I have a lecturer at uni who gets kicks out of dropping names. Artist names, designer names, typographic names, sculptors, printers… it’s both good and annoying, because you end up scribbling down names incorrectly and so quickly that you cannot whallop enough context around them to even hope you’ve spelt them well enough to chase down later. I have been meaning for a while to push myself into a position where I am a more intentional about chasing some of these names up. So for the past while I have marking names with asterisks or drawing little arrows that say ‘blog’.
From now on, every time this happens (which is usually at least once every Tuesday morning) I MUST read up about/write up about this oh-so-interesting/crazy/normal person.
Name Drop: Paul Scher
There is a decent article over on Fast Company: The Wordsmith.
She works for Pentagram
“The biggest problem designers face is fear; fear of clients, fear of failure, fear of ideas. Our ability to overcome fear is perhaps the greatest skill we can acquire. Most bad design, most mediocre design, is a consequence of fear. Clients are frightened, designers are frightened; audiences are frightened. The modern world of commerce runs of fear: a marketplace terror that makes us timid and risk-averse. Most of us deal with fear by falling back on the familiar and the safe. but if we do this, we are not allowed to turn around and say our lives are dull. If we are going to avoid losing our souls, we have to overcome this fear.” – Adrian Shaughnessy (p.147)
I finally managed to get my hands on a library copy of this book and am already eternally grateful. Shaugnessy has written a brilliant book that talks about the Design industry through it’s pitfalls and triumphs, it is gloriously practical, interesting and well written. I am a fan.
This takes the shiny button for the ‘best’ of design books that I’ve read thus far, just ahead of tellmewhy by karlssonwilker. Very different, incredibly helpful. I even feel vaguely prepared, although I’m sure that’s naive.
On another note, I’ve been exploring illustration lately… in that I’ve been thinking about it rather a lot and am getting these small hits of inspired glee. I bought a CAP magazine on Illustration a little while back but I’m holding out until holidays, where those things that I “have” to do aren’t getting in the way.
My branding assignment for the school is FINALLY coming along. I need to meet up with them again to discuss through some of the concepts that I’ve come up with. Still battling to get a decent linear mark as the uni brief requries that we produce: a linear, solid, abstraction, postive/negative, pictogram.
Apparently I have to credit Geoff for this idea… because it is his, but as I am married to the man – I technically still own at least some of the IP (What?) so I’m going to write about it anyway.
My attitude to Blog Action Day is somewhat like my attitude toward poverty. In that I really would like to do something about it, but life gets in the way. It’s a crap excuse. As it currently stands, it is nearly 11pm and I have to finish this post, print out stuff for uni for an 8:30am class as well as fix up a cover letter, while still wanting to watch an episode of the West Wing before bed. My grand scheme of thoroughly researching and writing up about Design related approaches to poverty has fallen in a heap, and I am here with a lot of good intentions but not a lot of practical outcomes.
It saddens me that the most obvious, in your face experiences of poverty (at least as a western, middle class, train rider) when asked for money come first with a knee jerk reaction followed quickly, but not quickly enough by the guilt to do something about it when it’s already too late, the moment has passed.
We are not proactive about poverty and often do not have the right mindset about it even when our intentions are good.
This is my confession.
And here is as far as I got with my design/poverty based research (I would love to know of more):