On the Floor

I figured that since this is my first attempt at writing a post to our blog (or any blog for that matter) that a natural choice for the subject would track how I entered into this industry. My background is in fine art (sculpture and painting) and I didn't own a computer until I decided to start this company with a few guys nearly 10 years ago.

In art school I got my first chance to use a computer as a means to create art, but it was completely experimental, and in the early days of Photoshop 3.0, before the advent of adjustment layers, actions etc. Layers had just been introduced! Basically, my classmates and I were taken into a room full of Power Macintosh 7100s and shown how to turn it on and start a project in Photoshop - then left alone for hours to tool around. I don't recall anything great coming out of these experiments, but I had a good time.

The interesting thing was that I did get quite a lot of instruction in more traditional applications of media for design and typesetting that tied directly in with my fine arts background. These same techniques have stayed with me, and I still think the same way as I used to when working on a layout, illustration or when art directing.

I find that too often, these traditional methods and old school ways of thinking are lost in modern design.  I have a sweet spot for these processes, but over the years I've replaced much of the hand drawn and pasted together layout approaches to project conception with digital methods. Much of the reason for this is just the sheer speed in which you can cobble together ideas and variations - and be able to send something to a client and review directly without having to scan or send hard copies.

Design in my mind is kind of like the great great grandchild of Fine Art: theories and issues that Fine Art had established and solved decades ago are still used today. Chromatics, Grids, and the Golden Ratio are great examples of this. All of these influence how we look at things, and what we perceive as beautiful or pleasing to the eye. Design is everywhere, every day.

Chromatics and Colour Theory is how the eyes perceive colour. Colour can trigger emotions, feelings and memories that can influence what the viewer thinks about a layout or design before they even know the subject matter. This can obviously be either a positive or a negative reaction.

Grids are structures made up of a series of intersecting vertical and horizontal axes used to organize content. The grid serves as an framework in which a designer can organize text and images in a rational, easy to absorb manner.

In the late 19th century in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom, this movement began to separate graphic design from fine art. Piet Mondrian is known as the father of graphic design. He was a fine artist, but his use of grids inspired the modern grid system used today in advertising, print and web layouts.

The Golden Ratio - Since the Renaissance (and even earlier), many artists and architects have proportioned their works to approximate the golden ratio - believing this proportion to be aesthetically pleasing. Other names frequently used for the golden ratio are the golden section (Latin: sectio aurea) and golden mean. This theory is said to even describe beauty in the human face.

According to Jan Tschichold, "There was a time when deviations from the truly beautiful page proportions 2:3, 1:√3, and the Golden Section were rare." Many books produced between 1550 and 1770 show these proportions exactly, to within half a millimetre.

These are only a few traditional ways of thinking that end up as second nature, and you begin to examine everything this way.

This isn't to say that good design is solely based on these principles, but generally that feeling when you look at something and it just doesn't sit well is possibly because some of these theories were not taken into consideration.