University/College

Beyond Moirés

It’s been a while since I last posted something on the design foundation course. Perhaps you still remember the topic was “the moiré pattern” a few weeks ago. Well since then we created many moirés ourselves and presented them in class. Our next task is to try and concentrate some more on three-dimensionality. After designing some basic patterns we were supposed to play with them and try different combinations and variations. After that we will try transforming our work to a 3D object (probably made out of paper) and try some different color applications to underline the form.

These assignments are supposed to make us understand how three-dimensionality is created out of simple lines and forms. It’s a very experimental approach 🙂

So here is one of mine moirés and one pattern stressing three-dimensionality:

moiré

moiré

moiré stressing three-dimensionality

moiré stressing three-dimensionality

By the way, both patterns are created with the same fragments. I just rotated and scaled them differently.

in Design Foundation  by Savina 0 comments

Mr. Scheinberger on Illustration and Sketchbooks

This week I attended a short lecture on illustration and sketchbooks presented by Felix Scheinberger. His recent book dealing with this topic “Mut zum Skizzenbuch” is nominated for the Binder Award & the Graf Ludo Award.

I was fairly lucky to be able to get some firsthand tips 🙂

Of course I want to share with you the most important points!

  • You should start drawing for yourself and nobody else but you! Trust your own skills and preferences. Don’t try to satisfy someone else, be it your teacher, your friends or some rigid fashion. You need to let your own style bloom and that’s only possible if you embrace it! This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t accept any criticism nor does it mean you should ignore basic drawing rules like perspective and proportions. You need to learn the basics but you shouldn’t wait to develop your style until you’re a pro in “conventional” drawing. You have to start now! Following your very own preferences will show better results than trying to draw the way people want you to.
  • Go outside and explore the world with your own eyes (and sketchbook)! Don’t always rely on Google for reference images. It’s very easy to just type in what you are looking for, but the results you get are very limited and sorted out. Besides that, if everyone relies solely on the internet for reference someday everyone will be drawing fairly the same dogs, the same cars and the same landscapes! You need to see the world through your own eyes in order to create your own style!
  • Start drawing everything you desire in your very personal sketchbook meant only for your eyes! Don’t show it anyone. It’s supposed to be as intimate as a diary. It’s meant to be a place where you can create whatever YOU want.
  • Try to find all facets of a subject. When going to Athena, for example, don’t simply draw the Acropolis only because it’s the first thing people connect with the city. Exactly because of this fact you should try to find Athena’s other faces. Always strive for new points of view!
  • Over time the purpose of illustration has changed. A century ago illustrators were needed to depict subjects as accurate as possible. They were sort of a human photo camera. Their job was to show people the world as it was. Nowadays everyone has got a camera and obviously its way easier to quickly take a picture than to illustrate it…And still illustrators are still needed! But what can an illustration do a photo can’t? The answer is it can reduce, it can concentrate on a certain subject/part of the image and alter reality. It reproduces something through the inner eye of an artist. The viewer in a way takes a look in the illustrator’s soul and this connection makes drawings so special. I think we can agree that it’s by far more interesting to look at drawings than photos.

Well that’s basically what Mr. Scheinberger told us. Please bear in mind that this is his opinion and he doesn’t expect anyone to fully agree or disagree with him! It’s a free world 😉

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

Signs

Some time ago I talked about media and gave you a short definition. This time I’ll take a look at signs.

First of all, there are three different types of signs:

  • Icons (depicting and actually representing the object shown)
  • Indexes (signs which are connected to what they represent through some kind of  a sensory feature like smelling, tasting, feeling, hearing, directly seeing EXAMPLE smiling facial expression is an index for happiness to us humans and sourness in milk products is an index for them being bad)
  • Symbols (having a deeper meaning and representing more than what is simply shown)

Here’s an example: Save Icon I bet you’ve seen this “icon” before now!  It’s one of the most famous save icons. Well let’s actually assume it is an icon. Every time you click on this icon you should get a floppy-disk since icons depict AND represent what is depicted! But since you do not get a real floppy-disk every time you click this image it’s obviously not a real icon (yes, this means the guys who started calling it this way didn’t do their homework). Naturally it’s not an index either since you do not have any direct contact to a floppy-disk in whatever way. So the only type of sign left is a symbol and this is exactly what most “icons” on our computers are: symbols. The floppy-disk represents the “action to save a file”.

I hope this example somehow helped you understand the distinction between the three kinds of signs 🙂

But let’s continue! What’s the difference between a sign and a medium you ask? Well as we already know a medium tells you about more than what it actually is. A sign on the other hand describes something it’s not itself. An example would be the color red in a traffic sign which certainly doesn’t just mean “red” but “ATTENTION! “ Or when your facials muscles pull together and form a smile. This doesn’t simply mean “flexed facial muscles” but more something like “I’m content and happy”.

But how do signs get their meaning? It’s very simple: As soon as you are taught a meaning to a sign it gets one! Let’s say you’re an analphabet then all the letters here would be just meaningless signs to you. Hence signs depend on your experience to get recognized! That’s the reason why the same symbol has different meanings for different cultures (or has none for some). A sign is useless without the necessary knowledge to be interpreted with!

Especially as a designer and artist you have to be really careful and thoroughly consider what reaction a sign (-combination) is going to evoke in the subject it’s directed to!

in Theory  by Savina 0 comments

Short History of Written Language

This week the main topic in typography was the history of writing. It’s probably useless to try to cover all of it, since it’s obviously a way too complex and large subject for one entry…

So, like always, here is my short summary:

  • about 3500 BCE the cuneiform script (wedge writing) emerged in the Middle-East
  • about the same time in Egypt the writing system of hieroglyphs started seriously developing
  • perhaps even older is the Chinese writing system of logograms, so basically these first three systems are considered the beginning of written language
  • the phonemic script (English is one of them) is a writing system in which every letter stands for a sound and has no particular meaning on its own, developed by the Greek

Of course there are other writing systems like the Japanese one using Chinese characters, syllabaries and to some extend the Latin alphabet (which used the Greek alphabet as a role model) but the most important ones are mentioned.

In the 8th century Charlemagne reformed the West-European way of writing which hadn’t changed since the Roman Empire. The Carolingian minuscule was a uniform script with clear spacing between each word and the use of capitals. Additionally punctuation was added. Nowadays we take all these specifications for granted.

Another really important historical personality is Johannes Gutenberg, who started a media revolution as he invented modern book printing. Up until then most books had been re-written by hand by monks (censorship). Now everyone who could afford was able to print books with a high number of copies. This was the basis for the alphabetization of the masses and the spreading of new ideas free from religious censorship.

I gave a lot of external Wikipedia links in this one, because there might be someone who feels my summary is too “skinny” but that’s what I try to offer you: Short and precise summaries of my classes 😉

in Typograhy  by Savina 0 comments

Drawing Classes

Perhaps some of you wonder why I’m not posting anything on the first thing everyone thinks of when you mention design or art, namely drawing. Well I’ve planned on making a “skill-o-meter” 🙂 This means I’m going to collect the drawings for a while and then I’ll pick a few for every month and try to show you my improvements (hopefully).

But I guess I can already tell you what the topic of the course I picked is. Right now we are doing some character design and backgrounds (at which I REALLY suck) based on a little story where I and 3 other characters go on a university trip.  We still don’t know where we’re headed to… By the way I picked the illustration course (I hope I’ll survive!) and I have to admit I have A LOT of catching up to do if I want to become an illustrator but to be honest I really like media design too. Lucky me, I still have one year time to decide and a little hard work on my drawing skills can’t do any harm 🙂

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

On the Meaning of Design

In our first class in fine arts we tried to figure out what “design” actually means and what it’s good for.

First of all think about what the word “design” does when added to another word. Like in designer footwear, designer furniture, designer screw driver etc. Obviously it acts like a quality enhancement, meaning that designer clothes are better than normal or discounter clothes. But why do companies bother to produce designer couches or bottles? Aren’t the “normal” ones just as usable? The answer is yes, everything’s fine with most normal products and services BUT the market is immensely flooded with different providers so only the “special ones” get more attention. Design is the perfect way to make YOUR products stick out of the average and sell.

Therefore market research is crucial for every provider. With enough good information the product or service can be improved enough to sell better, though it might not be literally better than what the competition is offering. It’s only better adjusted to what the customers think they need. Advertisement is business worth millions!

There are some basic rules a good industrial design has to follow:

  • use people’s need to express individuality and prestige (social/cultural function)
  • keep costs as low as possible for the client (economy)
  • find the best and most inexpensive materials and ways of production (technology)
  • consider important ecological issues like energy balance, recycling and consumption of raw materials (ecology)
  • design an appealing form that at the same time integrates all the factors mentioned before (aesthetics)

As you can see there is a lot more to design than simply creating beautiful objects and images. That would be something free artists can consider an option 😉 If you want to read more on Art vs. Design click here.

in Theory  by Savina 0 comments

More on Typography Basics

This week we’ve discussed what typography/font does and what it’s needed for.

First of all the most basic statement on typography: “Typography gives you access to information.”

But what exactly is typography? It’s not simply addressing to the letters in writing. It’s more like a letter-system including not only the different fonts  but also the structure defined by things like various heading-sizes (known in web-editors as H1,H2,H3 etc.) or the italic/bold adjustments. This is a very basic definition but for now it’ll do.

Furthermore typography does the following:

  • documents ideas and this way enables cultural development
  • passes culture down
  • gives orientation not only in a text (structure) but through pictograms (simple signs are also a part of typography, there are certain pictographically fonts in Word for example)
  • creates atmosphere and interprets the content (see “Venice”)

venice

looks like a picture in an educational book or a newspaper

venice

looks more dreamy, like a tourist postcard and only because I changed the font

And what is our relationship to typography? Well a good typographical work always pays out since the human eye prefers well structured, paragraphed text 😉 On the other hand, we are dependent on text. Have you ever been to y country where you cannot read any of the written signs? Did you feel the growing despair with time? See 🙂

Oh, and one more thing: If you are a designer you have to be able to convince your clients of why they should pick a certain font. And believe me you’re not going to achieve anything by reasoning your choice on whether the font looks good or bad! You’ll need some “invisible knowledge”. That’s what we are going to learn in our typography class 😉

in Typograhy  by Savina 0 comments

Design Foundation Course – Moiré Pattern

The moiré pattern (also called interference pattern) is a flickering human eyes tend to see when two patterns are overlaid at an angle.

Here are some examples:

moire example 1moire example 1.2

Second example:

moire example 2

moire example 2.2

Furthermore we got the task to create 5 moirés ourselves. The required format was 18×18 cm (7×7 inch). Of course we were given some tips again:

  • divide format in halves, quarters etc.
  • use different line thickness and/or space between lines to create a feeling of depth
  • don’t mix up too many different shapes and patterns

Additionally we were shown a little trick in order to draw a “progressive grid”. Here’s the trick which should make clear what “progressive grids” are:

progressive grid trickOh, and if you’re interested in some professional moiré artists look up Bridget Riley 🙂

in Design Foundation  by Savina 0 comments