Wednesday, July 16, 2003
Gestures We talked a lot today about composition, the placement of things on a page. Gestures--making broad strokes on a blank page--can help explore the feeling you are trying to capture in type and the placement of your text. Is the movement organic? Mechanical? Loose? Tight? etc. And don't put everything center. Centering is easy. Finding how far off-center you can go, how far towards the edges, is more interesting. Don't be afraid of the edges. But be careful of the ragged right edge of text. Make sure the edges aren't too ragged. You don't want to draw too much attention to that edge for the reader. When designing, don't throw away your early ideas. They might be cliche, but they might also be the most honest response to the problem. An underlying grid structure can help organize your page, and can also help build variety within consistant pages. It's sometimes hard to know when you are done with a project. The end is often simply determined by external forces (ie. a deadline). During the second half of class, we looked at the work of Bradbury Thompson, an American graphic designer who "helped give definition to graphic design" in the US in the second half of the 20th century. His main contribution was the integration of type and image in advertising and in his "Inspirations" projects for paper manufacturer Westvaco.
posted at 07:53 PM in
big ideas, design 101, projects, techniques, typography
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