February 16, 2004
Formal Opposition
Q. Aesthetically, what can digital technology do for bookmaking that couldn't be done before?
A. Well, I'll tell you what it can't do: What none of these things can do is substitute for a knowledge of type settings or styles, a knowledge of how these have been used in the past, an appreciation of the history of this, and how these can be used on the page. In the book, I tried to remind people that this might be a new way of doing things and one that offers many advantages, but there is nothing intrinsic in the medium that gives you the knowledge about how to apply these things in such a way as to make them look aesthetically pleasant or consistent with hundreds of years of typographical progress and practice. Same with the images: It can't make the pictures for you.Full Article
Gary Frost comments on formal issues as they might apply to scrapbooking in "The Future of the Book".
Tech & Scrapbooking
HP's site and its own scrapbooker page
...and quilting page...holy cow.
I've now seen it all...Microsoft's page for scrapbookers.
... uses the computer for all of her photo captions and text boxes. "It's so much neater than writing it out yourself. I like to use formal fonts that look like handwriting."
Everybody wants a piece of this market.
"If you want it to look like a swirl, like a candy rolled up, it'll pull it into that shape for you," she says...scrapbookers think font and text layout are the most important parts of the page-making process. "The fonts reflect what is happening in the photos and the page layout,"
...photos and drawings look best when edges are straight and when they're placed on mats that bring out the colours in the image. "When you look at my early albums, I hardly matted anything. Now I triple-mat the focal point of the page and I can't tell you how much better it looks," ... also experiments with oval and circle mats to create variety on her pages. You can create mats with your computer using colourful border images or placing a photo inside a shape pattern.
... recommends paying attention to opportunities for cropping photos. Cutting out all that extraneous stuff often makes for a cleaner, more pleasing image. See URL above.
Continued Thoughts
Doing more web research on scrapbooking. I thought I'd first make direct comparisons from "making" in the scrapbooking world and "making" in the academic design world.
Everyone is WAYYYYYY nice.
From an article in May/2003
Scrap bookers will soon have special photo paper to take advantage of computer technology. Epson's new paper is the first to come in 12-by-12; the most popular scrapbook size. And most importantly, it's Lignin and acid-free...which makes it archival quality. Epson's matte scrapbook and semi gloss photo paper will sell for about 20-bucks for 20 sheets and will include software full of ideas and projects. Full Reference
February 10, 2004
Workshop - New Methods
The following images are from a workshop with sophomore design students at The University of Texas at Austin. The objectives of the workshop, entitled, “New Methods in Human Computer Interaction” are two-fold. The first objective is to become familiar with, and obtain a working vocabulary of terms and existing methods used in human computer interaction design. The second objective is to devise and document new methods of human computer interaction design by using analog (physical, tangible) techniques to inform a digital design. My objective as an instructor is to facilitate an understanding of where the student’s design education can be applied in relation to fields where communicating user experience is part of the designer’s role, as it is in many cases. The focus is on an interaction played out - not on the form from within which the interaction takes place.
February 8, 2004
Outsider Art Notes
From "Raw Vision"
Michel Thevoz, Curator of the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne has written the following:
"Art Brut", or "outsider art", consists of works produced by people who for various reasons have not been culturally indocrinated or socially conditioned. They are all kinds of dwellers on the fringes ofsociety. Working outside fine art "system" (schools, galleries, museums and so on), these people have produced, from the depths of their own personalities and for themselves and no one else, works of outstanding originality in concept, subject and techniques. They are works which owe nothing to tradition or fashion.
A firm distinction should be made between "art brut" and what is known as "naif art". The naif or primitive painters remain within the mainstream of painting proper, even if they fail ingenuously to practise its style. However, they accept its subjects, technique (generally oils) and even its values, because they hope for public, if not official recognition. "Art brut" artists, on the other hand, make up their own techniques, often with new means and materials and they create their works for their own use, as a kind of private theatre. They choose subjects which are often enigmatic and they do not care about the good opinion of others, even keeping their work secret.
February 6, 2004
Scrapbooking |Phenomenon
"Scrapbooking conference sells out in 69 seconds
By Liesel Enke NewsNet Staff Writer - 7 Aug 2002"
Compare:
On the Business Side:
"I believe a lot of anti-crafters have tried a few projects on the sly and failed miserably. Somewhere along the line, they decide if you can't join them, beat them up."
"Create and Print allows scrapbookers and others to design and print cards and do photo embellishment on their home computer. The annual fee is $19.95 for unlimited access to thousands of designs and layouts."
"The designs are grouped by occasion to make it easier. Consumers can insert their photos in the computer or print out the design and paste them on the paper."
"Landers, who scrapbooks herself, believes the advantages of using a computer to scrapbook are ease and simplicity."
From an Early Show Segment that aired Jan 2003
Interesting little bit from a bitter art student...found on the web doing a google search for "scrapbookers" art, degree. I took the liberty of bleeping out the naughty words of the author for the purpose of this family-friendly blog.
2003/12/11
"I’ve been making a lot of collages lately - I’ve used up a whole large glue stick in the space of probably under a month, and I wonder what sort of adult does this? Scrapbookers maybe; respectable artists I’m not so sure...
...at least scrapbooking is sincere – they’re not cliquey and they ‘re never just trying to look smart. These are probably the real cultural documents..."
February 4, 2004
Meeting Notes
Using the tray forces the interface between the user and each index card. It provides the viewer with the opportunity to touch each and every card, as each card was touched in creation and in use.
The pin keeps the cards from being resorted. This will be fundamental to the story if it is imperative that it be read or experienced in a linear form. What other logic will it provide? Will a constructed drawer be more appropriate if the story/narrative is four feet of cards long?
Decide:
1. What is added to the card (words/sentence/year...)
2. How are the cards organized?
3. What is the relationship between them?
Then Decide:
Build vs Buy.
Notes from Modernism and the Perfect
From Natalia Ilyin's Article in Metropolis Magazine: Nov 2002
Full Article
"I followed Tanya. I wanted that streamlined life. I went to design school; memorized the names, objects, and theories; and later taught the names, objects, and theories. And it was only a while ago that I understood how much I had denied myself. For me, Tanya and Marinka represent the two halves of human life, human consciousness. Our bodies are dual: two legs, two arms, two feet. Our brains are dual: left and right. Sex is dual. Language is dual, depending on a speaker and a listener. But when we design today, we work in a language and mind-set that is not dual."
.....
"Modernism--pre, post, or neo--idealizes the cutting edge, the hot, the cool, the killer. The idea that something is hot means that something else is tepid. And if something is killer...well, I suppose the opposite would be "life-affirming." (God forbid.) The concept of one thing being cooler than another assumes that there is a hierarchy in good design, and hierarchy is an inherently male idea. (When I say male, I don't mean manly in the Irish Spring sense. I mean individualistic, intellectual, achieving, as opposed to the female: communal, chthonic, intuitive, tied to the body.)"
When we idealize the top of the hierarchy, we encourage the perfect and discourage the real. Apollonian perfectionism leaves out half of human experience. Its basic intellectual and emotional shortcomings leave us nowhere to be the complex human beings we are.
On Post Modernism:
"Even the postmodern era, which allegedly championed imperfection, did so only in ways that "perfected" the imperfect, lifting the vernacular from its lowly low to a lofty if ironic high. Old motel signs, Las Vegas and roadside duck stands were the outsider art of Modernism. Designers framed the colored-pencil drawing--laboriously done by the schizophrenic in his mother's basement--hung it on the wall of our nice clean museum, and called it art."
On Software
"The lovely liquid buildings of today's young architects are merely a repackaging of good old Modernism. This time there is less verbal posturing involved, because the decisions have already been coded into the software. The fulmination is predigested. Your palette may have three million available decisions, but they are all predetermined for you by the creator of the program."
Figurative Language
Types of Tropes
- What is anthimeria?
- What is a euphemism?
- What is hyperbole?
- What is irony?
- What is litotes?
- What is meiosis?
- What is a metaphor?
- What is a metonymy?
- What is onomatopoeia?
- What is an oxymoron?
- What is a paradox?
- What is a pun?
- What is a simile?
Be Specific - Which Definition
www.dictionary.com:
rhet·o·ric ( P ) Pronunciation Key (rtr-k)
n.
a. The art or study of using language effectively and persuasively.
b. A treatise or book discussing this art.
2. Skill in using language effectively and persuasively.
3. A style of speaking or writing, especially the language of a particular subject: fiery political rhetoric.
a. Language that is elaborate, pretentious, insincere, or intellectually vacuous: b. His offers of compromise were mere rhetoric.
4. Verbal communication; discourse.
Notes on High Design
Reference:
S. Heller, M. Finamore; Design Culture. An Anthology of Writing from the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design. Allworth Press, New York. 1997
In writing from a historical perspective of high design in the 1980's, Chuck Byrne recounts what high design was within what is considered "inside" design. Inside refers to the realm of practicing graphic designers, while "outside" design refers to those who might not be formally trained designers who are involved with graphic design as a hobby or a craft.
"This elitism extended to our relationships with others whose work is not so unlike our own. If they happen to have had the bad luck to have gone to the wrong school, where the words "commercial art" were used rather than graphic design, or -- God forbid -- found themselves working in advertising after they got out of school, or (worst sin of all) working for a marketing firm, or (the newest sin) taking a job in desktop publishing, they were and are, for the most part, considered not to be of the "true" brotherhood."
C. Byrne; Elitist Design: How High is High? AIGA Journal of Graphic Design. Vol. 10, No. 3, 1992
Steven Heller writes an essay that includes a transcript of his conversation with a person at the AAA Sign Painting Company. What sticks out in my mind, is the dialogue that takes place between someone on the high end of the inside, and someone who is what is defined as the low end of the inside (the sign painter). While the two are discussing letters on the sign, their language differs.
"You know, straight letters, like on the sanitation trucks -- nothing fancy, no flourishes, no shadows, no feet. You want feet, it costs extra.
Feet? Oh, you mean serifs."