Social Poster

Object as a Mark

Great Mind in Design

Patterns

Modularity and Grid

Layers

Type and Hierarchy Summary

When considering type and hierarchy within a layout or project, it is important to consider color, contrast, scale in conjunction with the placement of the information. In the video, she emphasized using borders, lines, and color to help guide the reader's eye through the content you are presenting. Designers directly influence the media and public, and therefore, are the creators of culture. The way that information is presented is so crucial to our society and how we receive that information.

Larger font or bold lettering can direct the reader's eye there first thus emphasizing a title or important information that the designers feels that the reader should be most aware of. The organization of your layout is also important when creating a cohesive hierarchy. In the video, she mentioned many ways you can do this, whether you have a small amount of information or a lot of text, using varying colors to depict groups or categories allows the reader to flow through the information with ease.

Hierarchy

Heber - Calligraphy Summary

Heber showed us his passion of lettering and how he has made it into his full-time job, not just as a graphic designer, but also as a lettering artist and craftsman. He uses a lot of his hands-on creativity through lettering to influence his work at Visual Asylum. He began his design career at City College and eventually transferred to SDSU. He believes the quality of staff and expectations of the City College program are what really gave him the boost he needed to further pursue his career in design.

With lettering and calligraphy being Heber's passion, he has many interesting and exploratory tools that he uses when creating his art. He inspired me to pick up a couple new tools to continue exploring my creativity with typography and lettering outside of the classroom. Heber emphasized that his commitment to his craft and time spent expanding his creativity directly relates to his success in his projects in Graphic Design.

Border Play

Amor + Keisuke Summary

Amor and Keisuke began their design career in the Graphic Design program at City College and used that foundation to obtain full ride scholarships to the Art Center. While attending the Art Center, they had the opportunity to work on some very impressive projects that allowed them to further their creative and critical thinking skills more than they ever imagined. Through their own tenacity and ability to act on advantageous opportunities, they were among the first students to go on an international internship program with the Art Center in Germany, were recruited as undergraduate students to be apart of a graduate research project for the inventors of the Snapchat face recognition technology, and also were able to live in Europe for a year and a half working on various design projects for such organizations such as Volkswagon and MetaDesign.

Amor and Keisuke demonstrate what can be achieved if you have a passion for what you are doing, a focused work ethic, a desire to learn everyday and push yourself as far as you can, in addition to creating and finding opportunities and acting on them. They also exemplify the importance of having a solid foundation when embarking on a challenging design career, which they believe the program at City College gave them.

Positive/Negative

Grouping Modes

Seeing Color

Jim Krause Summary

Jim Krause is an exceptional designer that is well-versed in using color to his advantage in his work. He explained that all color consists of three components - hue, saturation, and value. Although all three are very important in depicting emotion through color, value is the most important as the other two components would not exist without the value of a color. He showed many helpful examples of how to use color to create different branding, logos, color illustrations, etc.

I thought that his tricks with using the color guide to be extremely helpful when thinking about my future design career. Jim's favorite color design style is to use split complimentary, which means that he likes to select a color then use the near colors of its complimentary color. This technique allows for the designs to remain visually distinctive and interesting but also complimentary so it still has some relevance to each other.

Jim also went into a technique for color which I found especially interesting. He recommended finding classic works of art that you admire based on their color scheme, and using the color guide tools to create your own color swatches based on the color scheme of that original piece of artwork. I am looking forward to trying that technique in my own work. Overall, I found Jim's color advice to be very interesting and useful when thinking of applying it to my own work.

Interaction of Color

Color Wheel

Typographic Texture

Physical Texture

Marian Bantjes Summary

Marian Bantjes is a very successful graphic designer, both in the commercial sphere as well as her own personal creations. She is a true inspiration of someone who really honed in on her craft and her originality over years of working hard at it. She is at the point now in her career where she is really able to expand her creativity and push her own boundaries. As a contributor in the film said, "she is demonstrating that design can be personal". She always does the unexpected but in a beautiful way. Her designs were inspiring in that you can tell she takes of pride in her work.

Her project with the Valentine's Day cards using the old Christmas cards was beautiful. As she put it, it was an idea that turned into pleasantly aesthetic surprise. The details of the cards and the cut outs were creative, beautiful, and timeless looking. Marian uses a wide variety of materials in her projects, including drawing and scanning into illustrator, that adds to her overall creative expansion. 

Her colleagues referred to Marian as fundamentally understanding the creativity of each project and that is why she was so successful. The amount of knowledge she has and time she put into it showed through her understanding of concepts exceptionally well. 

Scale, Depth, Motion

Jessica Hische Summary

Jessica Hische is the co-owner the design firm, "Title Case", in San Francisco, and has a career that I truly admire and wish to learn more from. As someone who is passionate about lettering as an art form, it is always interesting to hear about someone who has made it into a lucrative and fulfilling career. In the video, Jessica mentioned people's reactions when she tells them she does lettering and how most people don't understand the complexities and intricacies that encompass typeface and lettering. She mentioned that not until you really start to look at and teach yourself the details of lettering, will you start to truly learn the craft. 

Her advice, in terms of career and artistic progression, was to be creative every day in order to keep yourself fresh and revitalized in your craft. When searching for your ideal career, she said that it is important to not only consider what you love and are passionate about but what your day to day really looks like. Her success has relied on her using her career to make a statement about yourself. 

Jessica constantly floods sketch books with ideas. It is important to do this because once you find out things that aren't working, you're closer to finding what does. You have to go through an exploratory period in order to generate your best work. 

Scale

Sean Adams Summary

As a founder of his own design firm, president of the AIGA, Graphic Design instructor, and a contributor to Lynda.com, among other things, Sean Adams is known as a very successful, and busy, designer. There is so much to learn from the span of his career, and he has a lot of wisdom to give to his students about making it in this line of work. I appreciated his insight on what he would be looking for in a potential hire, and that what he valued most was simplicity in presentation. He also emphasized networking as a way to create your own career path. The design community is a tight knit group of people, and the easiest way to get yourself an opportunity is to meet the right connections! 

Sean relies on many different techniques to get his ideas. One of them is to listen to other's ideas, which I thought was great. As much as anyone wants to have a completely original idea or thought, it is always helpful to get another's idea or perspective and then create it into your own. He also loves to combine symbols and ideas in his work to create artistic metaphors. 

He said, "design keeps capitalism going in the marketplace", which I thought was a very thought-provoking statement. Essentially, without design, our entire economy wouldn't have the momentum that is does today. As Sean put it, as an Art Director or Creative Director, you truly are "in charge of pop culture". 

Rhythm Balance

Points, Lines, and Planes

Margo Chase Summary

Margo Chase has had such an inspirational, and envious, career path! Her style and skills are so well-rounded and she is always willing to push herself further and try something new. She mentioned that she felt at the beginning of her career she started getting known for a certain style, which has its perks, but also can ultimately pigeon-hole you into a certain market. She pushed through this adversity, and has shown that you have to be confident in what you produce and what you are capable of. Before she even knew how to do effects on a Mac, she told her client that she could, because she knew it was possible. She trusted herself and her ability to push herself and her skills.

Margo showed that you must always been soaking in information and inspiration from everywhere. She has an extensive book collection that she references frequently for ideas, and also uses several different types of media to expand her creative thought process. She sketches and draws when she is traveling, and said that she pulls influence for certain projects from something that she had already created or an idea she thought of.

Margo took each new opportunity as it came to her, made it her own, and wasn’t afraid of a challenge, even if she didn’t feel fully prepared. My main takeaway from Margo’s story is that as much as you try, you can never be truly prepared for challenges in life. So, it is important to take the leap anyway, be confident in yourself, and know if you work hard at it, you will succeed. 

100 Iterations