Arteliance

Spark | CBC Radio

Okay I must be the last person on the planet to figure these things out… just subscribe in iTunes and then remember to open iTunes and listen. Sheesh.

via: BPLUSD: 11 Stories about Canadian Design.

Two and a half weeks ago I posted some sketches entitled Blog Redesign: Background and Brainstorming. One of the little squiggles was this image:

Then this morning I see this which predates my sketch by several years:

Maybe I am onto something here? Articulating abstract concepts visually is the most difficult challenge of graphic design. Damien Newman has provided an elegant and wonderful example of how design and drawing can clarify communication and thinking in an instant.

via Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog » The Design Process Simplifed

Malcolm Gladwell: Presentations from Gain 2008: Gain: AIGA Business and Design Conference 2008: Events: AIGA

Gladwell discusses two elements of genius:

1. A lengthy, focussed, disciplined period of practice (10,000 hours)

2. A willingness to experiment and start over (trial and error)

via swissmiss

graphics master photo by Myra Colbert

This got every ‘commercial art’ student on the right track, complete with info about typesetting, process printing and it even contained a built-in proportion wheel.

I’m pretty sure I still have mine along with a Pocket Pal from when I was a student.

From The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies

It is Day Thirteen of NaBloPoMo and I got nuthin’ but some really interesting packaging from my tai chi sword.

Wordpress themes:

Die Neue Typographie: The New Typography a tribute to Jan Tschichold

Writing For Designers based on Veryplaintxt by Scott Wallick

Other designs:

Subtraction by Khoi Vinh

Daring Fireball by John Gruber

These are all more Minimalist than my previous sketches. Perhaps as Twyla Tharp said:

The tricky part about scratching, however, is that you can’t stop with one idea. Henry James said that genius is the act of perceiving similarity among disparate things. In the empty room you’re trying to connect the dots, linking A to B to C to maybe come up with H. Scratching is a means of identifying A, and if you can get to A, you’ve got a grip on the slippery rock wall. You’ve got purchase. You can move on to B, which is mandatory. You cannot stop with one idea. You don’t really have a workable idea until you combine two ideas.

Here is a list of some of the ideas from yesterday:

• Work Environment and things that are used (concrete):

  • working - coffee cup, paper and mouse
  • computer picture
  • art tools: paper, pencil jar etc
  • print background: press sheets, loupe, pantone swatches (experience), spec-ing type
  • photographic equipment and tools (seeing and capturing) -> light?
  • typography: metal, letterpress etc
  • tools = eyes, brains, ears
  • artsy collage type thing
  • symbols and plans, wayfinding, signage, organization, clarity, blueprints
  • Type overlays photos etc (multi-layered, messy)
  • textures

• Design is (ways to define it - abstract):

  • multiple A’s (typography, many ways of presenting things, thinking about them)
  • different ways of seeing: glasses, microscopes, telescope, magnifying glass, digital, analog, insight, big picture/little picture (fractal?)
  • targets, goals, strategies, aim
  • connection (of minds); communication, transmission of ideas
  • concepts: diagrams, graphs, maps, drilling down to the heart of the matter
  • more on diagrams, abstracts, visual representation of non-create things like ideas
  • gears/machinery: design as a cog in overall business plan

• What design does (movement, emotional):

  • patterns: morphing, transformation, nothing to something, sketch to final?
  • simplicity, road, journey, prairie ref sinclair
  • life, energy, mark making, scribbles forming an image (how I draw)
  • urban sketches/story-telling (design is story-telling)
  • perspective, urban, architecture, escher, surprising
  • focus (broad to narrow)

Most designs can, IMHO, be broken down into these 3 aspects. Good designs incorporate all 3.

This blog post is just for me as I had great fun this morning dusting off and limbering up my old, slightly rusty, design skills. Its been 8 years since I worked as an Art Director/Graphic Designer and I felt the urge to give it a go. Perhaps after Tuesday, I simply felt the need to make a change (is that Obama I hear?).

Blogging about something creative during the process of creating it is risky and sub-optimal. One should finish it and then go back and write about it in a step-by-step fashion so as to give the impression that creativity is understandable and logical—especially in public. In hindsight, creativity generally is logical and understandable, however, the process is the exciting part. With that in mind and in the spirit of change I am going to blog my process—including all the messy bits.

Background

When I started this blog three and a half years ago, I made up the word Arteliance to combine the elements of art and design with experience and reliability. I also promised not to get bogged down by constantly redesigning it and simply loaded the default Kubrick template and stuck with it.

My concept of this being primarily a blog about art and design hasn’t changed and I have no desire to “monetize”, “commoditize” or “target” anything or anyone. Thus, the overall strategy is simply to provide an interesting and readable format for a diverse subject matter while at the same time sharpening up my design thinking skills.

That said, I still need a visual for what Arteliance is about and for the design that will best facilitate and communicate that.

Brainstorming

Below are a couple of pages from my sketchbook containing quick thumbnails of the things I am thinking about. The process here is to get as many ideas as possible down quickly without judging or discarding any of them and then later identify some that are worth developing further. In this process, I am defining some options for things I might want to communicate and include as part of defining what this blog is about.

The next step will be to develop some of these thoughts further and begin to narrow them down.

Newsdesigner.com | Bhutto Front Pages

Fascinating collection of International and U.S. newspaper front pages on the Benazir Bhutto assassination.

The Globe and Mail:

tech ronin: Leopard on iMac 24 2.8 - Bliss

This is my first iMac. Who knew I would love the integration and simplicity? I am beginning to see things Steve’s way on this. It’s so easy. So elegant. Sometimes options are more trouble than they are worth. That’s the religion you get with the iPhone…. I’m being corrupted but perhaps for my own good.

redhat.com | Intro to design thinking

David Burney: Design thinking is a term being used today to define a way of thinking that produces transformative innovation. While the term feels trendy, the way of thinking is hardly new. One can think of the cave painters in Lascaux 25,000 years ago as design thinkers— they first began to collect data about the world they experienced, express that data by creating visual stories, document those stories in a way that could be shared into the future, and use that data to create new and innovative ways to solve their problems. The creation of alphabets thousands of years later is an example of design thinking.

Blast from the past? Coldest winter in 15 years, Environment Canada says

Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips said the trend in recent years of uncharacteristically warm, short winters will be wiped out by a chilly reminder of what a real Canadian winter feels like.