>graphic design notebook

A designer on a journey through type and kerning + A digital notebook capturing 13 months of self-teaching = A savvy designer

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Lance Wyman

A great man.

A great designer.

Endless pool of inspiration 

[thedesignerandthegrid]

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10 Principles of “Good Design” by Dieter Rams 

Good Design Is Innovative :

The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.

Good Design Makes a Product Useful :

A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasises the usefulness of a product while disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.

Good Design Is Aesthetic :

The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products are used every day and have an effect on people and their well-being. Only well-executed objects can be beautiful.

Good Design Makes A Product Understandable :

It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product clearly express its function by making use of the user’s intuition. At best, it is self-explanatory.

Good Design Is Unobtrusive :

Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.

Good Design Is Honest :

It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.

Good Design Is Long-lasting :

It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society.

Good Design Is Thorough Down to the Last Detail :

Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the consumer.

Good Design Is Environmentally Friendly :

Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimises physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product.

Good Design Is as Little Design as Possible :

Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

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Super cute video.

If only it captured all of the design fundamentals  

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Another month - another topic. During September we will be exploring the semantics of design:

Principles of graphic design

Elements of design 

Communicating visually using design elements

Fundamentals of graphic form / sequencing / image production 

Gain:

 a working knowledge of design elements and how to use them

design vocabulary needed to evaluate solutions 

ability to manipulate space to comunicate specific objectives

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Every movement needs a voice, and ever since Gutenberg systematized the concept of movable type radicals have put ink to paper.

Another info pool <3

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Marian Bantjes is a designer, typographer, illustrator and writer who, born in Canada in 1963, spent the first half of her career as a book typesetter. She left the field of book typography to join the Canadian design studio Digitopolis in 1994, she flourished as a graphic designer there until 2003. She left the firm to pursue her own interests and style of work that she had become internationally recognized for. In the years since she has worked for Pentagram, Stefan Sagmeister, AIGA, The Guardian and The New York Times, among others. Her unique style of typography and illustration includes extremely detailed letterforms and ornaments and has been featured in design publications all over the globe. Her work is also in the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. She has released her own typeface, entitled Restraint and is set to release a book in October of 2010 entitled I Wonder. 

[typographybooks]

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A writer, educator and curator (as well as a graphic designer), Ellen Lupton studied art and design in New York at the Cooper Union during the 1980s. She spent several years curating a small design gallery inside of the Cooper Union before being offered a "real job" at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in 1992. Since then she has published multiple books on design and typography as well as running writing for several design blogs online. She is married to Abbot Miller, who is a partner with Pentagram in New York. Her books and writings have been wildly successful as graphic design primers for design students as well as educational reference tools for designers worldwide. Since 1997 she has also been the director of the MFA in Graphic Design program at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She frequents the design and art lecture circuit where she talks about her work, books and ideas and was awarded the gold medal from AIGA in 2007.

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Home

Creative partners for ambitious leaders

Wolff Olins was founded in Camden Town, London in 1965 by Michael Wolff and Wally Olins. Known for pushing the boundaries of identity and logo design, much of their work has been met with skepticism. But that has never stopped them from moving forward and evolving their business structure over their 40+ year history. They have worked for international clients including the Tate Galleries, AOL, New York City, Mercedes and Unilever. While always managing to be successful yet progressive, their company really started growing in the late 1990s and early 2000s.They opened up offices all over the world in Madrid, Barcelona, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo. Olins left in 2001 and a management buyout team, led by Brian Boylan took over the company while maintaining the signature name. They continue to push identity design in new and changing directions while creating lasting work for international companies.

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Experimental Jetset is a small, independent, Amsterdam-based graphic design studio, founded in 1997 by (and still consisting of) Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen. Focusing on printed matter and site-specific installations, and describing their methodology as “turning language into objects”, Experimental Jetset have worked on projects for a wide variety of institutes. Their work has been featured in group exhibitions such as ‘Graphic Design: Now in Production’ (Walker Art Center, 2011) and ‘Ecstatic Alphabets / Heaps of Language’ (MoMA, 2012). Solo exhibitions include ‘Kelly 1:1’ (Casco Projects, Utrecht, 2002) and ‘Two or Three Things I Know About Provo’ (W139, Amsterdam, 2011). In 2007, a large selection of work by Experimental Jetset was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, for inclusion in the MoMA’s permanent collection. Members of Experimental Jetset have been teaching at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (2000–2014), and are currently teaching at Werkplaats Typografie (2013–now).

inspiration <3

An independent graphic design studio, Experimental Jetset is made up of only three people, Marieke Stolk, Danny van den Dungen and Erwin Brinkers. All three members are graduates of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, located in Amsterdam, and have been collaborating since right after their graduation. While their influences are wide-ranging and varied, their aesthetic is closely related to that of the Modernist movement. The resemblance is reinforced by their use of Helvetica, implemented on nearly every one of their projects, as well as their often monochromatic color palette. They have worked with director Gary Hustwit on both of his documentaries, Helvetica and Objectified. 

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Born in Austria in 1962, Stefan Sagmeister was originally on a path to become an engineer. After shifting his course in life towards design he studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna andd was accepted at the Pratt Institute in New York on a Fullbright Scholarship after that. He first started working professionally in the field for Leo Burnett, in their Hong Kong office in 1991. After a short stint there he began working with Tibor Kalman at his studio M&Co. It wasn't long after that that Tibor announced he was closing the doors on M&Co, in 1993, and Sagmeister formed Sagmeister, Inc. He has been there ever since. His studio is very small in size and he works only with clients that appeal to him. He astonished the design community in 2000 when he closed the doors on his studio and took a year off for personal reflection. When he came back he published his first book, Made You Look. Thoroughly convinced that the reflection process was important in his continued creativity he has toured the design circuit giving many lectures and presentations about his personal success. He continues to operate his studio where he works for clients from a wide range of industries including fashion and music.

[typeworship]

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Born in Cleveland in 1957 and educated at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, Michael Bierut began his career as a designer for Massimo Vignelli in 1980. He spent 10 years there before becoming a partner at Pentagram in 1990. In the past 30 years he has won numerous awards for his work with international clients including Saks Fifth Avenue, United Airlines, AIGA, the Yale School of Architecture and various museums of art and design. He spent several years writing for Design Observer and is a senior critic at the Yale School of Design. His work, and his writings, are clear, concise, witty and intelligent. He prides himself not on being creative, but on being a problem solver and advises other designers to remember who they are creating the work for. His work is in the permanent collections of museums all over the world in several countries including the United States, Germany and Switzerland. Always a joy to listen to, Bierut continues to share his wisdom through his work, published materials and personal lectures.

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A growing network and enterprise dedicated to the progress of the graphic design profession and its practitioners, students and enthusiasts. At times intangible, its purpose is to question, push, analyze and agitate graphic design and those involved in the profession.

Established in 2002, Under Consideration has created, maintained and contributed to the success of 6 design blogs. All of which have made significant contributions to the growing online community of design professionals. The list includes Speak Up, Word It, The Design Encyclopedia, For Print Only, Brand New and Quipsologies. Run by Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit, the sites have all had their part in ushering in the digitization of design information and have provided many designers with an open forum for discussion, education and a sense of community. Speak Up published over 1600 articles relevant to all aspects of graphic design while For Print Only focuses on printed materials only and Brand New presents and evaluates branding changes of popular corporations. The Design Encyclopedia is exactly what it sounds like, although it never managed to fully get off the ground. Word It was a series of one word challenges issued to any willing participant asking them to visually represent the specific word. Quipsologies is a collection of brief creative references from both the staff and random contributors to the site.

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As a designer, Rick places a high importance on forming a personal and meaningful relationship with all of his clients. Often injecting his own personality and history into his work shows just how much Rick cares about making design personal and memorable. In 1989 he formed the design studio Thirst, which is a small operation which ruthlessly searches for creative applications of unique design solutions. Never one to be afraid of technology, the work of Thirst is often very progressive and unique in its aesthetic. Rick also spends much of his time involved in efforts to educate students and other designers and donates much of his time to holding workshops and personal critiques for both high school and college-level design students. A very active member of AIGA, he was awarded the AIGA gold medal for his contributions to the design community. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum and the 2006 Triennial, Design Life Now.

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While she has studied at design at the Parsons School of Design, Syracuse University and the School of Visual Arts and spent 12 years working as a magazine designer for Condé Nast, Barbara Kruger bridges the gap between fine art and design in her personal work. Her time spent as a designer and art director for magazines like Mademoiselle, House and Garden, and Aperture certainly influenced her signature style of combining found magazine imagery with simple, to the point typography. Setting much of her text in Futura Bold Oblique and with topics like consumerism, feminism and classicism it is hard to not have some kind of reaction to the stark statements of her work. She has been a pioneer of guerrilla art, producing some of her original works on shopping bags, t-shirts, bus benches and billboards. She has had exhibitions in many galleries around the world and currently resides and works in both Los Angeles and New York.

[authentic-boredom]

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Born in Ontario, Canada, Bruce Mau started his education of design at the Special Arts at Sudbury Secondary School and continued it at the Ontario College of Art & Design. During his career he has worked with the Fifty Fingers Design Group, Pentagram, Public Good Design and Communications, and his own studio Bruce Mau Design. He has been influential in the fields of book design, typography and design for social change thorugh his work with Zone Books, as well as his own organizations Massive Change and the Institute Without Boundaries. His work for Zone Books was the major turning point in his career which led him to form his own studio and helped develop the narrative style of design that he uses as a vessel for communication. His work with Zone has spanned over 100 volumes. His other design work encompasses many fields, including typography, architecture, multimedia, product and interior design. His work is a constant effort to improve the welfare of humanity and the Massive Change Project and the Institute Without Boundaries have influenced designers all over the world to be more aware of the environment and culture that they are surrounded by. 

[design-is-fine]

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Scher began her career creating album covers for both Atlantic and CBS records. However, it was not long before she formed her own design company, and after only a few years there she joined Pentagram. During her career she has created memorable identities and other work for clients such as Citi Bank, Coca-Cola, the Metropolitan Opera, the Museum of Modern Art and the New York Philharmonic, among others. She has twice been married to designer Seymour Chwast and has been a public figure in design since her early career. Her style of design communicates with contemporary audiences through the use of pop iconography, music and film. Her work has been published internationally and her contributions to the field design are numerous. Her work as a partner of Pentagram continues to inspire the new generation of designers.

[womenofgraphicdesign]

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A designer who is absolutely enthralled with Italian culture, Louise Fili worked in the book publishing business for 11 years and now runs her own design studio where she specializes in restaurant identity, food packaging and book jacket design. Her interest in food and the Italian culture started when she was very young. The daughter of Italian immigrants, she first visited Italy when she was 16 years old. Her affection for typography also started when she was very young and she would often spend the night-time hours hiding in the dark so she could carve lettering into the wall over her bed. She was a designer for Herb Lubalin for 3 years before becoming an art director for Pantheon Books. While she was there she designed over 2000 book covers and jackets. She is married to designer and author Steven Heller, with whom she has collaborated on several books with. Louise Fili, Ltd. was founded in 1989, where she continues to create Italian Art Deco inspired designs for a wide variety of clients.