Journal Entry 4

Who is Bruce Mau?

Bruce Mau is a visionary and a world leading innovator. He's Chief Creator of Bruce Mau Design, which was founded in 1985. He also founded the Institute without Boundaries, a studio-based postgrad program that was formed out of the conviction that the future demands a new breed of designer. In 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto was written to articulate Bruce Mau's beliefs, stratagies and motivations. This manifesto is how Bruce Mau Design approaches every project.

Of the forty-some mantras, therer are a couple that i would like to follow:

1. Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

I think there are times when things happen and I just return to the norm, not even phased by what happened; not realizing if there was any significance to what occured. I'd like to learn from past experiences, rather than not recognizing them and eventually forgetting.

9. Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.


A lot of times when I start a task, a project, whatever...i have trouble finding a starting point. Rather than worry about this..i'd like for it to just happen.

Journal Entry 3

reading: Twenty Rules for Making Good Design

1. Have a concept
2. Communicate - don't decorate
3. Speak with one visual voice
4. Use two typeface families maximum. Ok, maybe three.
5. Use the one-two punch!
6. Pick color on purpose.
7. If you can do it with less, then do it.
8. Negative space is magical - Create it, don't just fill it up!
9. Treat the type as image, as though it's just as important.
10. Type is only type when it's friendly
11. Be universal; remember that it's not about you.
12. Squish and separate
13. Distribute light and dark like firecrackers and the rising sun.
14. Be decisive. Do it on purpose - or don't do it at all.
15. Measure with you eyes: design is visual
16. Create Images- don't scavenge.
17. Ignore fasion. Seriously.
18. Move it! Static equals dull.
19. Look to history, but don't repeat it.
20. Symmetry is the ultimate evil.

To me, I think the three most important rules are Having a Concept, Communicating, and Being Decisive. Without a concept, design can lack so much; a message, an idea, a story. Without a concept, there is no communication. You can't just rely on piecing random parts together to achieve a whole; there has to be a thought process behind it, or you can't really call it design. It's being able to take an idea and develop it with conviction that leads to successful design. If you know and understand what you want—you understand the visual material you're working with— there shouldn't be a problem communicating that to an audience. If something feels off, others will be able to see.

These are also three things I would like to improve on for myself, especially being decisive. I seem to find myself wanting change when I get started on a project. Rather than developing and refining, I'm re-doing. I think design would be easier for me if I focus more on the direction I want to go in, rather than moving in multiple directions.

If I were to ignore any of these, I think symmetry and and speaking with one visual voice would be two of them. I don't think symmetry is evil. At times, symmetry can be beautiful. The simple nature of symmetry can be elegant, calming and visually pleasing. It just depends on what is being worked on. As for speaking with one visual voice...I think it depends are the circumstance. Audience is key. I believe it's possible to design and speak multiple voices, especially if the goal of ones design is to reach various audiences. Of course, being able to speak with one clear voice is just as important if there's a specific target audience.


on a side note in regards to rule 19. Look to history, but don't repeat it...it made me think of a quote by Jim Jarmush:

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to."

figured out what direction i'm going in..

Decided to go the illustration route. While the books themselves are quite graphic I wanted to play on that and have the Covers be toned down yet suggest a little darkness

Diary



Lullaby



Haunted



My books: Haunted, Lullaby and Diary all by Chuck Palahniuk.

Bookcover Update: Type Study, 3 books, 3 concepts, some variation

Lullaby









Haunted






Diary

update: book changes

originally I was going to do Invisible Monsters, Fight Club, and Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk but I changed my mind. Sticking with the same author, the books I'll be redesigning are

Lullaby



Diary



and Haunted

Le Corbusier and the Modulor

For Le Corbusier, what industry needed was a system of proportional measurement which would reconcile the needs of the human body with the beauty inherent in the Golden Section. If such a system could be devised, which could simultaneously render the Golden Section proportional to the height of a human, then this would form an ideal basis for universal standardisation. Using such a system of commensurate measurements Le Corbusier proposed that architects, engineers and designers would find it relatively simple to produce forms that were both commodious and delightful and would find it more difficult to produce displeasing or impractical forms. After listening to Le Corbusier's arguments Albert Einstein summarised his intent as being to create a "scale of proportions which makes the bad difficult and the good easy." A more mundane motive might also partially explain this endeavour. Le Corbusier saw that such a system could be patented and that when it became universally recognised and applied he "would have the right to claim royalties on everything that will be constructed on the basis of [his] measuring system."

According to Le Corbusier, the initial inspiration for the Modulor came from a vision of a hypothetical man inscribed with three overlapping but contiguous squares. Le Corbusier advised his assistant Hanning to take this hypothetical "man-with-arm-upraised, 2.20m. in height; put him inside two squares 1.10 by 1.10 metres each, superimposed on each other; put a third square astride these first two squares. This third square should give you a solution. The place of the right angle should help you to decide where to put this third square." In this way Le Corbusier proposed to reconcile human stature with mathematics.

Le Corbusier's Modulor represents a curious turning point in architectural history. In one sense it represents a final brave attempt to provide a unifying rule for all architecture - in another it records the failure and limits of such an approach. Le Corbusier is quite open when he notes that the Modulor has the capacity to produce designs that are "displeasing, badly put together" or "horrors." Ultimately he advises that "[y]our eyes are your judges" and that the "Modulor does not confer talent, still less genius." He also completely abandons the Modulor when it does not suit and persistently reminds people that since it is based on perception then its application must be limited by practical perception. Large dimensions are impossible to sense with any accuracy and so Le Corbusier does not advocate the use of the Modulor for these scales. Similarly construction techniques render the use of the modular for very small dimensions impractical. This proviso is important to remember and it is in part responsible for the way in which Le Corbusier eventually applied the rule. Having developed the Modulor and used it selectively in a few designs it then became largely invisible (and also immeasurable) in Le Corbusier's later works where it instinctively informed his eye as a designer but did not control it.

and the research begins..