Journal 14

I think the most inspiring thing about this semester was the good work that everybody else in the class was doing. I thought we all really pushed each other to keep the intensity up all year. There was no point where you really had to to slack and keep up with everyone else. I'm looking forward to seeing how we all grow over the next couple years and the work we're doing by the time we're at this point senior year.

Journal 12: Hillman Curtis Artist Series

I like the ideas Paula Scher brings up about type as image. When we design with metaphors I generally think of metaphors within pictures or icons. However, Scher points out that metaphors can be used within type design too. For example, she points out that a lowercase "a" is a square and a circle, so you can use the metaphor of a square peg in a round hole. I would love to know where she gets all of her inspiration from.

David Carson talked about the importance of maintaining a design personality, even while using a computer. What's nice about the computer is that it makes it so easy to duplicate things, but that can be sort of a curse. It's more important now than ever to pay attention to type, and tweak it just a little it to set it apart from all of the other Helveticas and Univers' out there. I would like to know mare about Carson's process. His work seems very free-form and gestural and I'd love to know how he arrives at that.

Lawrence Weiner is an interesting person because he has such strong views and opinions about typography. He detest Helvetica because he thinks it forces its own views on everyone, Which in a way is pretty true. It seems that designs adapt to Helvetica. Helvetica doesn't adapt to designs.

Journal 11: Debbie Millman

Debbie Millman the President of the design division at Sterling Brands, an international design consultancy. She has been there for fourteen years and in that time she has worked on the redesign of global brands for Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, Campbell’s, Colgate, Hershey and Hasbro. Debbie is President of the AIGA, the professional association for design.

Design Matters is a talk radio show on the internet focused on graphic designers. The show aims to delve into problems in design and the people that solve them.

I listened to the most recent interview with Stefan Sagmeister. It was interesting because I generally think of Sagmeister as being a print designer, but in this interview he was discussing a documentary film he was working on. This shows that creative people are often creative in many different ways.

Journal 10: GOOD

Good serves as a sort of social networking site for artists and designers. This offers a sort of a community for designers to get feedback or get their name out. Most of the infographics and videos are aimed to be educational, wether they be about medicine or crime. I think this is an interesting approach, because it gives designers interesting problems to deal with.

I liked the "State of the Planet" video. It had very dynamic imagery and really good pacing. The designer made good decisions in terms of what and what not to include. There weren't overly dramatic transitions and nothing seemed to be moving to fast.

Journal 9: Type in Motion

Some of these examples are really effective without sound and some aren't. Videos that have more sophisticated motion seem to illustrate the words better, and don't necessarily need sound. For example, the Pulp Fiction video. This one is effective because it has so many different speed changes and transitions that make the words reflect the sound bite.

Videos I didn't like usually had too much going on. For example, the V For Vendetta video. This one had way too many transitions and everything moved too fast. The viewer would need to hear the sound in order to understand what's going on.

I liked the title sequences from American Splendor, Se7en, and Thank You for Smoking. These all have smooth transitions and keep things on the screen for just the right amount of time.

Journal 8

Univers would be a better option than Futura because it has so many different forms.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface

This article pointed out that there are tons of fonts out there and there are a number of different reasons why you would choose a specific one. For example, it might be beautiful or versatile. This is why I've used Univers on practically every project. It's so easy to make Univers fit in with anything. I also liked where the author talked about custom fonts. It's always fun to work with something that is special or unique. Even if you don't have an entirely custom font, it's still fun to mess with existing fonts by outlining them by hand or changing certain letters.s

Journal 7