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Design Guy

A Design and Arts podcast

About the show

The show that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We discuss graphic design in particular, and design in general, to equip you with lessons in process, practice, and inspiration. Get a new concept under your belt in mere minutes and unleash your creativity!

Newest episodes

Design Guy, Episode 40, Talking About Type: Let Your Voice Be Heard!

Jun 4, 2010

Download Episode 40 Talking About Type: Let Your Voice Be Heard! Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. And before we begin, I'd like to announce my sponsor for the coming episodes. Yes, I have a sponsor. And that's Mark Batty Publisher. Mark Batty is an independent publisher dedicated to making distinctive books on the visual art of communicating. Affordable, well designed, thoughtfully created, and produced to last, MBP books are artful products that readers want to hold onto forever. A great example of their books, and one that ties in with this episode is the title, "Dot-Font - Talking About Fonts by John D. Berry. You may know Mr. Berry from his dot-font columns at CreativePro.com, which is a site I've enjoyed for many years. Berry, who is both an editor and a designer, himself, talks critically and entertainingly about type designers, font technology, and how lettering and type are ubiquitous in our culture. I've got a copy in my hand right now - It's a beautiful, perfect bound edition, just filled with great visual examples. Again, that's Dot-Font - Talking about Fonts. You can pick it up at markbattypublisher.com or, of course, at Amazon. Well, we're talking about Type. Typography. And we kicked off the discussion last time with a refresher on the importance of Type as that central and defining element in graphic design. It's what distinguishes it from other arts because everything we do traces to a definite message. A typographic one. And type is our primary artwork. Those letterforms are the clip art, so to speak, that we reach for above all else. And that's because these characters, these visual symbols, with which we encode our communications are evocative all by themselves. Designers often skip the other visuals, like photos and illustration, altogether, because Type, all by itself, has the power to produce images and emotions, even sound in the human mind. R. Hun...

Design Guy, Episode 39, Talking About Type: An Introductory Word

May 27, 2010

Download Episode 39 Design Guy, Episode 39, Talking About Type: An Introductory Word Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Today, we turn our attention to Type. That grand subject of design, of graphic design in particular. And we'll seek to just approach the topic. This topic is the Everest of Graphic Design, and from a Graphic Design perspective, this is where a show like this one really begins. And that's because Typography is the heart and soul of graphic design. It's the bedrock. It's what makes graphic design what it is, and what separates it from other disciplines and arts. In an early episode, we set down the distinction between graphic design and the fine arts in order to make this very point. And it bears repeating, because often we're not clear on the difference. The lines between the visual arts seem kind of blurry, we might think the difference is one of mere format or of the techniques and tools employed to create the work. And while there's some truth to this, the ultimate distinction has to do with the role and purpose of type in graphic design. A difference in our objectives in using type. And what is that goal? Well, the goal is simply to communicate somebody's message. And while we might do it in an artful way, maybe an oblique or a slightly ambiguous way (perhaps to stimulate interest and attention and thought), ultimately, however, the message we're communicating is objective. There is a specific piece of communication intended, and, unlike the fine arts, where we're allowed to play in subjective spaces if we wish to, where beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and where meaning or message (if there's any intended) may be inferred in a purely personal way, that is not the case with graphic design. Graphic Design is a form of art that is linked to an objective typographic message. And that's with the intent of communicating something very definite,...

Design Guy, Episode 38, Adopt a Negative Attitude

May 27, 2009

Download Episode 38 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Today we'll discuss why, sometimes, you've got to get negative to be positive. No, we're not talking creative mood swings here, or how to channel your anger into your work, or anything like that. We're talking about "negative space." And how giving attention to the negative space can strengthen our design compositions. Okay, so what exactly is "negative space"? Well, first of all, negative space is kind of an unfortunate phrase because the word "negative" is such a downer, but in the context of art and design, it is simply the opposite of positive space. Now, of course, that's not so helpful since we haven't defined positive space, either, so let's start there... Positive space is the shape of your foreground elements. If, say, you're looking at an illustration of a hippopatomus performing a high-wire act, carrying an umbrella - all the elements I've just described - the hippo, the umbrella, the high wire, make up the foreground elements. Taken together, their collective silhoutte defines the positive space. On the other hand, the space that surrounds her is the negative space (and yes, the hippo is a girl). So, if you were to take a marker and color in everything but the hippo, the high-wire and umbrella, you will have defined the negative space. Here's another example, drawn from Betty Edward's "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain."(1) Edwards reminds us of the old Warner Bros. cartoons, where Bugs Bunny reacts to something an runs. Maybe it was that episode in the mad scientist's castle with that big, orange haired monster wearing tennis shoes. Anyway, he panics and he runs, slamming right through a door, leaving a Bugs Bunny shaped hole behind. And it's that hole in the door that we want to remember. Because, in that hole, we see the exact shape of Bugs Bunny - his head and ears, his arms and legs, all perfe...

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All episodes

Design Guy, Episode 40, Talking About Type: Let Your Voice Be Heard!

Jun 4, 2010

Design Guy, Episode 39, Talking About Type: An Introductory Word

May 27, 2010

Design Guy, Episode 38, Adopt a Negative Attitude

May 27, 2009

Design Guy, Episode 37, All the World's a Stage for Designers

Mar 4, 2009

Download Episode 37 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. When beginning a new project, as much as is within your power to do so, choose the best of elements. You're going to be selecting type and image, among other things, and when you do, choose thoughtfully. Think of this as as an audition. If you were to assemble a high-caliber theatrical production, you'd screen for the best talent. There would be a line of candidates waiting in the wings, fidgeting nervously, awaiting their turn to show you what they've got. And you'd stock your ensemble with just the right personalities for the roles they were to play. You'd want them all to be great and capable and hardworking and suited for the personality into which they are to breathe life. But more than that, with an eye toward the ensemble you're putting together, you'd cast individuals who combine well, who coalesce into something...more. And now you're thinking chemistry, you're thinking alchemy, because you know that something magical and transcendent can happen when elements combine. Humphrey Bogart is great by himself, but put him together with Ingrid Bergman and something else is going on, something special. In the narrative arts, the craft term for this is orchestration. Elements are selected because they differ from or complement other elements. One character might be meant to serve as a foil to another. And so they act upon each other. And your job at this early, critical phase is to stage all the elements and action, keeping that broad picture in mind. How do the elements stand together? How do they combine? Is there good chemistry? What's the overall effect? This analogy to actors and such is helpful because we sometimes view individual elements as just static things when, in reality, each one is charged with personality and with power. Each one is an active agent in the mix. So, applying the analogy to design, wha...

Design Guy, Episode 35, Proximity and Alignment

Dec 4, 2008

Download Episode 35 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Today, we'll bring an end to this exploration of the principles of perception, also known as the Gestalt rules by discussing Proximity and Alignment. Now there's more to Gestalt than what we've covered in this series, but I trust this has given you a foothold on the topic. But let's get right to it. Proximity Proximity is something we understand intuitively. It requires no explanation when we see it. If we're at a party, we'll see certain kinds of people around us. Some will be standing by themselves with drinks in their hands, looking around. Others will congregate in groups of two or three or five or six, and we "get it." Those that are standing close together form a group. Even when they stop talking and interacting, we still see them as a group by virtue of their proximity. Or think of high school. There were groups of jocks. Groups of freaks. There were loners. Maybe there were gangs when you went to school. And we perceive these persons, we comprehend these individual elements, if you will, based on their relationships and context. They are either separate and individual, or they're perceived as part of a group. And it's just like our compositions. If we have a more or less even distribution of shapes or elements, they all tend to stand alone. They're not in proximity to anything in particular. But when we bring elements together as a cluster or collective or group, we view them as a new thing. Something bigger. And this helps us comprehend our environment. Complicated clusters of elements get simplified in our minds as one thing. They are that group or cluster, and this frees our minds from having to deal with them as individual units to be inventoried in our brain individually. You can mentally batch process the whole lot of them. This is important to understand in our designs. If we don't use proximity...

Design Guy, Episode 34, Visual Momentum (Continuance)

Oct 23, 2008

Download Episode 34 Design Guy here, welcome to the show, this is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. In our continuing series on Unity, we've been discussing the Gestalt Principles, and to remind once again, this is all about perception, and even closer to home, it's all about our goals in composition, that is, it's about how we perceive a unified whole, and how that whole is actually greater than the sum of its parts. Today, we'll look at the next rule in Gestalt, which is called Continuation. Another name we could give to Continuation is "Visual Momentum." Now, we all know what momentum is in physics. But in the visual realm, there's a tendency for our eyes, once directed, to continue moving in a certain direction. So, definitions describe continuation as this tendency for us to continue looking in a given direction, until we see something of importance, a dominant element in our composition. But continuation more often has to do with how our eyes follow through, even through intervening objects as we track along a certain visual path. A simpler way to describe this is to say that our eyes will follow along a line, or a path, or curve, and perceive it as a continuous line, even if it crosses another line or object. So, for example, a lower case "t" looks like just two lines, rather than four lines that happen to be meeting in the middle. A lower case "t," or the letter "x" then, provide us examples where two lines, or two strokes, are crossing each other. In other words, we percieve them as following through, or as a "continuation" right through each other. They cross each other. At least that's how it looks to our minds, even though, strictly speaking, we could just as accurately define such a form as four lines connecting at a central point. In design, we see this concept of continuation in a number of ways. Sometimes it's in the way elements are composed, we suggest a direction that our eye wants to follow, su...

Design Guy, Episode 33, All in the Family (Similarity)

Oct 4, 2008

Download Episode 33 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Well we're in the midst of a discussion on Unity, and as a part of that topic, we've taken a detour through what are called the gestalt rules. So, if you're joining us midstream, let's recap a few points. Fist of all, Gestalt theory gets its name from a School of thought in Psychology, which began in the early 20th century in Germany. And this school of thought says that, when it comes to studying human behavior, we need see the big picture, we need to discern broader patterns of behavior, not just isolated psychological events. It's in the big picture that we get our insights. But this concept carries over to visual studies as a way to explain how we can achieve a unified composition out of individual parts. And it even goes beyond that to assert that a unified whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And so far we've discussed a couple of gestalt concepts, namely figure-ground and closure, which you can catch up on by downloading those episodes. But moving right along, I'd like to step though some more gestalt rules today, starting with the rule of Similarity. And as we take these one by one, we'll see that they're really pretty simple and straightforward. The hardest part might be remembering the terminology. Now, the rule of Similarity, just as you'd expect, says that a composition looks more unified if the elements are similar in some respect. If objects are similar, they look related. Just like people. Identical twins are obviously related to each other. But brothers or sisters that share physical characteristics can also look obviously related. It's when siblings don't look much like each other that people express surprise that they're actually related. They scratch their chin and say, "Really? I just don't see the family resemblance." And this is what it's like in our compositions. As we compose, we can p...

Design Guy, Episode 32, We're All Seeking Closure

Sep 13, 2008

Download Episode 32 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. In our continuing series on Unity, we're exploring Gestalt Theory - which is about perception, and how our minds make meaningful wholes out of incomplete parts. But as a topic of design study, it's a way of putting designers in the driver's seat. In other words, these concepts help us control how our audience sees what we put in front of them. It allows us to control the points of emphasis, among other things, so we can communicate in a more controlled way. So moving right along, the next Gestalt concept we want to cover is Closure. Closure describes something that our our minds do to help us fill in the blanks. If a square is composed of a broken or dashed line, we understand it to be a square. We accept it as a square. It's not truly a square because of the spaces between the bits of line, but our minds of forgiving of this, and accept it as a square. If we see a half-shadowed face, we fill in the blanks. We accept that there is another side of the face. Otherwise, we might scream in horror over missing eyes and ears. And this is a really good thing to know if you're ever stranded on a desert island. You can have full confidence that when you form the word, "S.O.S," out of rocks on the beach, the rescue plane pilot won't just see a bunch of scattered stones, he'll recognize your distress call for what it is and pick you up. But Closure does another important thing for designers. It teaches us an important sensibility. And that's that you don't have to be super-explicit all the time. You don't have to overplay your hand to get the job done. Your audience can put together a whole lot of meaning out of a few elements. And this reminds us not to visually over-explain, or to underestimate our audience. We can take a less-is-more approach with assurance that they'll "get it." So go ahead and imply a human face with a fe...

Design Guy, Episode 31, Figure-Ground

Aug 27, 2008

Download Episode 31 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We're talking about Unity, which we've described as the compositional goal of taking many elements and fashioning them into a cohesive whole. In other words, we don't want our audience to be distracted by the parts and pieces of a thing, we want them to see the big picture, and want them to see it in way where everything ties together, everythings feels integral, everything hangs together as one piece, and creates one effect. And as we pointed out, this is essentially the definition of design, itself. So, in keeping with this idea, we're taking a short tour through Gestalt theory, which is about perception as a dynamic process. It's about making meaning out of what we see, and how our minds want to make meaninful patterns out of chaos. And we do this by perceptually organizing what we're looking at. As we look around, as we survey our environment, we begin to infer a sense of structure and relationship among the things we see. And we do this so we can quickly come to terms with it all, to make sense of it all. And in a survival sense, it makes sense that our minds want to know what we're up against, so we can react appropriately. In visual design, we learn how to apply these principles of perception so we can aid that process. Generally speaking, we want to make things as intuitive and as instant as we can. Because the goal is communicate, to transmit meaning rapidly, and make sure people get the message. So, I'd like to give a quick rundown of these Gestalt rules, or tools, starting with what's called figure / ground. Figure/Ground is a way of understanding the visual field before us. If we see a man, for example, standing in the street, we see the man as the figure, and everything else as ground. And depending on how clear that distinction is to us, we'll have a stronger or weaker sense of which is which. The dist...

Design Guy, Episode 30, Seeing Unity (Gestalt)

Aug 1, 2008

Download Episode 30 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We're talking about Unity. And when we began this discussion last episode, we said that unity is a goal of composition - unity describes how a multiplicity of elements combine to achieve one efffect. And this concept hearkens back to the fundmental definition of design we layed down in our earliest episodes, when we said that Design is the process of creating order out of chaos, as we fashion many disparate elements into an ordered unit. But how does Unity work? How is it that one design is perceived to be more unified than another? And that's the key phrase, "perceived to be." Because this discussion lands us squarely in the territory of perception. And it's all perception, when you think of it. Our designs are nothing but bits of paper and ink, or illuminated pixels. It's what our minds of make of those bits and pieces that matters. And while we may not entirely understand how our minds work, we know we can aid cognition by understanding some principles of perception. So, today I'd like to introduce the ideas behind what is called Gestalt Theory. And don't let the terminology scare you, Gestalt Theory is concerned with how our minds connect the dots, so to speak, forming a coherent whole out of incomplete parts. A puzzle with missing pieces still provides enough relational and contextual clues for us to discern that emergent whole. And you may recall that we touched on this idea somewhat in the episode on Shape, when I said that this was a cognitive imperative, the way our minds compulsively and continuously make meaning out of stimuli around us, even connecting random things. And I can't help being reminded of the scene in Woody Allen's Take The Money and Run, when he tells his analyst that the ink blot looks like two elephants making love to a male glee club. But I digress. So, what Gestalt theory does is make...

Design Guy, Episode 29, Unity: Out of Many, One

Jul 10, 2008

Download Episode 29 Design Guy, here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We concluded our recent series on balance with a quotation from Alex White's book, The Elements of Graphic Design. White tells us: "Balance is an important route to achieving unity in design. If the various elements are seen to be in balance, the design will look unified. It will make a single impression. If a design is out of balance, its constituent parts will be more visible than the overall design." (end of quotation.) These remarks provide a nice segue into the topic of unity. And they also echo the very first definition we laid down for design itself. To refresh your memories, we said that Design is the process of creating order out of chaos, of taking many disparate elements and forming them into an ordered unit, or a unified whole. So, that idea of wholeness, the E Pluribus Unum of Design, if you will, where from many things we attain one thing, or we achieve one effect is a very important concept both to have and to maintain as we're working. Especially on projects of any scope or scale. My own work experience has consisted of large-scale projects, spanning months or even years, contracts requiring multiple teams of people to execute, with a variety of taskings. When you find yourself in this situation, you can easily miss the forest for the trees. You find that you're working on your own tree, and that, after a while, that's potentially all you can see. So achieving a unified effect becomes an even greater challenge on large, complex projects. And this is why direction is necessary. We need directors on large projects to maintain alignment toward a unified vision of an end product. Movies are a perfect example of this. And the more you think about it, it seems almost miraculous that so many elements can come together so well in spite of the scale of a modern motion picture. There's the music, the specia...

Design Guy, Episode 28, Balance On Balance

Jun 19, 2008

Download Episode 28 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We're in the midst of a discussion on balance, and in the previous episodes we discussed how elements act as optical weights within certain balancing schemes - and those schemes are typically classified as either symmetrical or asymmetrical. And we spoke about some of the implications and the effects - the feel that we get - out of those schemes. Alex White, in his book, The Elements of Graphic Design, defines balance, and also sums up those balancing schemes as follows: "Balance, or equilibrium, is the state of equalized tension. It is not necessarily a state of calm....Symmetrical, of formal, balance is vertically centered and is visually equivalent on both sides. Symmetrical designs are static and evoke feelings of classicism, fomality, and constancy. Asymmetrical, or informal, balance attracts attention and is dynamic....(and it) requires a variety of sizes and careful distribution of white space. Asymmetrical designs evoke feelings of modernism, forcefulness, and vitality.' (end of quotation.) And that's more or less what we concluded, except that we emphasized the notion that if symmetry is essentially static, then asymmetry, on the other hand, suggests movement, because the equilibrium we've achieved is a dynamic one, made up of unequal parts, in an imperfectly resolved layout. Now, before we get too conclusive about this distinction, I'd suggest that symmetrical designs can suggest motion also. Think of a paint spatter shape. Now if the splash radiates out pretty equally, we could call it an example of formal balance, or its close cousin, radial balance (to introduce a new term), nevertheless its shape is highly suggestive of action and movement. Not to mention the choice of color and and other elements that we could employ to further heighten our sense of dynamism. Like a tie-died t-shirt, symmetrical des...

Design Guy, Episode 27, Asymmetrical or Informal Balance

May 24, 2008

Download Episode 27 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Now these days we've taken up the principle of Balance. And having established the concept of optical weight, and the way our page becomes a kind of balancing beam as we add visual elements to it, we turned our attention to the idea of Formal or Symmetrical balance. And we described this as a mirror image type of arrangement, where elements are symmetrically balanced on a page with respect to its central axis. And wee also pointed the implications of formal balance, the effect achieved by symmetry. Which is a feeling of equilibrium, and a sense of stasis and stability. And if I'm recapping too many concepts, too quickly, just take some time to listen to the previous programs, where I explain each idea in turn. But moving on from there, the next concept we need to identify is Asymmetrical Balance, also called Informal Balance. And the typical example of this kind of balance is when one large element is counterbalanced by several smaller objects. Or if you'll recall the role of value that we described, we may have a situation where a smaller, dark object, is counterbalanced by a larger, light-colored object. At first glance, we might think these kinds of compositions aren't balanced, because they don't have the obvious symmetry that makes the situation feel all the more stable. But on closer examination, we realize that the teeter totter of our page is balanced, after all. And though the objects distributed on either side of the central axis may be very different from each other, the optical weight of each side appears to be about even. An even more clever example of assymetrical balance is when a large object on one side of the page is balanced by a smaller object placed at the very far end of the opposite side, mimicking the physics of leverage. But, as we explained last time, the visual designer is usually more con...

Design Guy, Episode 26, Symmetrical or Formal Balance

May 16, 2008

Download Episode 26 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. In our last episode, we took up the principle of balance. And to lay the ground work for this discussion, we introduced the phrase, optical weight, which, in a nutshell, describes the phenomenon of how elements on a page have visual gravity. Depending on their size, and depending on their value, which refers to their lightness or darkness, an element can appear relatively light or heavy. And in the balancing beam that is our page, this influences our perceptual sense of balance. Today, I'd like to introduce the idea, first, of Symmetrical Balance, also referred to as Formal Balance. And as the name implies, this kind of balance has an even symmetry, or mirror image distrubution of elements on the page with relation to the central axis. So, like the appearance of a butterfly, or a rorschak test folded perfectly in half, we often have a perfect parity, and close left hand / right hand shape equivalence. Now, this doesn't mean that we necessarily have identical objects on either side of that central axis, but we've got similarity in terms of numbers and sizes and value of objects, and they're more or less arranged in mirror-image fashion. The simplest example of this is the center justfication of type. When we center-justify type on a page, we clearly see that mirror-image shape occurring. In other words, whether the measure of a line of type is long or short, their position will correspond to a central axis. So, if we squint at a page of justified type, we'll discern a grayish mass with identical contours on each side. Kind of like a rorschak shape. So, here we have an example of type brought into formal balance. Now, the more thoughtful typographers employ formal balance with purpose in mind. They have a reason for doing so. But to understand that purpose, one has to appreciate some of the implications of formal bala...

Design Guy, Episode 25, Balancing Act

May 8, 2008

Download Episode 25 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explore timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Well, we may not be able to bring balance to the force, but we can speak to the principles of balance that will help us in our design work. In life, as in many arenas, balance is something we're always striving for. In our compositions, designers have the unique advantage of seeing balance, and of actually visualizing its dynamics. And yet despite that advantage, designers still need help with balance, they need help with how to think about balance, and so this is a topic that's worthy of our time and attention. But let's start with a basic definition. The standard dictionary entry describes balance as an even distribution of weight, allowing a person or thing to remain upright and stable. When something is stable, it tends not to fall over. When a person loses their balance, it's because their weight has shifted in a way that won't allow them to maintain their stance. And so we begin to fall over, and if we can't recover, we take a tumble. The greater the shift in weight, the less chance we have of regaining our balance. So, balance is something we're constantly trying to maintain, even on an unconscious level, as we stroll down the avenue on a carefree, sunny day. And so it goes with our design compositions. The balance we maintain is often something we're not even consciously thinking of. We just make the adjustments to our layouts as we go, intuitively, without much thought or concern. And yet balance merits a bit of study, especially when we're starting out, and are forming our habits of thought and approach to our work. So, what I'd like to do is discuss the different kinds of balance, and their implications on our work. Now, with that definition of balance as an even distribution of weight, or weights, we've got a pretty good leg up on things. In fact, I've heard designers compare the weight and balance aspec...

Design Guy, Episode 24, Elements: Format, The Forgotten Element

Apr 17, 2008

Download Episode 24 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Today, we bring to a close our series on the formal elements of two dimensional design. Having surveyed line, shape, value, color, and texture, today we'll wrap up our discussion with some thoughts on format. And what is format? To lay out a definition, Format refers to the shape and size and dimensions associated with our chosen medium. Specifically, that could be a business card or a book jacket or a label for a can of beans. All these are examples of formats, each with their own possibilities and challenges and constraints. And every one of these formats deserves thoughtful consideration before we set to work. Unfortunately, however, Format is the forgotten element. Or if that's too dramatic a statement, we might at least agree that it's frequently the overlooked element. Like the phenomenon of something that's hidden in plain sight, format isn't always given the consideration it deserves. This syndrome reminds me of one of those classic monster movie scenes where someone is being told where to look for the creature's footprint, but they just can't see it. "Where? Where is it?," they ask. And it's not until the camera pulls back, creating a wide reveal, that we, the audience, can see that they're actually standing in it. The footprint is enormous--the work of Godzilla or King Kong. And this is why we overlook format. It's our context. And we tend to miss it or to take it for granted. And what we tend to do, is to default to the tired, conventional uses of certain formats, without giving it a whole lot of thought. Robin Landa, in her book, Graphic Design Solutions, says it this way. "Whether it is a page or a business card, whatever you start out with is the format. The format is a vital element in two dimensional design. Most beginning students take the format for granted, not realizing that it is an active el...

Design Guy, Episode 23, Elements: Smooth Moves with Texture

Apr 7, 2008

Download Episode 23 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Or as Emerson once exhorted, "If you learn only methods, you'll be tied to your methods, but if you learn principles, you can devise your own methods." If we update that advice for today, we might say to designer, "Learn how design works, don't just learn software applications." We're talking about the formal elements of two dimensional design, which are the building blocks that we use to compose our work. And today we turn our attention to texture. Texture is a bit more sensual than the other elements, because in addition to the visual qualities or the surface appearance we portray in our work - which looks like a relative smoothness or roughness - texture is also a tactile phenomenon. It's something we feel and, in some cases, literally touch, like when we select gloss or matte lamination for an annual report. This is a case where someone will see it and respond to the textural elements, but they'll also hold it. They'll feel the weight of the paper and they'll feel the tactile qualities of the stock we've chosen, as well as any special treatments, like lamination. Robin Landa, in her book, Graphic Design Solutions, says it this way: She says, "Sometimes you decide just by looking at a texture whether or not you want to touch it. Some textures are appealing, like velvet, while others, like rust, are not. In art, there are two categories of texture - tactile and visual. Tactile textures are real, we can actually feel their surfaces with our fingers. Visual textures are illusionary; they simply give the impression of real textures." (end of quotation). But texture comes in a number of forms. And we express texture in a variety of ways. We describe it using words like hard or rough or coarse or craggy. Or we use terms like smooth or velvety or even warm or cold or soft. In other words, all surfaces have a texture. An...

Design Guy, Episode 22, Elements: Value-Added Design

Mar 30, 2008

Download Episode 22 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We're talking about the formal elements of two-dimensional design. And these are the building block elements, the fundamentals at work in our design compositions. So far among these elements we've identified Line and Shape and Color. And with the last discussion of color fresh in our memories, today we'll consider Value. And Value simply describes the relative lightness or darkness within a composition. A good way for us to see Value at work is to conjure up in minds an image of a color wheel. In fact, imagine you're in a room with a poster of the color wheel on one of the walls. And it's your garden variety color wheel that we're all familiar with. Sort of a pie chart, with seven wedges that follow the Roy-G-Biv arrangement, each wedge its own color. Then imagine you've got your hand on a dimmer switch and you can make the room dim, and the color wheel dim,... and then dim them even more until the colors are pretty dark,... and then darker still until everything is black or near-black on that poster. Then, alternatively, you can bring that dimmer switch up to make the room bright,... and brighter still,... in fact these lightbulbs can get so bright that we can hardly look after a while, everything is just awash in white, including the colors on the chart. Now this example of playing with a dimmer switch (and I can still hear my Mom telling me to cut it out, by the way) is a study in Value, or how we can play with Value. When we turned up the light, we added white to the colors, and this had the effect of turning blue into light blue, and red into pink. And it's really just like adding white to your paints when you want to turn full strength colors into pastels. Sort of that Martha Stewart or Easter pallette. And this kind of change in value, adding whites, is called TINT. But, when we dimmed those colors, which i...

Design Guy, Episode 21, Elements: The Color of Design

Mar 11, 2008

Download Episode 21 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We're talking about the Formal Elements, which we've defined as the building blocks of two dimensional design. To that end, we've touched on Line and Shape so far, and just enough to convey their importance without getting too in-depth or technical. And I'd like to do the same today with Color. Now, Color is a pretty broad topic. We could speak about it at length for many episodes, and the temptation is to get technical. And there IS a ton of information we ought to know about color. For starters, we hear about additive and subtractive color. And then there's the issue of color management. Or we hear about proprietary tools like the Pantone Matching system. And then there're those color models that we've heard of since Kintergarten, the color wheels that help us identify color relationships. We use terms like primary, secondary colors, complimentary, split-complimentary, analogous, to name some. And of course, there are what you might call the anatomical aspects of color - hue and saturation, etc. All these things and more really are essential to your education as a designer. And hopefully we'll have opportunity to explore many of these aspects in the future. And these give you the technical foundation you need to deploy color successfully in your projects. But today I want to offer some basic thoughts on how we should think about color. And this has more to do with communication than anything else. Because, in the final analysis, designers use color to convey meaning, whether that's through obvious color symbolism or more subliminally, in order to strike a mood. Color specialist Leatrice Eiseman says it this way. She says, "Figure out the thing that color does. Being the complicated creatures that we are, our reactions go well beyond the physical phenomena (of color)....(they go to) the psychological response. If...

Design Guy, Episode 20, Elements: Things Are Shaping Up Nicely

Mar 4, 2008

Download Episode 20 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We're talking about the Formal Elements, which we previously described as the building blocks of two dimensional design. In the last episode, we explored the idea of Point, and how Point becomes Line as we move it about the surface of our chosen medium. Today, we'll talk about the next thing that happens in this process. Which is to suggest that these elements follow a natural order. Point begets Line, as we just said, and Line begets Shape. Shape, then, is the next thing to occur, and Shape is the element we want to explore today. But let me review that progression with a bit more precision. We draw a line, beginning at a given point. And from that point, we wander about the page, and our line remains a line until... we bring it on home and establish a Shape. In other words, Shape happens when we complete our circuit by connecting the end points of our line. Or we might simply say that we've outlined something. And for those of you who've logged time with drawing programs with their pen tools, this outlining process is very familiar. Graphic designers routinely create shapes in this way. Sometimes we take a photo, of a leaf perhaps, then trace its contours in order to capture just its shape. This is a common task, a common process that consists of Point, line, and shape. The textbooks classify shapes in three ways. Geometric Shapes - these are shapes made out of triangles or squares or circles or other geometric forms, and they look mechanical, in that they lack a hand drawn appearance. They're the product of tools like rulers and protractors. Organic Shapes are more free-flowing, as opposed to geometric, but they still look mechanically produced in that they lack brush strokes or other artifacts of the media used. Then there are Calligraphic Shapes. And as the word calligraphy implies, it refers to shapes that...

Design Guy, Episode 19, Elements: What's the Point of Line?

Feb 15, 2008

Download Episode 19 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. As I've mentioned before, our focus here is on principles, rather than software tips or industry events. Not that there's anything wrong with those things - we all need to keep up. But it's the principles you can depend upon as your constants - principles act as footholds in a world of rapid change. And once grounded in them, you'll probably even save yourself a bit of money and effort as the siren song of new software upgrades loses some of its allure. You may find you can skip a version or two before upgrading to the next big thing, because you begin to realize that new features aren't everything. It's better to invest your attention toward principles, and learn how to wield the tools you've got, than misplace your investment in mere features. But we're talking about the formal elements of design these days, and in the last program we started things off with some introductory thoughts. To highlight one point, we said that the formal elements are the basic building blocks of design. And just like the opening moves of a chess game, we should think of them as strategic, because we'll use them to frame things and set up things to follow as we build our design. Now, the first of these elements is Line, which German artist, Maholy Nage,(1) described as the "record of a path of motion." This idea comes in clearer when we recognize the basis of Line, which is the concept of Point. Point is what we make our line with. Or to say it another way, line is what results when we start moving a point around the surface of our medium. And Point is simply the tool we've chosen: the pencil's point, or the tip of a brush, or the tool with which we're painting pixels on screen. So, Line is the expression or movement of that point. And as we move that point, our resulting lines can be straight or angular or curvilinear. They can very p...

Design Guy, Episode 18, The Formal Elements of Design: A Foreword

Jan 30, 2008

Download Episode 18 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Well, it's high time we spoke about the basic elements of 2-dimensional design, the so-called formal elements. But before we get into specifics, we should be aware of a general principle. And that's that there's power in simply being able to name things. In any arena, there's an authority we gain merely by learning the names and faces, the do's and don'ts, the rules of the road, etc. And in the self-same way we study vocabulary and grammar in the realm of writing, there's power for the designer in being able to name and properly use the elements of design. Particularly in visual design, because so much of what we do is kind of invisible to us, even as we're working, because we're running along intuitively and not necessarily consciously thinking about the principles that underly what we're doing. We just do it. And that's fine and actually desirable because it means we've internalized what we've learned. We've got the principles inside of us. Like learning to ride a bike, we want to get to a place where we no longer have to think, "left foot, right foot, balance, apply brake." We want to achieve what learning theorists call "automatic mastery" because it liberates us from the stymying effects of having to think too much. Now, this intuitive mode of working serves us just fine most of the time. But sooner or later we get into unfamiliar territory. We become unsure of ourselves. Something we're working on takes a weird turn and we find ourselves at a loss to diagnose it. And it's unsettling for us to know that something's wrong, yet feel ill-equipped to fix it. If only we could put our finger on what's wrong, we could get ourselves unstuck. This is why it's helpful to name the elements, and remind ourselves how the work. It's a way of getting ourselves out of jam, just by talking ourselves through the problem. Now, t...

Design Guy, Episode 17, Embracing Constraints

Dec 28, 2007

Download Episode 17 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Now, we've spent some time trekking through that terrain known as the creative process, and on our way we've looked at a few ideas that will help us to gear up for the challenges we can expect to face as we traverse our projects. Today, we'll bring this series to an end today with some parting thoughts. But since this little excursion has been by no means exhaustive, you can expect that we'll dip into the general subject matter of creativity from time to time. And I encourage you to continue doing your own study in this area. At my webpage, which you can find at designguyshow.blogspot.com, I've posted shownotes, which include a bibliography of all the books I've referenced during these programs. And at the end of today's talk, I'll recommend a few of the programs that I enjoy and highly recommend for real world insight into creativity. If you've been with us from the start of the show, you'll remember that before we launched into this series, we discussed how design begins. Along those lines, we explored requirements gathering, and the discovery process that we undertake with out clients. And in those programs, I recommended that you keep your horizons broad as you prepare for the creative phase of your projects. And this provided a natural segue into the series we're wrapping up now, because the big idea is that we want to approach creative without a heightened sense of constraints pressing down on us. The early part of our project should be characterized by an open-minded brainstorming sensibility, where no idea is a bad idea. And this meanas that, at least for a little while, we can indulge ourselves in a bit of fantasy. To use a filmmaker's analogy, we can allow ourselves to think like Steven Spielberg for a while, even if we've only got a Kevin Smith budget. And this exercise in thinking big safeguards us from a...

Design Guy, Episode 16, The Eleventh Draft

Dec 17, 2007

Download Episode 16 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design, and explains them simply. We've talking about creativity in recent episodes. And, continuing this line of thought, I'd like to start today's episode with a quotation. It's by Saul Bass, who remarked in an interview about a problem encountered by young designers and students: "They are not privy to process," he noted. "They have the illusion that these things really spring full-blown out of the head of some designer. This is a very unsettling perception for young people, because they struggle with their work. They have a go at it... They redo.... It gets better... It slips... It gets worse... it comes back ... It comes together. And maybe it's something that's pretty good, even excellent. But they say to themselves, "Gee, it comes hard and it's so difficult. Am I really suited for this?" (1) (end of quotation) Bass is speaking to the subject we've been exploring - the ofttimes arduous journey of the creative process - and how we've got to correct our misconception that great design comes forth in a fully realized state. Let's face it, we're conditioned by an instant gratification world. So, it's understandable if we expect remarkable things to be handed to us by our minds, fully formed, as effortlessly as a Mocha Frappuccino from across the counter at Starbucks. If the creative process teaches us anything, it's that anything worthwhile takes effort. Sometimes we've got to pursue what eludes us for a while, like one chasing a dropped dollar on a windy day. We need to experience the discomfort of something being just out of reach. We need to endure setbacks before we truly advance. One step forward, two steps back. Picasso did many versions of a painting, and destroyed many a canvas until he realized the ideal he was pursuing. Even prolific authors like Stephen King need at least a few drafts to get their work into final shape(2). Hemingway de...

Design Guy, Episode 15, Flow vs. Edit

Dec 11, 2007

Download Episode 15 Flow vs. Edit Design guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. If you're just joining us, our motto here is "Principles First." Or to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, "If you learn only methods, you'll be tied to your methods. But if you learn principles, you can devise your own methods." Which is why we don't spend time on specific software tips or methods. Now, there are excellent shows that cover those things, and, of course, we all need to keep up our technical knowledge up to date, but it's out of scope for this program, where are goal is to offer information that doesn't change. And that's why we emphasize the timeless principles - because can safely commit them to long term memory. Now, we're in the midst of a series on creativity, with the most recent shows focusing on the creative mind. In the last show, we introduced the subject of left brain / right brain theory. And while scientists today have a more nuanced understanding of all of this than was popularly presented in the past, the model still stands as a good metaphor for the mental dynamics we experience in our creativity. We also pointed out some similarities to Freud's teaching about the id, ego, and superego.(1) And we melded it all together to say that there's a side of us that acts like an inner critic or adult. We can liken this to Freud's ego and superego, and we can also liken it to the logical left hemishphere. This is the analytical part of us that complements and sometimes conflicts with the creative side of us, or the inner child, as represented by the right side of the brain, or the unconscious id. I'm mixing up these overlapping theories a bit to reinforce the point that these dynamics really exist. Which is that we need to recognize that there's a left and right brain dynamic, a rational and emotional side, logic and feelings, intellect and intuition. And in the case of creativity, they've go...

Design Guy, Episode 14, The Mind at Odds

Nov 21, 2007

Download Episode 14 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We're talking about the creative process. The last couple of shows, we gave attention to the creative mind. We spoke about the mental patnership of our conscious and unconscious levels of awareness, and also about the priority of loosening up and having fun. Along these lines, we reasoned that if creativity is the mind at play with materials it loves, then we need to seek out ways to have fun. First, as a means of conditioning ours minds for idea-production, and, second, as a way to noodle around and to sandbox our project and uncover possibilities. Creative play allows us to wrap our heads around the subject matter and continue to feed those mental partners. Today, we'll speak some more about the creative mind by introducing some related concepts. Now, most of us have heard at least a little bit about the whole left brain vs. right brain thing. This is a theory or model that says that there are differences in cognition between the left and right hemispheres of our brains. And, in fact, there is a physical separation, called the longitudinal fissure, if we must know, which creates two hemispheres, joined together by the corpus callosum. And this accounts for that walnut-like appearance, where we plainly see two halves making up the whole. And while they're physically very similar in appearance, ostensibly just mirror images of each other, they've actually got some distinct functions. And so we've come to associate the hemishperes with different mental tasks. This is called lateralization. And it tells us that mental tasks are not shared equally, but that they're handled by one hemisphere or the other, whereas others appear to be bi-lateral, or a shared. But in keeping with the broad statements that have influenced creative theory, the left brain is said to be adept at logical, linear, analytical tasks, while the rig...

Design Guy, Episode 13, The Mind at Play

Nov 14, 2007

Download Episode 13 Design Guy, here. Welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We're talking about the nature of the creative process, and the things we can do to get a handle on it. Last time, we spoke about the creative mind. We described how the conscious and the unconscious parts of our minds work together to help us solve problems and combine elements into ideas. And we likened this mental partnership to making a stew, or building a compost heap. And this is to say that, in our normal, conscious state, we gather the raw materials of our project. Then, over the course of time, this stuff is processed by our unconscious mind. Eventually, this stew of materials will be useful to us. But we need time - time enough for our unconscious to do its work. Because it's on this deeper level, the part of us that dreams, that our mind forms the connections that lead to ideas. The German Philosopher, Helmholtz,(1) summarized the process in three parts. First, a Preparation Phase, where we gather materials, followed by Incubation, when our unconscious does its unseen work, followed by Illumination, when (quote) "happy ideas come unexpectedly without effort, like an inspiration" (unquote). Illumination is that pregnant moment when solutions come forth, the moment we here about in famous anecdotes: Archimedes Eureka moment.(2) Or J.K. Rowling(3) envisioning the entire basis for the Harry Potter books while riding on the train. And, obviously, this is the state we want to be in all the time, if we can help it. So, how can we? Jack Foster, in How to Get Ideas, lays down the same basic process, but spends the bulk of his book offering ways to condition our minds for it. First and foremost, and above all else, his advice is to have fun. He writes, "It's not by chance that I list having fun as my first suggestion on how to get your mind into idea-condition. Indeed, in my experience it might well be the most imp...

Design Guy, Episode 12, The Creative Mind

Nov 8, 2007

Download Episode 12 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We live in a create-on-demand world, and, whether you're a graphic designer or a college student working on a writing assignment, or a podcaster trying to come up with his next episode, the question is the same. How can we gain some control of the creative process, so that our minds and imaginations are productive when we need them to be? As we established last time, creativity is a process. It's often slippery and disorderly, and we can make huges messes along the way, but it IS a process. And AS a process, it consists of steps and actions - practical things we can DO to encourage our productivity. And this ought to encourage us, since we can be proactive in our creativity, rather than passively wait around for ideas to just happen to us. We also spoke about ideas, because we need ideas, large and small, to get us through our project. But we demystified the subject by explaining that ideas aren't of otherworldy origin, or the domain of the supercreative, but simply new combinations of old elements. Ideas feel fresh because we've made a new juxtaposition of things. So, the trick is to find relationships between these old elements, and put them together in interesting ways to create a new effect or perspective. This is a bit like our reaction when we see people get together. We know our friend, John. We know our friend, Susan. But then they hook up and become a new idea, called John-and-Susan, and it changes our perspective. There's a new dynamic, a combined effect that's different than when they were apart. In the realm of music, someone took rhythm and blues and put it together with country to create a new idea in music, which we know as rock 'n' roll. In the realm of graphic design, Saul Bass(1) took our old fashioned idea of what a movie poster was, and married it to a graphic, modernistic sensibility, and influen...

Design Guy, Episode 11, Getting A Handle on Creativity

Oct 27, 2007

Download Episode 11 Design Guy, here. Welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Now, we're talking about the creative process. And in earlier episodes, we discussed the preparation that precedes creativity, which namely takes the form of information gathering. In graphic design, there's always a message at stake - one that we need to craft for an audience. So, we're concerned early on with doing our homework. And once we've laid the groundwork for our project in this way, we're ready to get creative. And, as we said last time, this can go well or poorly, depending on certain factors. Sometimes creativity seems effortless and automatic. We come to our project bursting at the seams with ideas, and everything almost seems to build itself. We fly through the entire process with ease, and we finish our work exhilarated, knowing that our solutions and the execution of them were right on target. But as many of us know well, that's not always the case. The ideas that came fast and free last week aren't coming anymore. We find ourselves facing a barren page or a blank screen, and we wonder what's wrong. And, as the clock ticks toward our deadline, we begin to despair, or to tie ourselves up in knots of anxiety. It's those problem moments that catch our attention and cause us to wonder what's going on under the surface, what is this creative process, anyway? How does it work? Why does it seem that our best ideas come at random? And can we get some degree of control over our creativity? I think the best way to get at all this is to start with some definitions. First off, we can rightly describe creativity as a process. Now, granted, it doesn't often feel like a process. In fact, it's frequently a messy, non-linear, and elusive affair, but it's a process nonetheless. And The Oxford American dictionary defines the word "process" as "a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end."(1...

Design Guy, Episode 10, Getting Creative

Oct 19, 2007

Download Episode 10 Design Guy, here. Welcome to the show. This is the program where we set aside the technical manuals and focus on the timeless aspects of design. Software versions come and go, and new forms of media emerge, but the principles behind our work stay pretty much the same. So, it's my hope that these brief discussions will be worth the time investment, since we can commit these principles to long term memory. Better yet, we can put them into practice, knowing they'll serve us throughout our careers. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "If you learn only methods, you'll be tied to your methods. But if you learn principles, you can devise your own methods." So, prior to the detour that we just concluded concerning the attributes of the designer, we were discussing the earliest stages of the design process. And we said this process of design begins with the work of data gathering. This is the first step in the sequence of practical things that we do as designers. By amassing a bunch of information, we basically prepare ourselves for all the creative work to come. In so doing, we're stocking our mental shelves, we're fueling the creative tank, fertilizing the ground - whatever anology you want to use. The key thing - is that we do it. If you're kind of an impatient designer who wants to jump right into your favorite authoring environment and get going, you really need to resist that impulse early on. Newer designers may wonder if it's necessary to gather as much information as I was suggesting, but I'd say that, as a rule, it really is. Sometimes we can pull off good results with some pretty scant data, but, on the whole, and especially if the project is at all extensive, the more we know about the things that are important to our client, the better off we'll be. And while, we tend to gather more data than we'll eventually use, it's recommended that you capture a super abundance of stuff. When you have more than you need, you can make better decisions - yo...

Design Guy, Episode 9, Designer's Attributes Pt. 3

Oct 8, 2007

Download Episode 9 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores the timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Now, we've been talking about the attributes of the designer. And today, we'll conclude this little rabbit trail with one final observation or truism. And while I call this an attribute, there's a sense in which it's really an aspiration or ideal that encompasses everything we want to be as designers. So, here goes: Designers have a love for The Craft. And, when I say craft, I've got a couple of shades of meaning in mind. The first one refers to that affinity or reverence that we've got for the tools and techniques of our trade. Just as an iron smith loves the hammer and the glowing iron and the sparks that fly, we, as designers love the process that we're engaged in, and all the tools and techniques that we use in order to ply our trade. But graphic designers are engaged in an amazing hybrid of art and craft. On the one hand, design is an art with all of that creative mystique to it. There's that intangible and evasive muse or magic that we seek in the form of inspiration. Mysteriously, an idea forms within us and then we fashion it with our tools, giving it form and substance. It really is a wondrous thing. It's as if we pull rabbits out of hats. On the other hand, we're engaged in a practical craft. We're like traditional tradesmen - we resemble plumbers or bricklayers who just go to work every day. We use techniques. We obey rules for activities like setting type. And in that respect, we don't always need muses or magic. And, come to think of it, have you ever heard a plumber complain that he couldn't fix your toilet for lack of inspiration? Or a bricklayer complain that he was too creatively blocked to build your patio? But, as designers, we've got this duality or hybrid thing going on. We're creative craftsmen. But I mentioned that there's a second shade of meaning to the word, craft. When I say that desi...

Design Guy, Episode 8, Designer's Attributes Pt. 2

Oct 3, 2007

Download Episode 8 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We're talking about the attributes of the designer. And we began last time by asserting that graphic designers take an interest in the world around them. We said that it's preferable to be a generalist, rather than a specialist. And what we mean to say in this is that it's not a good thing to know your profession to the exclusion of other things. You want to cultivate a curiosity in many things. To that end, you should read widely and expose yourself to new things whenever you can. If you're musical tastes run toward the Smashing Pumpkins, go see an opera. You get the picture. The idea here is that we're supposed to help our clients make a connection with their audience. So, the more informed we are to the world of the client, the more effective we'll be at bridging that gap. In order to do this well, we want to be good at the next attribute. And that's COMMUNICATION. Robin Landa, in her book Graphic Design Solutions, writes, Graphic designers use words (type), and pictures and other graphic elements (visuals) to communicate. Their art is a visual-verbal expression. The graphic designer mediates between a client with a message to send and the audience. Visuals and words are used by the designer on behalf of the client in order to inform, persuade, or sell." (end of quotation) And that's a basic definition of graphic design. Visual communication. And as we get deeper into this podcast series we'll tackle all the various elements and principles of design that foster that visual form of communication. So, there's really not much more to say about this right now. To become a better visual communicator, you need to study this craft of graphic design. By learning about contrast or proportion, for example, you communications will improve visually. Now, although it's obvious, I should point out that this visual communication...

Design Guy, Episode 7, Designer's Attributes Pt. 1

Sep 17, 2007

Download Episode 7 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. If you're just joining us, we're talking about the attributes of the designer. In the last episode, we established the idea that, as designers, we profoundly influence the work we do by the mere fact of who we are as individuals. Our unique way of thinking and solving problems, our personal style and perspective on the world, all have an impact on the product. Our fingerprints are all over our work, so to speak. You can I.D. a designer through their work sometimes. And this is obviously why certain designers are sought after. We tend to describe their work as unique or distinctive. So, it stands to reason that if we give one design problem to two different designers, we can expect somewhat different outcomes. At the same time, though, there are certains traits that designers should have in common. Unique as we all are, there are certain stereotypes or generalizations that ought to hold up in order for graphic designers to qualify as graphic designers. If your into movies, you'll know how it is to hear that a certain director is rumored to be helming a film project. When we hear the name Tim Burton or Steven Soderbergh or Guillermo Del Toro, we develop different expectations. At the same time, we're pretty confident that while they think divergently, and that they'll all emphasize different themes, that they've got some other things in common. They all know a thing or two about storytelling, and casting, and where to put the camera. That's how it is with designers. Unique as we are, some things are the same. So, in no particular order, I'd like to describe the traits we can expect. And I'll just mention the first one today, which is this. A designer takes an interest in the world around them. Adrian Shaughnessy, in his book, How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul, (1)writes: "Among the myriad definiti...

Design Guy, Episode 6, Harry Houdini and the Attributes of a Designer

Sep 11, 2007

Download Episode 6 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. If you've been following along, you'll know that we've been talking about the very beginning stages of the design process, and the skills we need to develop in order to gather the information that fuels our creative work. So, moving right along, there are some practical process things we could talk about next, like brainstorming and how to get ideas, but before we do that, I think this is a good time for us to pause and consider the designer in all of this. If we think about it, the designer is the first medium through which ideas pass. Before we choose a physical format or medium, we're it. And I realize this is a really obvious statement. But if "the medium is the message," as Marshall McLuhan(1) famously declared, then I think it's worth stepping outside ourselves for a moment, to consider what kind of medium we are. What kind of attributes should we have as designers before we even get started on the work? Let's consider the word medium for a moment. When we say something is immediate, it means there's nothing inbetween, there's a direct connection between two things. But when there's a medium, we mean to say that there's something inbetween, something that intervenes. Designers intervene. We take one thing, and pass it through the medium of ourselves, so it becomes a somewhat different thing. We're like prisms that receive the light and then refract it. We take our client's message and then split it apart, we break it all down. We perform a reductive work so we can identify the component parts. Then we build it back up again in just the right way, and communicate it. We basically perform a work of translation. We take ordinary language and convert it into visual language. Medium is also the word used to describe individuals who claim to have psychic ability. People who claim to be conduits or channels to an...

Design Guy, Episode 5, How Design Begins, Pt. 2

Sep 3, 2007

Download Episode 5 Design Guy, here. Welcome to the show. This is the program that offers a pause from our technical manuals: all the keeping up we do with tools, technologies, the state of the art. Now, we've got to keep up, of course. It's essential we stay current. But it also can be overwhelming. There is so much to keep up with, it's like drinking from a firehose. We get cognitive overload. And it's hard to retain things that we know are going to continue to change. On the other hand, we want to learn principles. The good news about principles is that they don't really change. We can learn them with confidence that our time investment is not wasted. We'll know that at least this part of our knowledge base will not erode. Software will come and go, but principles remain. And I think that sends a message to our brains that this is stuff we should latch on to, that we ought to retain. At least that's my theory, and my experience. And that's where this show comes in. Hopefully, we can offer a bit of white space or margin from other concerns, by setting aside the transient information, and speaking to timeless things - things we can commit to long term memory. Now, we spoke last time about how design begins, and today I'd like to amplify those thoughts and add a few suggestions. We said that listening is key. Or as Hillman Curtis says, listening is an activity, wherein we ask the right questions in the right way, and then fine tune our reception to the answer, however buried it may be.(1) In other words, we query our clients to learn what they really want. We want to excavate their core message, their story, so we can identify the thematic drivers of our project. But to do this effectively requires skill in the art of questioning. Questions are to this process, what picks and shovels are to archaealogical digs. To carry the analogy further, questions also act like sifters that filter sand and rock from the stuff we're after. And we want the bones. We want the...

Design Guy, Episode 4, How Design Begins

Aug 27, 2007

Download Episode 4 Design guy here. Welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Last episode we explored Graphic Design. We laid out a basic definition first by clarifying it's difference from fine art. In fine art, it's perfectly okay to be subjective and to allow for individual interpretation, or to have no message at all. But Graphic design is different in that it must support an objective typographic message. If it doesn't communicate something specific, we've failed at our mission. We also identified typography as the essential component of graphic design. Without typography, there is no message, and if there's no message, there is no graphic design. Today, we'll talk a bit about process. More to the point, we'll ask HOW does this process begin? In short, it begins with listening. New Media Designer, Hillman Curtis, gives us insight about listening. He says, Listening is an activity. It's a matter of asking the right questions in the right way. And then fine-tuning your reception to the answer, however buried it may be.(1) Now, no matter what we're designing, whether it's a post card or a passenger ship, what we're listening for are requirements. It's the requirements that define our project. We want to know about dimensions and deadlines, we want to know about constraints and content. We want to gather all the all the guiding factors that will put us on a sure path to reaching our destination. But before we can assemble all these requirements, we've got to get comfortable with this activity of listening. Sounds simple, right? The client tells us stuff, we right it down, we go to work. In practice, it's far more tricky. Clients sometimes don't tell us stuff, or they tell us the wrong stuff, based on well-meaning, but misguided preconceptions. Or they're not even in touch themselves with what they really want. This leaves gaps. And we've got to get skilled at filling those gaps. The way to...

Design Guy, Episode 3, On Graphic Design

Aug 20, 2007

Download Episode 3 Design guy here. Welcome back. This is the show that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Last episode we defined design as the act of creating order out of chaos. And whether we're talking graphic or interior or environmental design, the basic definition stands because we're all engaged in the same PROCESS. It's a process that STARTS with a number of unrelated pieces and ENDS with an ordered unit. (1) Looking closer, Graphic design has its own set of concerns that distinguish it from other forms of design. And, I think, right from the start, we have to be clear about what graphic design is not. And that's Art. Oh, sure it is AN art. It's practitioners are artists. But it's not Art with a capital A in that it's not fine art. This is where people get confused. Especially when we see some of the stunning works of graphic design by luminaries like Paul Rand (2) or Milton Glaser.(3) Their work should be viewed in a gallery. They're models of artistic excellence. So, what's the difference? Are we splitting semantical hairs, or what? The distinction... is a question of motivation or purpose. Fine art is something that can be done in a loft, which is to say, it can be done for highly individualized ends. It can be done with no conscious purpose. It can be highly SUBjective. You might do it for your own enjoyment. Or to get a certain technical effect or for any other reason in the world. Sometimes there's a statement being made. Other times, if there's meaning, we'll leave that to the eye of the beholder to interpret. In other words, it's subject to personal interpretation, and IF it's subject to interpretation, it can mean anything. When we cast the issue in these terms, we begin to see that graphic design is different. It's inherently Objective. Sure, it INVOLVES art, and designers can leave room for some ambiguity or personal interpretation, after all, this generates questions in the viewer, which intensifies their int...

Design Guy, Episode 1, Intro Episode

Aug 6, 2007

Download Episode 1 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is our premier episode, so, by way of introduction I'd like to explain what the show is about, and how you'll benefit. We live in a design-driven age. We've witnessed a productivity revolution and the spawning of vast amounts of new products and services. Along side of that, we see the rise of design as the high ground or competitive advantage, the differentiator, really, that allows business to stake out and hold unique market positions longer. The other amazing phenomenon that's occurred is this power-to-the-people shift that places creation tools in the hands of us all. Desktop publishing, of course, is old, old news by now. But across the board, whether your arena is the graphic arts or publishing or music or film, the cost of entry and the ease with which people from all walks of life can participate has become democratized. The tools just get better and cheaper every day. So, there's a sense in which everyone is a designer, or at least it feels that way. We're all design guys, and I mean that in a gender neutral way, of course. The impetus for this new program, therefore, is to recognize these facts, and help make the principles of design accessible to professionals and ordinary folks, alike. Now, there's lots of stuff out there about design, including podcasts. So, why this one? Well, often, these programs focus on technique. Others keep us abreast of industry happenings. And, while these, indeed, are helpful, and while I'll probably refer you to these programs from time to time, that kind of information tends to have a short shelf life. What I'll endeavor to do, instead, is point up the timeless stuff. I want to impart information that doesn't change. Ideas that don't expire with successive software releases or date themselves to current events. This way we can concern ourselves with principles that'll stick in our long term memory, rules we can recall when we've lost our way, creatively spe...

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Design Guy, Episode 40, Talking About Type: Let Your Voice Be Heard!

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Podcast details

Created by: DesignGuyShow.BlogSpot.com
Status: Inactive
Latest episode: Jun 4, 2010
Episodes: 38
Release period: Monthly
Avg. episode length: —
Explicit: No
Language: English

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