Posts Tagged ‘Design’

My only concern with my goal for this year, writing at least one piece for this blog every week, is that I don’t feel particularly creative in my writing. Now, I may be technically competent, and have enough knowledge of various subjects to pass muster in blog form, but when it comes to writing creatively, I’m egregiously lacking in the interesting department. My writing stinks unless you want a term paper.

And so the subject for this week is: strategies to help me improve my writing, or how to get better at creative pursuits. Which also happens to be the subject of one of my notes.

As stated in that note, the strategy for me to employ is the classic “practice, practice, practice” technique successfully used by generations of people; in this case, I’ll use the stereotypical artists Moleskine notebook I carry around, and try to write a new bit of poetry every day in an effort to improve my creative process. What techniques will work best to create something new and fresh, and how will that help in my design work? I’m pretty excited about exploring this in 2010.

Which brings me around to the ol’ explanation of why I feel that I’m not good at writing to begin with. It is my lack of production that bothers me. It seems prior to the explosion in my personal time spent online, I could write fairly well, and fairly creatively, without the feeling of being hindered. Perhaps that view is simply in hindsight, rose-colored glasses and all, but my patience for some pursuits has dimmed considerably.

Wish me luck, can’t wait to post some of the results. In other news, keep an eye out for a progress meter I’m about to post.

I’m a big giant nerd for space exploration, and have been since I was a young kid. Something about exploring the unknown of space, the size of the universe, and the processes that set it all in motion have left me in awe.

That’s probably a big reason why I enjoy science fiction so much (I always loved Star Trek, so try not to flog me too hard for that). The imagined exploration of space and encounters with elements of the unknown, including that of life beyond our planet, is enough to keep me watching for hours.

Couldn’t tell you why I have those nerdy tendencies, but there you go. Now on to other things…

Ok, ok, football, great sport. Takes a all men going 110%, toughing it out in the trenches, 3 yards and a cloud of dust, going to war, turning the ball over less, scoring more points, etc, etc.

50 Years of Space Exploration, Adam Crowe

Seriously though, take the opportunity to explore this wonderful illustration of mankind’s exploration of the space.

I’m incredibly impressed by the photographic work of Alan Jaras. In many ways it exemplifies precisely the kind of style I enjoy most in abstract work (albeit most of what I’ve seen has been produced in Photoshop).

Out of the Blue, Reciprocity

What impresses me most, perhaps, is the technique used to produce these.

From one of the image descriptions:

For new viewers: These are light refraction patterns or ‘caustics’ formed by a white light beam passing through shaped and textured transparent forms. The pattern is captured directly on to 35mm film by removing the camera lens and putting the transparent object(s) in its place. Colours are introduced by placing complex coloured optical filters directly in the light beam.

The processed film is digitally scanned for uploading. Please note these are not computer generated images but a true analogue of the way light is refracted by the objects I create.

Lame headline, right? Deal with it, because this made my day a little bit brighter.

Total Eclipse of the Heart Flowchart, via Flowing Data

Yep, it’s Friday again. Enjoy the rest of it.

I’m a big fan of money. I need it to continue financing this website and my lavish lifestyle of the poor and unnoticed; but I mostly need it to continue living in my home and paying for my education (which concluded some time ago).

One of money’s downfalls (not the love of it), quite frankly, has been it’s largely unchanged design; it looks fantastic, and purely American, but the Dollar Redesign Project has me interested in what else might be possible. The project itself is fictitious but seeks to pose the question, “what could our money look like if we moved in a drastically different direction?”

Design by Michael Tyznik

There are a lot of excellent designs on that site that more or less take cues from other world currencies; I must admit, though, that I’m a bit in love with our current designs, simply because we’ve chosen to ignore those trends. But I cannot stress enough how great it would be to see this kind of change in our currency. I’m a fan of unique and excellent design, and to see it in our money would be brilliant. I’m particularly fond of this design by Michael Tyznik.

Take a look at the Dollar Redesign Project and consider the thought experiment it poses. Are we not ready, with a bearish economy, for something positive like this? Something to take the edge off for a bit, something to give us a small bit of national pride? Three fingers of whiskey for the destitute in the form of freshly designed cash?

What better way to respond to the title than to say, “I’m not sure.” I think it has more to do with my desire to create. I’ve always done it. When I was young the medium was Lego. I would take my sets, destroy them, then build them into something else altogether: castles, planes, cars, trucks, whatever. When I got a little older, I started working on plastic model kits. Still do. At first, I just wanted to make the model car/truck/plane and play with it; I didn’t realize I was only supposed to look at it.

After a while I would take some of the cars and customize them with the various things a young boy would think was cool; I would use one of those little firecrackers to burn it, and subsequently destroy a good portion of it, and then paint some fake blood on it sprinkled with a little dirt for gore. Yeah pretty immature, but at the time it seemed pretty creative. Come to think of it, maybe I just wanted to see the things burn and the rest was an afterthought.

I–eventually–grew out of that, and started to build a real interest in cars and their mechanical operation. At that point, the best access I had to learning the various parts and their function was a model car; so that’s what I used. I built them, with care, and love, paying particular attention to all of the fine details. If a life-sized car had a certain characteristic, I attempted to apply that to the model.

The point I’m trying to make is that this innate desire I have to create, perfect, and interact with everything is a natural extension of design. I design, because I love to create. I create because I enjoy seeing the results of my work.

Why do I design? To see the resulting piece, good or bad, and appreciate what I put into its creation.