Those are the type of insights these interviews provide. The run-of-the-mill stuff that keeps the mill running.
To me, they are gold.
How I Work: Animator and illustrator Aaron Blaise...
How I Work: Writer, storyteller, host of This American Life, Ira Glass...
How I Work: Articles editor at Wired Magazine, Adam Rogers...
How I Work: Technology blogger, Amit Agarwal...
How I Work: Writer and CEO of The Aspen Institute, Walter Isaacson...
I had the opportunity to visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. this past weekend. (First time.)
What struck me was the enormity of the positive effect one human being has had on the United States of America in particular and the world in general. In celebration of the holiday in his honor, one of his many beautifully articulated ideas:
"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for the their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits." Martin Luther King, Jr.
I was really taken with the illustrative feel of it. Notice how graphically the shapes and folds of his coat are rendered.
For those who haven't seen it, I'm trying to give you an idea of the scale through my photographs. In case it is not clear, the front piece with Dr. King is sliced out of the piece behind.
In that last image, you can see the distance between the front and the back (King's visage is on the front of piece to the right).
Just for grins...
A torturous version of the iconic Also Sprach Zarathustra (also the soundtrack for the majority of 1970s muti projector slide shows)...
