Category: <span>Design</span>
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
And she apparently does paintings like this to keep sane!
“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.
My head currently is great friends with the procrastination monster (here is where I should jump into Illustrator and haul out some illustration skills and show you what my monster looks like).
I spent yesterday afternoon reclaiming sanity by cleaning my house and spending time with my friend Ana in the glorious sun at a cafe. I thought I’d won the war in capturing control.
Today control has made some kind of spectacular get-away and I am floundering.
I hate having to do bits and pieces without accomplishing anything tangible. Unfortunately these bits and pieces NEED to get done to even get remotely close to the whole.
I currently have four books on the go, struggling to get through the Pratchett (of all things!) and feel quite unstable.