Listening to Mike Meiré talk last night at the Istituto Marangoni was both wildly entertaining and strangely down to earth. It covered (almost) everything an art director deals with. To hear someone who operates in that sphere of both client and creative say things that you and your colleagues have said or – more regrettably – should of said countless times was quite inspiring:
I was brought right back to art college ethic of “make lots of things quickly and see what happens” yesterday at the fantastic Dennis Hack Day. Craft, analysis and iteration can come later – there has to be a place in the process where you just do stuff quickly and see what things you make. Yesterday was just that – amplified and accelerated.
“In visual perception a colour is almost never seen as it really is — as it physically is. This fact makes colour the most relative medium in art.” Joseph Albers
Every now and then you get given a picture of a great leap of progress; there was a time before say, Picasso or hot metal, and then there is everything that came after it. Listening to Adrian Shaughnessy’s talk on FHK Henrion (St Bride Printing Library, 15 January) he pitches him as a pioneer of many things but I was particularly drawn to him leading the way in system based design. I was trying to imagine “the time before” but in this instance I couldn’t. I am not sure we can call it design if it is not system based.
It was very nice to see one of my projects up on stage at the EDO talk this week – Cyclist Magazine App. It was being used an example of how well considered design can create strong templates in HTML products. Or as Ant Miller of Clearleft said in his post: “It’s structure heavy, technically, but this is just a scaffold for some really beautiful design.” Thanks! That is what I want people to think when they see my products. (http://clearleft.com/thinks/pointstopixelsatedo/)
Had the great pleasure of visiting Monotype’s Clerkenwell office last week. We met with Than Hoang, Thomas Elliot and the type designer Toshi Omagari. We discussed numerous subjects including Etext fonts, kerning pairs, and their very clever Typecast system.
A fascinating and fun day at the Digital Magazine Awards (#dma13) and the “Un-conference” before hand. Spoke to all sorts of interesting people about what is going on in the industry.
Here are some of the things we saw or that came up:
Last time I was in L.A. and had some time off I went to some fantastic shows that were part of the Pacific Standard Time season. My favourite was Eames Design: The Guest-Host Relationship. The quote pictured was on the outside of the A+D Museum on Wilshire Boulevard.
Read another wonderful architectural definition today. It was about how architects differentiate between items and space: “A figure is an element or shape placed on a page, canvas, or other background. Ground is the space on the page”
Running up Parliament Hill early this morning when a pack of runners doing a 10k ran the other way on the turf in “silence”. I say silence – their sound was actually incredible. About a hundred people not saying anything, feet hitting mud and grass, breathing in a sort of unison. It was only silence in a social sense. The actual experience of it was a sort of soft rythmic murmur.
ideas/forms/functions 