Tag Archives: creativity

Graphic Design and Graphic Arts, The Graphical Expression of… Whose Message?

After looking at some of our makeover projects and a meeting I had in my design studio today, several concepts just keep lurking in my mind.

I remember some time ago I was a fairly big supporter of the fact that design is art, and posted a poll in the About Desktop Publishing forum. While I still think that, I view this in a different way now.

Art is often regarded as the expression of self. It has to comunicate something, and that communication will be very subjective to the beholder, but what you communicate as artist is your message, something that was created by your mind and you realise through artistic means. The means you use can be paintings, drawings, or any number of graphical arts that can include the use of graphics software.

The August Wallpapers from Smashing Magazine

For those who get tired of their wallpapers very fast, Smashing Magazine posts a collection of handpicked wallpapers every month. There are wallpapers for all tastes, from grunge to sleek, from illustrations to 3D rendered graphics. You don’t only choose from a wide range of sizes, you can also choose whether you want the monthly ...

Function Comes First

I was travelling to work by train, as usual. I guess I am not in the best of moods when I am still fresh from bed, but I was getting really irritated by the doors between compartments. I don’t know how many times I have had to help elderly people get through them because those doors are really heavy. Surely the person who designed them was thinking of a way to make sure the doors closed themselves without mechanisms that could wear off. Impeccable logic if it wasn’t for the fact that people can’t even open them. Yet there are several trains like that.

Another time, still travelling by train this time for totally ludicrous reasons, I notice the train has nice glass doors between compartments. I go though one and take a sit, wondering whether there was the same designer behind this idea. It didn’t take long to realize that it probably was the same designer. The door kept banging and the noise was really annoying. If it didn’t bang, it still made noise because of the vibrations of the train. This door was easy to open, but it never really closed.

Find the Design Element that Is Just Right

Have you ever opened a magazine, read an article and wondered, “How did the designer think of THAT design element?”

This is a question I have asked myself so many times that I lost count. Then I again I haven’t been counting. As a designer you need to know how to visually communicate a message, that’s the essence of your job. Yet sometimes you see an article about cows and you see a bell or a stylized face of a cow used as a bullet. Or you are doing a car catalogue and you notice that the page numbers have the same elements of the logo of the car. Sometimes you manage to think at those things in a snap, while other times you just have a design block. What do you do in that situation?

Tip O’ The Day: Simple Is Best

Today I was messing around with a page for a monthly magazine I design. It was supposed to be a quick thing—just a bunch of boxes with ads—but in my quest to make the page interesting, I got lost and I just couldn’t achieve a satisfying result, with my headache as accessory. I kept changing ...

All-In-One Designers

To specialize or not to specialize