Archive for Design inspiration

500th-painting-sold
Originally uploaded by mlangfeld.

I recently blogged about websites-as-graphs. Now it’s time to introduce you to one-thousand-paintings as well.

When I found the websites-as-graphs site, it referred me to www.onethousandpaintings.com to support the author. So, I decided to check it out. I found an intriguing conceptual art site. Sala, the author of both sites, is in the process of painting and selling paintings of all the numbers from 1 to 1000.

I love both the idea, and his method of using the Internet to market the paintings. He’s masterminded a viral marketing campaign that’s been very successful to date. I just purchased the number 72, which was the 500th painting to be sold. He’s already over half way to his goal of selling 1000 paintings. I wish him success in this project!

paulascher.jpg
Originally uploaded by mlangfeld.

This evening Paula Scher presented her approach to graphic design to members of the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington (ADCMW).

She described the body of her work as being directly influenced by New York, where she has worked during most of her career. Even her choices of type, often tall and narrow, vertical and architectural, are influenced by the verticality of the city, the overlapping conversations, the conflicting emotions that make up the multi-layered environment of New York. Interesting, especially to the DC audence, since she grew up in the Washington metropolitan area.

An extraordinary typographic designer, Paula also paints typographically, exploring cartography as well as Information overload in her paintings. She reminded us that designers used to paint comps for book and album covers, so that painting type comes naturally to her. I still have a set of gouaches from those days myself, so I understood just what she meant.

You can check out some of these web pages to learn more about her work: Paula Scher: Chrysler Design Institute Award 2000, Paula Scher, AIGA Medalist 2001, Paula Scher’s Atlas of the World, Paintings.

paula scher
pentagram
graphic design
environmental design
typography

As I mentioned in another post late last year, I’ve been experimenting with Textorized images since the end of last year, when I discovered the possibility on Flickr. I thought I’d share some of my favorite images so far, so you can see a little more of what’s possible.

Textorizing works by defining edges and replacing those edges with strings of type, so that normally dark areas become hollow outlined edges. This poses an issue for many images, so many of the photos I’ve tried textorizing don’t work well. It also seems to be important to use images that will make visual sense, so simple, recognizable shapes seem to work best, if you want recognition.

The length of the words used in strings also affects the final image. Surprisingly, I like longer strings sometimes, shorter strings other times. I thought I’d like all shorter strings when I began to experiment.

Overall light images seem to work well. I was surprised by the polar bear image. I thought there would be some detail inside the bear. Instead the ice field surrounding the bear shows most texture.

I’m hoping to find uses for the technique in my work. The only drawback is that textorizing only works well on a small percentage of images that I’ve tried. So, it might be hard to work it into a project. I’ll let you know as time goes on.

I hope you enjoy these images. I’ve been toying with the idea of producing some posters or T-shirts if I hear that there is interest. Please let me know what you think.

happynewyear.jpg
Originally uploaded by mlangfeld.

What’s a textorized New Year? I’m not exactly sure, but I do know that textorizing is an SVG-based technique for converting an image into strings of text that define edges and outlines.

Max Froumentin developed the technique a while ago. I learned about it from Paul Downey, who runs the Textorized Group on Flicker. I’ve just begun to learn how to best use the technique and love the idea of text creaing images. Lots of possibilities!

So, I hope you’ll enjoy my exploration of textorizing this New Year!

Reading about the Guardian newspaper’s redesign brought to mind the Newseum, the Interactive Museum of News, which I visited in Arlington, VA before it closed in 2002 for relocation to Washington DC. It is scheduled to reopen in 2007, so sponsors events with other organizations during this interim period.

I’m happy to say that the Newseum has a web presence which includes a guided tour of the new museum, special features and a visual comparison of front pages from newspapers all around the world (though heavily US oriented). It’s called Today’s Front Pages and is a fine resource for comparing both front page headines and layouts.

When I first saw the the redesigned Guardian front page I was surprised to see the masthead dropped down below a row of photos and captions, and the masthead reversed out of a colored background. After taking a look at front pages in Today’s Front Pages, I see that other newspapers, such as the Chicago Tribune, have instituted those ideas already, though perhaps not as successfully.

The new front page is very clean and modern, at least the first edition. We’ll see how well the design holds up in use over time. One of the little controversies of the new design is the masthead using a lower case letters, with the words run together: theguardian. The concern is whether the paper’s authority is lessened. In my opinion, the effect is modern, friendly and open, which works well with the Guardian’s left of center stance.

This time, let’s look at using only two colors in a print design. Many brochures are created using two colors of ink in order to limit printing costs. The challenge is to create visual interest with the two colors chosen. In addition, black is often chosen as the body type color, so that there’s actually only one accent color.

Color sets the emotional stage

In the example brochure, a cool, medium blue was chosen along with black. The decision stemmed from the subject matter of the brochure, which is a disfiguring disease called lymphatic filariasis. Cool blue can calm emotions, is often seen as scientific, and is very distinctive on an uncoated paper, so was a logical choice for this subject.

Next let’s look at design techniques that can be used with a single color in addition to black. Several are used in this particular brochure.

Background color, reversed white type

Solid blue was used as a background color on the inside front cover, with reversed white type. A full-page photograph was printed as a background in blue and lightened enough that text in black and a quote in blue would be visible over it on the inside facing page.

Duotone photographs

Photographs that were not used as backgrounds were printed as duotones, which means that both inks were used. This extended the range of tones in the photographs, making them stronger, more vibrant. In this brochure, the blue ink was used only in the shadow areas of the photos, so that they would not look too blue.

Color accents

Color can also be used in accents, such as titles, box text, quotes, etc. as it has been used in this brochure.

When all these techniques are used, a two-color brochure can be just as successful as a four-color brochure.

Welcome to Langfeldesigns Talk. I’ll be commenting on a variety of topics, hopefully interesting to both designers and clients.

To kick off this blog, let’s look at how one project can be designed an infinite number of ways. The best example of this I’ve ever seen is a website called CSS Zen Garden.

The site has a slightly different purpose than mine in this post. It exists to excite designers about using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to separate design styles from content (in html). So, designers are invited to add their own CSS files (and images) to the base html text file.

It is amazing to see how many ways the content of the page can be styled. Of course, some of the designs are closer to the theme of the page than others.

That’s to be expected… unless the client gives (or develops with) the designer a written brief describing the intended audience(s), communnication objectives, strategies and tactics before beginning a new project. The brief gives the designer guidelines against which to test concepts and designs. It also helps the client to clarify the project aims. It may also bring up questions that
need to be answered before beginning the project.

So, the point I’d like to leave you with is this: work with your designer to define design objectives, or you may be surprised at the designs presented, since there is an infinite number of designs possible for any one project.