Posts Tagged ‘design’
2Way to start New Year off, right? =)
Actually, this is not so about me having an existential angst session about my chosen profession, as it is about some realizations that have come to pass over this recent holiday season.
The main thing is this: design is not as important as designers think it is. If you have ever tried to explain your profession or show your portfolio to relatives or non-design friends or even some potential clients, you can probably understand what I mean. (I am speaking here mostly about *graphic* design, but this could also apply to other types of design like fashion, architectural, industrial.)
Finally, we visited the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Design today (after two failed attempts). And admission was free! Apparently they have invented some sort of “National Design Week” to promote itself. And design. Well, it was pretty much as I expected. Very… institutional. But still worth a visit.
The first floor was an exhibition titled “Design USA,” which was a show consisting of the winners of the National Design Awards from the past 10 years. The winners showcased were pretty predictable—many famous names like Diller Scofido + Renfro, Stefen Sagmeister, John Maeda, Adobe, Herman Miller, IDEO… I think Pentagram was mentioned a few times. I kept getting exasperated at how insular and limited and.. like, self-congratulatory the design world feels sometimes. These are names I hear over and over until it’s drilled into your head. You’d think no one else has any good ideas or knows how to innovate.
Building on the online design community’s shining tradition of making utterly massive lists of supposedly invaluable resources and things, I give you:
100 Design-Related Blog Posts With Lists of 100 Things
- Top 100 Best Fonts of All Time
- 100 Inspiring Character Designs
- 100 Great Blog Logso
- 100 Great Inspirational Resources for Designers
- 100 Extraordinary Examples of Paper Art
- 100 of the Best Creative and Grunge Designs About (Hm… about…)
- 100 Wonderful Photo Effects Photoshop Tutorials
- 100 of the Best Inspirational Blog Designs
- 100 Nice and Beautiful Blog Designs
- 100 Amazing Free Wordpress Themes for 2009 (And here we begin quite a few from Smashing Magazine…)
Full entry »
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte
rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was a completely worthwhile read. I was able to get through it really quickly by only briefly glancing at the many graphics. This either means I somehow didn’t notice Tufte’s resounding plea to appreciate graphics, or that it is a testament to the lucidity and elegance of many of the graphics in this book. Hopefully, the latter. =)
Edward Tufte is a huge data dork and has evidently studied the topic of data graphics deeply. The book is chock full of visual examples from diverse sources—news publications, historical treatises, scientific journals, etc. Not all are excellent; many are superlatively bad, such as the full-page chart that only manages to convey four data points. However, all charts used are well-chosen to illustrate each of his points.
He is also very opinionated and doesn’t hesitate to adopt an authoritative tone in sharing his Commandments of Good Data Graphics. Like a wise teacher however, he gives license on the last page to intelligently disobey (keyword “intelligently”) any of them. He also sounds like a 19th-century scholar—there is something irrepressibly didactic in the prose—but a fabulously dorky sense of humor makes occasional cameos, which keeps this work from being dry.
Another great graphic designer talk from TED (they have oh so many). I like this one because Milton Glaser talks more about his process than about his higher overarching ideals. Also I enjoy his irreverant attitude.
Many times I’ve felt that same urge to humorously pontificate the “meaning” of this or that design, mostly to poke fun at designers’ tendency to take themselves too seriously. I would have if I thought I could get away with it. It must help to be an esteemed, established designer, which I am anything but. =)
