Showing posts with label Brief 2: Type Design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brief 2: Type Design. Show all posts
Typeface - MyFonts mock up
I do intend to complete the typeface in font lab and upload to a site where it can be downloaded, probably for free though. For now, however, I thought I would mock it up to see how it would look next to the other typefaces.
Type specimen book printed
Not overly happy with the cover - it doesn't have the effect that I wanted it too. Also, the stock is picking up all my finger prints like you wouldn't believe, which is very annoying. It's the satin stock from downstairs. I don't particularly want matt though, so I'm unsure what to do.
We'll see how it photographs. If I have time, I will re-print the cover before hand in.
We'll see how it photographs. If I have time, I will re-print the cover before hand in.
Type posters.
Adapted from the first spread of the booklet, also took inspiration from Dalton Haag type posters, which showcase specific letterforms rather that the whole set.
Again using my self branding - still can't figure out if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
If i'm honest, I just can't wait to get this brief finished and out of the way, and I think it's showing through in my designs.
It's time to re-evaluate I think.
Type specimen booklet.
I made the mistake of starting this brief a while ago and then leaving it to do another brief, I think it was the end of year show. Getting back into it has been really hard, and I've completely lost all enthusiasm for this brief.
Picking back up on the layouts of the type specimen booklet, I decided to alter the layout from square format to A5, it just seemed to fit better with my layouts. Other than that, haven't changed a great deal.
Issuu hasn't done it justice on the thin lines!
Not sure about the cover, or about using my branding on it. However, it is a personal project and thats the only way I can think of to give it context.
Picking back up on the layouts of the type specimen booklet, I decided to alter the layout from square format to A5, it just seemed to fit better with my layouts. Other than that, haven't changed a great deal.
Issuu hasn't done it justice on the thin lines!
Not sure about the cover, or about using my branding on it. However, it is a personal project and thats the only way I can think of to give it context.
Dalton Maag.
Joe suggested I have a look at Dalton Maag type posters. I couldn't find many images of them on the internet, but the one I did find shows how great they really are.
I love the way they showcase specific letterforms rather than the whole typeface. Definitely something to consider for my type design brief.
I love the way they showcase specific letterforms rather than the whole typeface. Definitely something to consider for my type design brief.
Process
'The first in a series of special edition Process publications, printed in only black on lightweight 70gsm Bond, Process 4.5 purposely contrasts the usual high production qualities of the quarterly journal, as well acting as a platform to experiment with different formats and production techniques. The publication’s content is a reflection and retrospective of the first four editions of Process Journal. Consisting of three major parts, the first a comprehensive essay written by typographer and design-lecturer Brad Haylock. The second a typographic analysis of each of the typefaces featured in editions one to four, including type samples and specimens. And finally, we asked a selection of contributors from editions one to four the simple question: ‘what is your process’. Including responses from Brett Phillips (3 Deep Design), Michael C. Place (Build), Mason Wells (Bibliothèque), Tom Crabtree (Manual),Tony Brook (Spin) and more.'
Barbican brand guideline book.
Designed by North
I posted about their exhibition design a while ago and here's the brand guideline book to go with it.
Great bit of inspiration for my type design brief.
I posted about their exhibition design a while ago and here's the brand guideline book to go with it.
Great bit of inspiration for my type design brief.
Interview with Experimenta
Experimenta is a design studio based in Wellington, New Zealand made up of Duncan Forbes and Elaina Hamilton. Their work has a subtle minimalist and modernist feel that is very refreshing and unique which focuses towards artists, galleries, museums, music and education. Duncan and Elaina took a moment to answer a few questions for AisleOne.
How long have you been designing?
As Experimenta we have been designing for about a year and a half now. So we havn’t been designing for very long and we are conscious of this but have a lot of confidence in our work. Simply put – we are learning as we go. Although one year in this business isn’t long we have been lucky enough that people have really liked and taken notice of what we are doing and this has led to us doing some nice work for great clients. We work regularly with a local art gallery who we are really starting to do some good work for now. We try to be pretty strict with clients, only giving one option with little to no compromise and reiterate that we are the designers and we make the design decisions. It’s a matter of the client trusting you and of course that needs to be earned. Doing this in such a small country and being a niche studio can sometimes be difficult. Our client base is so small here, for the type of work we are interested in doing, along with the budgets. You really have to be in it for the love.
Who or what turned you on to graphic design?
We both started out studying as visual artists, and sort of fell into design. Art school was a very confusing time and you really have to find your style and not be afraid of that. Carson and grunge was very ‘in’ at this time so it was hard to escape, some of it was so bad. This probably helped in forming the way we work which is very structured and neat. In saying that we have a lot of appreciation for types of design we could never do, the post-modernists, the new brutalists and are influenced by these and other movements.
Who or what are your influences?
Locally a few people at the moment. Our good friend Kris Sowersby from KLIM is a big one. Although our work is very different from each other we both appreciate good honest design. Sort of by proxy we critique each others work, sending screenshots via iChat just to show what we have been working on. He will send through a typeface design he is working on, and we send through different designs we have been doing that day. Critique is good; I think we both have good eyes for what works and we don’t really lie to each other. If it doesn’t work for us then we say so. Part of it is having the confidence to take it or leave it, not just get upset or have a ‘tanty’. Sometimes when Kris really doesn’t like something we have done, I know it’s perfect and we have hit our mark. Sometimes it’s the other way around.
Our other friends The National Grid are an influence, even if not a seemingly aesthetic one, Luke and Jonty do some great work and like us they are obsessed with design. Their work is so careful and thoughtful, we really like that. Luke said once that a lot of the best work happens on the design fringe. I completely agree.
Other designers we really admire are Catherine Griffiths who is a really organized, ‘go forth’ designer (she is organising a New Zealand design conference TypeSHED11 for next year that’s going to be pretty amazing), Neil Pardington: a legendary New Zealand book designer and we really like Inhouse’s stuff from Auckland.
Looking abroad we are very interested in Design history and are always reading about different movements and their reactionaries. The humanist Dutch type evolution interested us greatly and still does. Our work is more humanist than strict so we thought it was appropriate to name ourselves after Dutch designer Willem Sandberg’s Experimenta typographica. A publication that ran from 1943 – 1945 and started to break free of the modernist perfectionism.
What is your favorite typeface?
We only use a handful of typefaces at the studio. It might seem we are more akin to Sans, but this is not the case. We will usually use a sans for our the majority of design work, but when it comes to designing books we like to be more classical and depending on length will use a serif or mixed. We used Newzald on a catalogue a while ago and loved it. The Book and the Black weights gave fantastic contrast to the page. We recently acquired Graphik from Christian and it’s a beauty. I really love National and I’m wanting to put the Book weight to good use ASAP. Some typefaces that we don’t have that we really like are Brunel from Christian and Paul Barnes, Dada from Optimo is interesting, I wasn’t sure about it at first but now it has grown on me, Neutral from Kai Bernau, another I wasn’t so sure about, but after seeing it in print used well and reading about it, it is good to be wrong, Unica looks really interesting, I would like to see it in print. Lexicon and Trinite are also some of my favorites and although some type designers will hate me I just have a fondness for Helvetica. It can look good when used nicely. An updated modern version would be great though. Basically we take a lot of time to choose the right typeface for the job. This is a really exciting part of the design process for us, we love the stage where you get to try out different typefaces for the job.
What is your favorite color palette to work with?
We usually work in black and if necessary will add colour. We have been finding lately we have been using primary colours a lot, but getting things looking good in black is important to us. We recently had an informal lecture about Frutiger/Roissy from a old Swiss designer Erich Alb, who gave us the formula for ‘Swiss’ black: 100% K, 60% B, 20% R. He was a crazy guy but he made us smile with his enthusiasm. There are a lot of different subtleties that can be achieved in the one colour, we like to think the same about our work.
Can you explain your creative process from brief to completion?
The start of our process is research. This usually starts with going to book stores, libraries, reading through our studio library, talking, maybe a visit to some galleries if we feel the need. All the obvious steps. We then get really stuck into drawing. We are real advocates of this, not just a few sketches, but really exploring ideas on the page. Everything changes when you take it to the computer anyway but by working an idea through on paper it helps the work to retain a sort of tangible integrity right through to the production of the object which is hard to develop solely onscreen. We usually figure out a rough grid on paper, then work it out on the computer, which gives us more freedom to make it more complex/simple if needed. We only ever present the client with one solution. If the client doesn’t like the solution, we don’t just re-jig it, we start over with a new concept. We are pretty strict with this. We feel that the designer should be making the design decisions and not the client – after all that’s what we are getting paid to do. We would never show the client two options, then have them mash the two together, or show them 10 designs based on the same theme so they can choose, that’s just wrong.
Do you use a grid system when designing and how do you feel about them?
Our work always ends up with a tight grid underneath it. It just makes sense to us to do this. We usually work out some sort of grid in the drawing stage then really flesh it out on the computer. We have a couple of really good grid books (rather than a whole lot of bad ones) that we have learnt a lot from. However, it is no use having a ‘grid for grids sake’ – it has to help the idea and remain as a subtle undertone. In our work we don’t like to overstate the grid rather give clues and hints to it when appropriate.
Who do you feel is currently doing innovative work?
If you mean who is pushing new ideas/new methods, we think studios like vier5 have introduced a sort of ‘new brutalism’ to graphic design that we are interested in. We have definitely seen that filter down to design we see locally too. Rick Poynor pointed out that when the post-modernism ‘grunge’ craze came through in the 90s, you obviously had these designers who embraced/invented the style who were the masters of it, but also that suddenly you had designers who bad work suddenly looked good. We should be aware of this with a new brutalist style too. I think dotdotdot – although quite different – foreshadowed some of this design as well.
What are you working on now?
We are insanely busy, which is great for having been open for just over a year and a half. We have one more show for the Adam Art Gallery this year and I think there will be posters, a catalogue, and signage. Right at this moment we are working on an arts journal called Hue & Cry which is pretty much finished so we are now designing some A0 posters for the opening launch based around the work of Brion Gysin and his cut up method.
What is your favorite album?
We both have very different taste in music. I usually arrive early in the mornings and listen to either Mozart or Meshuggah. We like the Battles album and listen to mostly contemporary stuff while working (Deftones, Wu-Tang, anything from Mike Paton – Peeping Tom, Fantomas) and like searching for new music to listen too. Our favorite albums at the moment would be Arcade Fire and the Kings of Leon in terms of playcount on iTunes.
What is your favorite movie?
Recently we really enjoyed Southland Tales. Too many ideas for some, but we love complex hard to navigate films. Collectively our favorite is either Vertigo from Hitchcock, or Blow-Up from Antonioni. Both pure brilliance. Both Directors had amazing vision. The art direction is so different to anything you would see now – true masters of their craft. The parts in Vertigo where Kim Novak’s character has seemingly returned from the dead were so surreal for me. I wasn’t quite sure what was going on – I was so lost in the character. I wish I could have my graphic design work in the same way.
Intervista is a series of interviews conducted for AisleOne with some of todays top talents in graphic design.
How long have you been designing?
As Experimenta we have been designing for about a year and a half now. So we havn’t been designing for very long and we are conscious of this but have a lot of confidence in our work. Simply put – we are learning as we go. Although one year in this business isn’t long we have been lucky enough that people have really liked and taken notice of what we are doing and this has led to us doing some nice work for great clients. We work regularly with a local art gallery who we are really starting to do some good work for now. We try to be pretty strict with clients, only giving one option with little to no compromise and reiterate that we are the designers and we make the design decisions. It’s a matter of the client trusting you and of course that needs to be earned. Doing this in such a small country and being a niche studio can sometimes be difficult. Our client base is so small here, for the type of work we are interested in doing, along with the budgets. You really have to be in it for the love.
Who or what turned you on to graphic design?
We both started out studying as visual artists, and sort of fell into design. Art school was a very confusing time and you really have to find your style and not be afraid of that. Carson and grunge was very ‘in’ at this time so it was hard to escape, some of it was so bad. This probably helped in forming the way we work which is very structured and neat. In saying that we have a lot of appreciation for types of design we could never do, the post-modernists, the new brutalists and are influenced by these and other movements.
Who or what are your influences?
Locally a few people at the moment. Our good friend Kris Sowersby from KLIM is a big one. Although our work is very different from each other we both appreciate good honest design. Sort of by proxy we critique each others work, sending screenshots via iChat just to show what we have been working on. He will send through a typeface design he is working on, and we send through different designs we have been doing that day. Critique is good; I think we both have good eyes for what works and we don’t really lie to each other. If it doesn’t work for us then we say so. Part of it is having the confidence to take it or leave it, not just get upset or have a ‘tanty’. Sometimes when Kris really doesn’t like something we have done, I know it’s perfect and we have hit our mark. Sometimes it’s the other way around.
Our other friends The National Grid are an influence, even if not a seemingly aesthetic one, Luke and Jonty do some great work and like us they are obsessed with design. Their work is so careful and thoughtful, we really like that. Luke said once that a lot of the best work happens on the design fringe. I completely agree.
Other designers we really admire are Catherine Griffiths who is a really organized, ‘go forth’ designer (she is organising a New Zealand design conference TypeSHED11 for next year that’s going to be pretty amazing), Neil Pardington: a legendary New Zealand book designer and we really like Inhouse’s stuff from Auckland.
Looking abroad we are very interested in Design history and are always reading about different movements and their reactionaries. The humanist Dutch type evolution interested us greatly and still does. Our work is more humanist than strict so we thought it was appropriate to name ourselves after Dutch designer Willem Sandberg’s Experimenta typographica. A publication that ran from 1943 – 1945 and started to break free of the modernist perfectionism.
What is your favorite typeface?
We only use a handful of typefaces at the studio. It might seem we are more akin to Sans, but this is not the case. We will usually use a sans for our the majority of design work, but when it comes to designing books we like to be more classical and depending on length will use a serif or mixed. We used Newzald on a catalogue a while ago and loved it. The Book and the Black weights gave fantastic contrast to the page. We recently acquired Graphik from Christian and it’s a beauty. I really love National and I’m wanting to put the Book weight to good use ASAP. Some typefaces that we don’t have that we really like are Brunel from Christian and Paul Barnes, Dada from Optimo is interesting, I wasn’t sure about it at first but now it has grown on me, Neutral from Kai Bernau, another I wasn’t so sure about, but after seeing it in print used well and reading about it, it is good to be wrong, Unica looks really interesting, I would like to see it in print. Lexicon and Trinite are also some of my favorites and although some type designers will hate me I just have a fondness for Helvetica. It can look good when used nicely. An updated modern version would be great though. Basically we take a lot of time to choose the right typeface for the job. This is a really exciting part of the design process for us, we love the stage where you get to try out different typefaces for the job.
What is your favorite color palette to work with?
We usually work in black and if necessary will add colour. We have been finding lately we have been using primary colours a lot, but getting things looking good in black is important to us. We recently had an informal lecture about Frutiger/Roissy from a old Swiss designer Erich Alb, who gave us the formula for ‘Swiss’ black: 100% K, 60% B, 20% R. He was a crazy guy but he made us smile with his enthusiasm. There are a lot of different subtleties that can be achieved in the one colour, we like to think the same about our work.
Can you explain your creative process from brief to completion?
The start of our process is research. This usually starts with going to book stores, libraries, reading through our studio library, talking, maybe a visit to some galleries if we feel the need. All the obvious steps. We then get really stuck into drawing. We are real advocates of this, not just a few sketches, but really exploring ideas on the page. Everything changes when you take it to the computer anyway but by working an idea through on paper it helps the work to retain a sort of tangible integrity right through to the production of the object which is hard to develop solely onscreen. We usually figure out a rough grid on paper, then work it out on the computer, which gives us more freedom to make it more complex/simple if needed. We only ever present the client with one solution. If the client doesn’t like the solution, we don’t just re-jig it, we start over with a new concept. We are pretty strict with this. We feel that the designer should be making the design decisions and not the client – after all that’s what we are getting paid to do. We would never show the client two options, then have them mash the two together, or show them 10 designs based on the same theme so they can choose, that’s just wrong.
Do you use a grid system when designing and how do you feel about them?
Our work always ends up with a tight grid underneath it. It just makes sense to us to do this. We usually work out some sort of grid in the drawing stage then really flesh it out on the computer. We have a couple of really good grid books (rather than a whole lot of bad ones) that we have learnt a lot from. However, it is no use having a ‘grid for grids sake’ – it has to help the idea and remain as a subtle undertone. In our work we don’t like to overstate the grid rather give clues and hints to it when appropriate.
Who do you feel is currently doing innovative work?
If you mean who is pushing new ideas/new methods, we think studios like vier5 have introduced a sort of ‘new brutalism’ to graphic design that we are interested in. We have definitely seen that filter down to design we see locally too. Rick Poynor pointed out that when the post-modernism ‘grunge’ craze came through in the 90s, you obviously had these designers who embraced/invented the style who were the masters of it, but also that suddenly you had designers who bad work suddenly looked good. We should be aware of this with a new brutalist style too. I think dotdotdot – although quite different – foreshadowed some of this design as well.
What are you working on now?
We are insanely busy, which is great for having been open for just over a year and a half. We have one more show for the Adam Art Gallery this year and I think there will be posters, a catalogue, and signage. Right at this moment we are working on an arts journal called Hue & Cry which is pretty much finished so we are now designing some A0 posters for the opening launch based around the work of Brion Gysin and his cut up method.
What is your favorite album?
We both have very different taste in music. I usually arrive early in the mornings and listen to either Mozart or Meshuggah. We like the Battles album and listen to mostly contemporary stuff while working (Deftones, Wu-Tang, anything from Mike Paton – Peeping Tom, Fantomas) and like searching for new music to listen too. Our favorite albums at the moment would be Arcade Fire and the Kings of Leon in terms of playcount on iTunes.
What is your favorite movie?
Recently we really enjoyed Southland Tales. Too many ideas for some, but we love complex hard to navigate films. Collectively our favorite is either Vertigo from Hitchcock, or Blow-Up from Antonioni. Both pure brilliance. Both Directors had amazing vision. The art direction is so different to anything you would see now – true masters of their craft. The parts in Vertigo where Kim Novak’s character has seemingly returned from the dead were so surreal for me. I wasn’t quite sure what was going on – I was so lost in the character. I wish I could have my graphic design work in the same way.
Intervista is a series of interviews conducted for AisleOne with some of todays top talents in graphic design.
Typefaces of 2010 - Type directors club
http://tdc.org/tdc/tdc2-2010-winners
Typeface Designer: Michael Hochleitner, Vienna, Austria
Foundry: Typejockeys (www.typejockeys.com)
Members of Typeface Family/System: Regular Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Heavy, Heavy Italic, Fat, Fat Italic, and Block
Typeface Designer: Laurent Bourcellier, Scherwiller, France
Foundry: (typographies.fr)
Members of Typeface Family/System: Classic and Pro
Typeface Designer: Ramiro Espinoza, Amsterdam
Foundry: ReType
Members of Typeface Family/System: Regular, Italic, Light, Light Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic
Typeface Designers: Jean François Porchez, Clamart, France
Members of Typeface Family/System: Regular and its extensions
Typeface Designer: Michael Hochleitner, Vienna, Austria
Foundry: Typejockeys (www.typejockeys.com)
Members of Typeface Family/System: Regular Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Heavy, Heavy Italic, Fat, Fat Italic, and Block
Typeface Designer: Laurent Bourcellier, Scherwiller, France
Foundry: (typographies.fr)
Members of Typeface Family/System: Classic and Pro
Typeface Designer: Ramiro Espinoza, Amsterdam
Foundry: ReType
Members of Typeface Family/System: Regular, Italic, Light, Light Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic
Typeface Designers: Jean François Porchez, Clamart, France
Members of Typeface Family/System: Regular and its extensions
Interview with Robin Uleman
Born in the Netherlands, Robin Uleman specializes in editorial design that requires a distinctive character and identity work for people and organizations that have a story to tell. His aim is to translate strategic objectives into meaningful design solutions by creating a visual language that communicates in an authentic and intelligent way. Robin took some time out of his day to answer a few questions for AisleOne.
How long have you been designing?
Guess you mean by ‘designing’, designing and getting paid for it? That I’ve been doing since 1994, so that’s almost 14 years since leaving art school.
Who or what turned you on to graphic design?
Before turning my interests to graphic design I wanted to become a draughtsman or a car designer, but when I found out that a serious accomplisment of maths was required for the latter I settled for the first. Admittedly that is a naive choice growing up in the eighties; nobody needed a draughtsman, but I just happened to love drawing. The other thing that interested me was literature and history, so for a while I considered going to university, but then I had to let go drawing, a thought I couldn’t bare. When I was 15 I heard of graphic design as a professional occupation. To be honest, I only had a vague notion of the activities it encompassed, but from what I could understand drawing was part of it, next to dealing with language, storytelling, photography and alongside those basics came a lot of topics that could be a subject for a graphic designer, so all together it made great appeal. The fact that I could unify a couple of native interests in one profession made the choice. I no longer had to choose.
Who or what are your influences?
There are many, but when I stick to the graphic designer’s hall of fame — which is the easiest — I can say I’m inspired by Herbert Bayer, Herb Lubalin, Saul Bass, Paul Rand, Alexey Brodovitch, Will Burtin, Lester Beall, Josef Müller-Brockmann, Wim Crouwel and Karel Martens. The order isn’t fixed, but this is how my top 10 is structured at the moment, starting with Herbert Bayer as my number one. A shame there isn’t a proper book on his work around.
What is your favorite typeface?
To be honest, I find it hard to pin down one in particular, it very much depends on the thing I’m working on. The context counts, but in general I have a nack for typefaces that have a genuine presence, a distinctive character so to speak, like Akzidenz Grotesk, Avant Garde, Futura, Franklin Gothic, American Typewriter, Plantin, Clarendon, Arnhem… I’m not a big fan of type that is contrived, mannered or too neat. Apart from that, a likeable flaw or even a bit of clumsiness can be just the quality a job requires.
What is your favorite color palette to work with?
I like to use CMYK as it is, or when mixing I use very crude combinations, simply because I want colours to be solid, or at least have a solid appearance. In process print I often end up using the raw inks and their pure overlaps combined with a muted grey of some sort. Most of the time I choose one colour to play the leading role next to black. It’s all very simple. If I use PMS colours it’s either very bright, fresh, dayglow, together with black or very muted and subtle or a combination of these, not much in between I guess. In general I like contrast.
Can you explain your creative process from brief to completion?
Think my answer to this will be somewhat of a cliché. There is no recipe for creativity, and every project demands a different approach and therefore develops in a different manner. Nevertheless there are certain routines. Things simply wouldn’t work without them.
More specific: there are things that re-occur, like the number of stages a project usually takes to be completed. While cleaning up and archiving some projects lately I discovered a distinctive pattern in my computer files: most projects seem to build up to the constant amount of five consecutive folders, each of them containing between four to ten documents — regardless of the nature of the project, be it a poster or a brochure. Alltogether these five folders cover the digital part of design process — I say, digital, since I always start with drawing, which may not come as a great surprise. I very much need to have a hand on things to understand it. I love the screen and it’s possibilities, but sometimes it stupifies, then I switch off and move back to the drawing board, or I print the stuff I have and start playing with it, tearing it up, folding it in different ways until It tells me how to move on. Especially in editorial work I make a lot of rough mock-ups to understand the flow of things. Spreads aren’t just incidents, they relate. So it’s all about making things tangible: printing on different paper stock, making variations, cutting prints, folding them, all help to understand the true nature of the project. I guess, it starts with eagerness and curiosity, I just want to get my hands on the outcome — so drawing, printing and mocking-up all help to bridge the gap between briefing and the moment the stock arrives from the printer.
Apart from that, I more and more acknowledge the role that dialogue can play throughout the process. Asking the right questions and being responsive is of growing influence to my practise, the interaction with the people that happen to be my clients being an important ingredient. I like to involve them instead of treating them as an audience to a slick presentation. I prefer to work with them, instead of working for them. Also I’m more inclined to ask difficult questions instead of working around them.
When I started working, I was 25 and I thought I had to solve all problems by myself and superimpose my ideas upon the client, regardless of the thing he wanted to get accross, if people raised questions or made a comment, I thought I had failed.
Do you use a grid system when designing and how do you feel about them?
Grids are very handy, but should never be an end in itself. When I discovered how to use them I was thrilled with their possibilities; it created a well of opportunity which otherwise wouldn’t be explored. Grids allow you to make music and help to create rhythm and pace and be articulate at the various levels of understanding a lay out requires. Still I discover new possibilities with every project, but I stepped back from using them lately in the initial stages of the process, since they tend to stiffen as well. When exploring various ideas and approaches, grids can be quite limiting and there is a risk they keep you from making a powerful gesture.
There was a time when I still worked in Quarck that even first sketches were made with grids underneath; so eventually I found myself adjusting and changing and adjusting and changing… Fascinating alltogether, but it caught me up in the wrong kind of details too soon, but one could say I probably needed that laborious method to make grids my own. Today it’s second nature and I take a free approach.
Who do you feel is currently doing innovative work?
I don’t have a clue. To my opinion there is a lot of repetition going on at the moment. But then again, the level of that repetition can be quite high. In a way graphic design — or visual communication for that matter — has long passed the stage that things were first defined and invented, therefore It lacks a fresh view. That’s only natural.
At the moment our profession seems to be very self-consumed and busy refining and responding to codes, trends and fads that emerge as quickly as they disappaer. It’s hardly about ideas and new approaches. To me that’s a great loss.
The web supports that mechanism by prolifying the latest hit with an ever increasing speed, thus equalising all graphic design output to a thick stream of nice pictures that is appreciated and valued for the sensation of seeing it first. Flicking through a book or a magazine, visiting an exhibition, touching and unfolding, the context in which the project functions, let alone other subtle qualities like the use of material, space and pace, faculties that are part of a designer’s palette of expression are all left out, so that makes our judgement of what’s good or innovative very poor. All these overview books with the designers that make the world go round in 2008 leave out context and flatten our idea of what is good design.
I believe, true innovation has always stemmed from individuals that followed their own path and fascinations without losing the broader perspective. Styles have more or less become a library we can pick from to suit our intentions. In the end innovation will come from designers that are able to rethink these intentions and their role in society, perhaps partly as producers of content, perhaps as people that create new ways of connecting to people’s interests again. For that matter the fixation on trends is a dangerous one.
What are you working on now?
Just started working on a book about the work of Satyendra Pakhalé. He is a very interesting product designer. It’s our own initiative, so we also have to pull the project off in financial terms, which is quite a challenge.
What is your favorite color?
Same as with type, but I guess you could say I have a weak spot for yellow.
What is your favorite album?
Impressed 2 with Gilles Peterson. Rare, classic & unique modern jazz from Britain 1963 — 1974. At least, that’s what’s on the cover. Anyway, the music hasn’t gone stale since I bought it last summer.
What is your favorite movie?
I was very impressed by Capote by Bennet Miller. I appreciated it’s precise approach to all aspects of the movie. Saw it on DVD and also enjoyed the extra’s. While most of the time the supplied interviews with director and actors are about rubbing each others backs, these talks were truely interesting and inspiring. They confirmed that attention to detail in photography, sets, atmosphere and acting can make a difference. Love to take example to this. All ingredients are well balanced and the result could not be anything else than film. Think most graphic design — apart from some good exceptions — is lacking that intrinsic quality at the moment. I mean, most graphic designers are not using the full potential graphic design has to offer as a language in itself.
Intervista is a series of interviews conducted for AisleOne with some of todays top talents in graphic design.
How long have you been designing?
Guess you mean by ‘designing’, designing and getting paid for it? That I’ve been doing since 1994, so that’s almost 14 years since leaving art school.
Who or what turned you on to graphic design?
Before turning my interests to graphic design I wanted to become a draughtsman or a car designer, but when I found out that a serious accomplisment of maths was required for the latter I settled for the first. Admittedly that is a naive choice growing up in the eighties; nobody needed a draughtsman, but I just happened to love drawing. The other thing that interested me was literature and history, so for a while I considered going to university, but then I had to let go drawing, a thought I couldn’t bare. When I was 15 I heard of graphic design as a professional occupation. To be honest, I only had a vague notion of the activities it encompassed, but from what I could understand drawing was part of it, next to dealing with language, storytelling, photography and alongside those basics came a lot of topics that could be a subject for a graphic designer, so all together it made great appeal. The fact that I could unify a couple of native interests in one profession made the choice. I no longer had to choose.
Who or what are your influences?
There are many, but when I stick to the graphic designer’s hall of fame — which is the easiest — I can say I’m inspired by Herbert Bayer, Herb Lubalin, Saul Bass, Paul Rand, Alexey Brodovitch, Will Burtin, Lester Beall, Josef Müller-Brockmann, Wim Crouwel and Karel Martens. The order isn’t fixed, but this is how my top 10 is structured at the moment, starting with Herbert Bayer as my number one. A shame there isn’t a proper book on his work around.
What is your favorite typeface?
To be honest, I find it hard to pin down one in particular, it very much depends on the thing I’m working on. The context counts, but in general I have a nack for typefaces that have a genuine presence, a distinctive character so to speak, like Akzidenz Grotesk, Avant Garde, Futura, Franklin Gothic, American Typewriter, Plantin, Clarendon, Arnhem… I’m not a big fan of type that is contrived, mannered or too neat. Apart from that, a likeable flaw or even a bit of clumsiness can be just the quality a job requires.
What is your favorite color palette to work with?
I like to use CMYK as it is, or when mixing I use very crude combinations, simply because I want colours to be solid, or at least have a solid appearance. In process print I often end up using the raw inks and their pure overlaps combined with a muted grey of some sort. Most of the time I choose one colour to play the leading role next to black. It’s all very simple. If I use PMS colours it’s either very bright, fresh, dayglow, together with black or very muted and subtle or a combination of these, not much in between I guess. In general I like contrast.
Can you explain your creative process from brief to completion?
Think my answer to this will be somewhat of a cliché. There is no recipe for creativity, and every project demands a different approach and therefore develops in a different manner. Nevertheless there are certain routines. Things simply wouldn’t work without them.
More specific: there are things that re-occur, like the number of stages a project usually takes to be completed. While cleaning up and archiving some projects lately I discovered a distinctive pattern in my computer files: most projects seem to build up to the constant amount of five consecutive folders, each of them containing between four to ten documents — regardless of the nature of the project, be it a poster or a brochure. Alltogether these five folders cover the digital part of design process — I say, digital, since I always start with drawing, which may not come as a great surprise. I very much need to have a hand on things to understand it. I love the screen and it’s possibilities, but sometimes it stupifies, then I switch off and move back to the drawing board, or I print the stuff I have and start playing with it, tearing it up, folding it in different ways until It tells me how to move on. Especially in editorial work I make a lot of rough mock-ups to understand the flow of things. Spreads aren’t just incidents, they relate. So it’s all about making things tangible: printing on different paper stock, making variations, cutting prints, folding them, all help to understand the true nature of the project. I guess, it starts with eagerness and curiosity, I just want to get my hands on the outcome — so drawing, printing and mocking-up all help to bridge the gap between briefing and the moment the stock arrives from the printer.
Apart from that, I more and more acknowledge the role that dialogue can play throughout the process. Asking the right questions and being responsive is of growing influence to my practise, the interaction with the people that happen to be my clients being an important ingredient. I like to involve them instead of treating them as an audience to a slick presentation. I prefer to work with them, instead of working for them. Also I’m more inclined to ask difficult questions instead of working around them.
When I started working, I was 25 and I thought I had to solve all problems by myself and superimpose my ideas upon the client, regardless of the thing he wanted to get accross, if people raised questions or made a comment, I thought I had failed.
Do you use a grid system when designing and how do you feel about them?
Grids are very handy, but should never be an end in itself. When I discovered how to use them I was thrilled with their possibilities; it created a well of opportunity which otherwise wouldn’t be explored. Grids allow you to make music and help to create rhythm and pace and be articulate at the various levels of understanding a lay out requires. Still I discover new possibilities with every project, but I stepped back from using them lately in the initial stages of the process, since they tend to stiffen as well. When exploring various ideas and approaches, grids can be quite limiting and there is a risk they keep you from making a powerful gesture.
There was a time when I still worked in Quarck that even first sketches were made with grids underneath; so eventually I found myself adjusting and changing and adjusting and changing… Fascinating alltogether, but it caught me up in the wrong kind of details too soon, but one could say I probably needed that laborious method to make grids my own. Today it’s second nature and I take a free approach.
Who do you feel is currently doing innovative work?
I don’t have a clue. To my opinion there is a lot of repetition going on at the moment. But then again, the level of that repetition can be quite high. In a way graphic design — or visual communication for that matter — has long passed the stage that things were first defined and invented, therefore It lacks a fresh view. That’s only natural.
At the moment our profession seems to be very self-consumed and busy refining and responding to codes, trends and fads that emerge as quickly as they disappaer. It’s hardly about ideas and new approaches. To me that’s a great loss.
The web supports that mechanism by prolifying the latest hit with an ever increasing speed, thus equalising all graphic design output to a thick stream of nice pictures that is appreciated and valued for the sensation of seeing it first. Flicking through a book or a magazine, visiting an exhibition, touching and unfolding, the context in which the project functions, let alone other subtle qualities like the use of material, space and pace, faculties that are part of a designer’s palette of expression are all left out, so that makes our judgement of what’s good or innovative very poor. All these overview books with the designers that make the world go round in 2008 leave out context and flatten our idea of what is good design.
I believe, true innovation has always stemmed from individuals that followed their own path and fascinations without losing the broader perspective. Styles have more or less become a library we can pick from to suit our intentions. In the end innovation will come from designers that are able to rethink these intentions and their role in society, perhaps partly as producers of content, perhaps as people that create new ways of connecting to people’s interests again. For that matter the fixation on trends is a dangerous one.
What are you working on now?
Just started working on a book about the work of Satyendra Pakhalé. He is a very interesting product designer. It’s our own initiative, so we also have to pull the project off in financial terms, which is quite a challenge.
What is your favorite color?
Same as with type, but I guess you could say I have a weak spot for yellow.
What is your favorite album?
Impressed 2 with Gilles Peterson. Rare, classic & unique modern jazz from Britain 1963 — 1974. At least, that’s what’s on the cover. Anyway, the music hasn’t gone stale since I bought it last summer.
What is your favorite movie?
I was very impressed by Capote by Bennet Miller. I appreciated it’s precise approach to all aspects of the movie. Saw it on DVD and also enjoyed the extra’s. While most of the time the supplied interviews with director and actors are about rubbing each others backs, these talks were truely interesting and inspiring. They confirmed that attention to detail in photography, sets, atmosphere and acting can make a difference. Love to take example to this. All ingredients are well balanced and the result could not be anything else than film. Think most graphic design — apart from some good exceptions — is lacking that intrinsic quality at the moment. I mean, most graphic designers are not using the full potential graphic design has to offer as a language in itself.
Intervista is a series of interviews conducted for AisleOne with some of todays top talents in graphic design.
FontLab.
Haven't worked out how to set the kerning etc yet. I've found it generally quite easy to use though, even if it is a little tedious.
Full typeface.
I keep calling it 'circular' as it started out with circles, but I still have no idea what to call it.
Range proposals for type design brief.
3 typefaces
Each with specimen booklet, promotional poster, CD/mailout and wallpaper
Each with specimen booklet, promotional poster, CD/mailout and wallpaper
'Circular' finished typeface.
4 weights - Thin, light, medium and bold.
Uppercase, lowercase and italics in each weight.
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