Download Episode 40Talking About Type: Let Your Voice Be Heard!Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.And before we begin, I&#39;d like to announce my sponsor for the coming episodes. Yes, I have a sponsor. And that&#39;s Mark Batty Publisher. Mark Batty is an independent publisher dedicated to making distinctive books on the visual art of communicating. Affordable, well designed, thoughtfully created, and produced to last, MBP books are artful products that readers want to hold onto forever.A great example of their books, and one that ties in with this episode is the title, &quot;Dot-Font - Talking About Fonts by John D. Berry. You may know Mr. Berry from his dot-font columns at CreativePro.com, which is a site I&#39;ve enjoyed for many years. Berry, who is both an editor and a designer, himself, talks critically and entertainingly about type designers, font technology, and how lettering and type are ubiquitous in our culture. I&#39;ve got a copy in my hand right now - It&#39;s a beautiful, perfect bound edition, just filled with great visual examples. Again, that&#39;s Dot-Font - Talking about Fonts. You can pick it up at markbattypublisher.com or, of course, at Amazon.Well, we&#39;re talking about Type. Typography. And we kicked off the discussion last time with a refresher on the importance of Type as that central and defining element in graphic design. It&#39;s what distinguishes it from other arts because everything we do traces to a definite message. A typographic one.And type is our primary artwork. Those letterforms are the clip art, so to speak, that we reach for above all else. And that&#39;s because these characters, these visual symbols, with which we encode our communications are evocative all by themselves. Designers often skip the other visuals, like photos and illustration, altogether, because Type, all by itself, has the power to produce images and emotions, even sound in the human mind.R. Hunter Middleton, said:(quote)&quot;Typography is the voice of the printed page. But typography is meaningless until seen by the human eye, translated into sound by the human brain, heard by the human ear, comprehended as thought, and stored as memory.&quot; (unquote).In the book, Environmental Interpretation, contributor Richard Dahn writes:(quote)&quot;In approaching typographic choices, it&#39;s helpful to keep in mind that typography has a &quot;visual voice&quot; that is dependent on the typeface chosen, its sizes and organization within (your) format, and the nature of the message. Emphatic messages such as EXTREME DANGER, KEEP OUT would demand the use of a heavy bold sans serif type, while a quote by Aldo Leopold might look better in a Roman serif set with generous line spacing. The visual impact on a sign can welcome the viewer to read and reinforce the meaning and sense of the message, or it can speak in such a dull and confused voice that the view

Design Guy, Episode 40, Talking About Type: Let Your Voice Be Heard!

Download Episode 39Design Guy, Episode 39, Talking About Type: An Introductory WordDesign Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.Today, we turn our attention to Type. That grand subject of design, of graphic design in particular. And we&#39;ll seek to just approach the topic. This topic is the Everest of Graphic Design, and from a Graphic Design perspective, this is where a show like this one really begins. And that&#39;s because Typography is the heart and soul of graphic design. It&#39;s the bedrock. It&#39;s what makes graphic design what it is, and what separates it from other disciplines and arts.In an early episode, we set down the distinction between graphic design and the fine arts in order to make this very point. And it bears repeating, because often we&#39;re not clear on the difference. The lines between the visual arts seem kind of blurry, we might think the difference is one of mere format or of the techniques and tools employed to create the work. And while there&#39;s some truth to this, the ultimate distinction has to do with the role and purpose of type in graphic design. A difference in our objectives in using type.And what is that goal? Well, the goal is simply to communicate somebody&#39;s message. And while we might do it in an artful way, maybe an oblique or a slightly ambiguous way (perhaps to stimulate interest and attention and thought), ultimately, however, the message we&#39;re communicating is objective. There is a specific piece of communication intended, and, unlike the fine arts, where we&#39;re allowed to play in subjective spaces if we wish to, where beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and where meaning or message (if there&#39;s any intended) may be inferred in a purely personal way, that is not the case with graphic design. Graphic Design is a form of art that is linked to an objective typographic message. And that&#39;s with the intent of communicating something very definite, and of your audience receiving it as it was intended. And if we think about it, it just can&#39;t be otherwise. When Apple runs ads about the iPhone, you can be certain that they&#39;ll consider those ads to have failed if somehow you thought they meant for you to buy an Android phone, instead. When the state park posts a sign that says that they&#39;re closed at dark, or that you need to curb your dog, that&#39;s not open to the whim of your own private interpretation. The intent and the meaning are objective. This is not a realm where you can conclude that 1 +1 = 3, just because it turns you on to think so. So, our success as graphic designers is that we convey a definite message. And our principle means of achieving that goal is to encode the message in type, to craft our communications with all those letterforms that are the stuff of word and thought and meaning.Okay, so that&#39;s my preamble, and a bit of a repetition of points made before, so we&#39;

Design Guy, Episode 39, Talking About Type: An Introductory Word

Download Episode 38Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.Today we&#39;ll discuss why, sometimes, you&#39;ve got to get negative to be positive. No, we&#39;re not talking creative mood swings here, or how to channel your anger into your work, or anything like that. We&#39;re talking about &quot;negative space.&quot; And how giving attention to the negative space can strengthen our design compositions.Okay, so what exactly is &quot;negative space&quot;?Well, first of all, negative space is kind of an unfortunate phrase because the word &quot;negative&quot; is such a downer, but in the context of art and design, it is simply the opposite of positive space. Now, of course, that&#39;s not so helpful since we haven&#39;t defined positive space, either, so let&#39;s start there...Positive space is the shape of your foreground elements. If, say, you&#39;re looking at an illustration of a hippopatomus performing a high-wire act, carrying an umbrella - all the elements I&#39;ve just described - the hippo, the umbrella, the high wire, make up the foreground elements. Taken together, their collective silhoutte defines the positive space. On the other hand, the space that surrounds her is the negative space (and yes, the hippo is a girl). So, if you were to take a marker and color in everything but the hippo, the high-wire and umbrella, you will have defined the negative space.Here&#39;s another example, drawn from Betty Edward&#39;s &quot;Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.&quot;(1) Edwards reminds us of the old Warner Bros. cartoons, where Bugs Bunny reacts to something an runs. Maybe it was that episode in the mad scientist&#39;s castle with that big, orange haired monster wearing tennis shoes. Anyway, he panics and he runs, slamming right through a door, leaving a Bugs Bunny shaped hole behind. And it&#39;s that hole in the door that we want to remember. Because, in that hole, we see the exact shape of Bugs Bunny -  his head and ears, his arms and legs, all perfectly circumscribed. So, that hole represents the positive shape, the positive space of  Bugs. And it&#39;s what&#39;s left behind of the door that is the negative space, because the remaining part of the door captured the negative shape surrounding Bugs Bunny. I like this example because the the door put us in mind of our canvas or page which is almost always a rectangle of some sort. And with the positive space extracted (i.e., the shape of Bugs Bunny), what we&#39;ve got left is our negative space. If you&#39;ve logged as many hours as I have watching Chuck Jones cartoons, then this example is great and visual, and you&#39;ll never forget how to describe negative space.I mentioned this came out of Betty Edwards&#39; book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and if you&#39;re anything like me, somewhat frustrated with your drawing abilities, you&#39;ll want to grab this title for your library because

Design Guy, Episode 38, Adopt a Negative Attitude

Download Episode 37Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.When beginning a new project, as much as is within your power to do so, choose the best of elements. You&#39;re going to be selecting type and image, among other things, and when you do, choose thoughtfully.Think of this as as an audition. If you were to assemble a high-caliber theatrical production, you&#39;d screen for the best talent. There would be a line of candidates waiting in the wings, fidgeting nervously, awaiting their turn to show you what they&#39;ve got. And you&#39;d stock your ensemble with just the right personalities for the roles they were to play. You&#39;d want them all to be great and capable and hardworking and suited for the personality into which they are to breathe life.But more than that, with an eye toward the ensemble you&#39;re putting together, you&#39;d cast individuals who combine well, who coalesce into something...more. And now you&#39;re thinking chemistry, you&#39;re thinking alchemy, because you know that something magical and transcendent can happen when elements combine. Humphrey Bogart is great by himself, but put him together with Ingrid Bergman and something else is going on, something special. In the narrative arts, the craft term for this is orchestration. Elements are selected because they differ from or complement other elements. One character might be meant to serve as a foil to another. And so they act upon each other. And your job at this early, critical phase is to stage all the elements and action, keeping that broad picture in mind. How do the elements stand together? How do they combine? Is there good chemistry? What&#39;s the overall effect?This analogy to actors and such is helpful because we sometimes view individual elements as just static things when, in reality, each one is charged with personality and with power. Each one is an active agent in the mix.So, applying the analogy to design, what are we talking about?Well, in the stage that is our design. In the theater of our composition, we do well to remember our audience. Think of it! There&#39;s an audience out there that will be responding to what we do, reacting to the world and ensemble that we put together. Dramatists intend their audience to laugh or cry or feel a sense of foreboding or perhaps be so terrified that they jump from their seats. They are out to provoke a reaction. And we designers share the same aspiration. We want our work to be evocative and to communicate feeling. Or as the ever-quotable Seth Godin has said, &quot;Communication is the transfer of emotion.&quot;So, let&#39;s say you&#39;re starting with your choice of type. Work hard to choose those typefaces. Give them thought. Like a casting call, you&#39;re looking for the right personalities. As an Anthony Hopkins or a Michael Caine are suited for mature, dignified, masculine performances, so also are classical typefac

Design Guy, Episode 37, All the World's a Stage for Designers

Download Episode 3Design guy here. Welcome back.This is the show that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.Last episode we defined design as the act of creating order out of chaos. And whether we&#39;re talking graphic or interior or environmental design, the basic definition stands because we&#39;re all engaged in the same PROCESS. It&#39;s a process that STARTS with a number of unrelated pieces and ENDS with an ordered unit. (1)Looking closer, Graphic design has its own set of concerns that distinguish it from other forms of design. And, I think, right from the start, we have to be clear about what graphic design is not. And that&#39;s Art. Oh, sure it is AN art. It&#39;s practitioners are artists. But it&#39;s not Art with a capital A in that it&#39;s not fine art. This is where people get confused. Especially when we see some of the stunning works of graphic design by luminaries like Paul Rand (2) or Milton Glaser.(3) Their work should be viewed in a gallery. They&#39;re models of artistic excellence. So, what&#39;s the difference? Are we splitting semantical hairs, or what?The distinction... is a question of motivation or purpose. Fine art is something that can be done in a loft, which is to say, it can be done for highly individualized ends. It can be done with no conscious purpose. It can be highly SUBjective. You might do it for your own enjoyment. Or to get a certain technical effect or for any other reason in the world. Sometimes there&#39;s a statement being made. Other times, if there&#39;s meaning, we&#39;ll leave that to the eye of the beholder to interpret. In other words, it&#39;s subject to personal interpretation, and IF it&#39;s subject to interpretation, it can mean anything.When we cast the issue in these terms, we begin to see that graphic design is different. It&#39;s inherently Objective. Sure, it INVOLVES art, and designers can leave room for some ambiguity or personal interpretation, after all, this generates questions in the viewer, which intensifies their interaction. But, ultimately, Graphic design is done with a clear, specific aim in mind. And what is that aim, but communication? Communication of what? The artist&#39;s inner feelings on the day of creation? No, it&#39;s not about that. It&#39;s not subjective, as we&#39;ve said. Graphic design is linked to an objective, typographic message. We can communicate that message artistically, in a stylized way, there may even be a strong individual signature on the work that makes one aware of the artist behind it.I mentioned Milton Glaser before, and I&#39;m thinking of his famous, iconic Dylan poster.(4) It&#39;s distinctly Glaser. But, in the end, it&#39;s commercial art. It&#39;s meant for commerce, to support a music company&#39;s product. And we&#39;re usually trying to sell stuff, whether that&#39;s the advantages of a certain denture cleaner, or a socially conscious screed about the impacts of deforestation. Regardless of subject matter,

Design Guy, Episode 3, On Graphic Design

Download Episode 2

Design Guy here. Welcome to the show.

This is the program that explores timeless principles of design, and explain them simply.

Today, we&#39;ll tackle the fundamental question. The one that frames everything to follow. So, before we get too specific, to define, say, graphic design, we want to begin by asking, &quot;What is design?&quot; What is design, itself? Now, there&#39;s a number of ways to answer the question. But the definition that I believe really distills it down to its essence, is this one:

Design is the act of creating order out of chaos.(1) 

And what is chaos, but a randomness. It&#39;s a senseless jumble of elements. It&#39;s an absence of rules, a complete breakdown from any scheme that would lend sense or reason, or purpose or meaning to anything. And as human beings, we all have a desire for this order, it&#39;s a drive that&#39;s in our individual and collective psyche. That need to move away from chaos is in all of us. And when we&#39;re engaged in design, that&#39;s what&#39;s going on under the surface. It&#39;s really what&#39;s driving our efforts and moving our hands as our minds are churning away on the problem.

Now, as a theme, this idea of order versus chaos runs really deep in our culture. It forms the foundation of our sacred books. Take the Bible for example, which starts right off, of course, with an account of creation. But what&#39;s even more interesting in light of our definition of design, is that it goes on to describe the earth being initially formless, and void, basically in a state of chaos, as if it&#39;s just raw material. And it&#39;s only after this Creator performs an act of Design by ordering it, that he can declare it &quot;good.&quot; When it was chaos, it was not good or pleasing. But now that everything has been put into order, with purpose and function, it can be declared good. And the same account goes on to describe mankind as having been made in the image of a Creator/Designer. And, of course, man is ever ordering and designing his world. Some of us listening today would describe ourselves as creative professionals as we go about designing the little worlds of our websites or posters or books, etc. So, we see this concept everywhere we look. It&#39;s all around us.

So as designers, we&#39;re constantly engaged in it as we do our work, which boils down to combining many elements into cohesive whole. The more successful we are at integrating elements, the better our design outcomes will be. I like the word &quot;integrate&quot;, especially in light of it&#39;s opposite, which is &quot;disintegrate,&quot; which basically means to fall apart. I think that&#39;s why we speak in terms of design problems. They&#39;re like puzzles to be put together, or strings to be unknotted. As visual designers, we help untangle the problem of communication for our clients. We give shape and form and hierarchy to their message. Without our help, things fall apart. There&#39;s less meanin

Design Guy, Episode 2, What is Design?

Download Episode 36Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.Well, when last we met, we were concluding a short tour of the gestalt rules, aka &quot;the principles of perception,&quot; where &quot;the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,&quot; and where our minds make meaning through our instinctive human tendency to visually group things together. In other words, we&#39;re wired to make associations between things. To mentally batch process them, and thereby simplify many, many things as just a few groups, or to ignore them altogether. And we can&#39;t help it. And thank goodness it works this way or we might go stark raving mad trying to reckon with every last thing in our field of vision.Now, that excursion into gestalt came as a result of our original exploration, which was on the subject of Unity.To refresh our memories, Unity echoes the very definition of Design itself, because Design is the process of creating order out of chaos, of taking what might start out as nothing but a senseless jumble of individual elements and organizing them into unified whole.And it&#39;s that idea of Wholeness, or Oneness that we&#39;re always after as Designers. In fact it&#39;s what&#39;s operating beneath the surface, it&#39;s what&#39;s driving us, tugging at our hearts and minds and making our hands move as we&#39;re working. And it&#39;s what you might call the &quot;E Pluribus Unum of Design&quot;, to coin a phrase taken directly from American coinage. &quot;Out of Many, One&quot; - one thing emerges. We achieve one effect.This is the grand aim of design. This is design itself. It&#39;s the difference between randomness and intelligence, between chaos and order, between designs that seem to disintegrate and fall apart before our eyes, and those compositions where everything seems to fly in formation.So, how do we do it?Well, as we&#39;ve said before, a good start is to make sure you&#39;ve achieved balance in your composition. Now, this balance can be symmetrical or it can be asymmetrical, but it should be there nonetheless. You can get a refresher on balance, by revisiting the older episodes in which we covered the topic.But Unity requires more than just balance, which leads us to the next principle we&#39;ll explore, and that principle is Emphasis.Emphasis, as you might guess, is all about focus. Emphasis draws our focus by making us aware of a dominant element in our composition. Think of it this way, if all the elements in our composition are given equal attention, if they all speak in an equal voice, then what we&#39;ve got is a cacophony. We don&#39;t know where to focus. Everything vies for our attention. And, ironically, nothing vies for our attention.By creating certain points of interest in our composition by scaling an object larger than the rest. Or by using contrast to make it leap forth in our awareness. Or by centering it, or coloring it differentl

Design Guy, Episode 36, Unity Revisited / Emphasis

Download Episode 35Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.Today, we&#39;ll bring an end to this exploration of the principles of perception, also known as the Gestalt rules by discussing Proximity and Alignment.Now there&#39;s more to Gestalt than what we&#39;ve covered in this series, but I trust this has given you a foothold on the topic. But let&#39;s get right to it.ProximityProximity is something we understand intuitively. It requires no explanation when we see it. If we&#39;re at a party, we&#39;ll see certain kinds of people around us. Some will be standing by themselves with drinks in their hands, looking around. Others will congregate in groups of two or three or five or six, and we &quot;get it.&quot; Those that are standing close together form a group. Even when they stop talking and interacting, we still see them as a group by virtue of their proximity.Or think of high school. There were groups of jocks. Groups of freaks. There were loners. Maybe there were gangs when you went to school. And we perceive these persons, we comprehend these individual elements, if you will, based on their relationships and context. They are either separate and individual, or they&#39;re perceived as part of a group. And it&#39;s just like our compositions.If we have a more or less even distribution of shapes or elements, they all tend to stand alone. They&#39;re not in proximity to anything in particular.  But when we bring elements together as a cluster or collective or group, we view them as a new thing. Something bigger.And this helps us comprehend our environment. Complicated clusters of elements get simplified in our minds as one thing. They are that group or cluster, and this frees our minds from having to deal with them as individual units to be inventoried in our brain individually. You can mentally batch process the whole lot of them.This is important to understand in our designs. If we don&#39;t use proximity to our advantage, then our audience has to mentally sort through all that we put before them. On the other hand, when we put like things together, as a logical group, we&#39;ve put convenient handles on them. Now all those things are glanceable. You can take them all in at once.Some examples. Think of web pages. Often we see various tiers of navigation. One group of links relate to global navigation, links like &quot;home&quot; or &quot;about us&quot; or &quot;contact us&quot;. Another set of links might be grouped according to related product categories, like at Amazon, where they group &quot;movies, music, and games&quot; as one link, as opposed to another labeled &quot;apparel, shoes $ jewelry&quot;.  It&#39;s this grouping that enable us to cope with all the information. It gives it logic and order and hierarchy. We can put convenient cognitive handles on a bunch of stuff at once.There&#39;s many more examples that I&#39;m sure you can come up with

Design Guy, Episode 35, Proximity and Alignment

Download Episode 34Design Guy here, welcome to the show, this is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.In our continuing series on Unity, we&#39;ve been discussing the Gestalt Principles, and to remind once again, this is all about perception, and even closer to home, it&#39;s all about our goals in composition, that is, it&#39;s about how we perceive a unified whole, and how that whole is actually greater than the sum of its parts.Today, we&#39;ll look at the next rule in Gestalt, which is called Continuation. Another name we could give to Continuation is &quot;Visual Momentum.&quot; Now, we all know what momentum is in physics. But in the visual realm, there&#39;s a tendency for our eyes, once directed, to continue moving in a certain direction. So, definitions describe continuation as this tendency for us to continue looking in a given direction, until we see something of importance, a dominant element in our composition.But continuation more often has to do with how our eyes follow through, even through intervening objects as we track along a certain visual path. A simpler way to describe this is to say that our eyes will follow along a line, or a path, or curve, and perceive it as a continuous line, even if it crosses another line or object. So, for example, a lower case &quot;t&quot; looks like just two lines, rather than four lines that happen to be meeting in the middle. A lower case &quot;t,&quot; or the letter &quot;x&quot; then, provide us examples where two lines, or two strokes, are crossing each other. In other words, we percieve them as following through, or as a  &quot;continuation&quot; right through each other. They cross each other. At least that&#39;s how it looks to our minds, even though, strictly speaking, we could just as accurately define such a form as four lines connecting at a central point.In design, we see this concept of continuation in a number of ways. Sometimes it&#39;s in the way elements are composed, we suggest a direction that our eye wants to follow, such as in a progression of shapes. In photography, our eyes naturally want to wend their way down paths such as roads and rivers, or perspective lines, like railroad tracks, or across a telephone wire til we reach two sparrows perched on the other end. In typography, we have an obvious and built-in sense of continuation, because, in effect, we&#39;re lining up a long string of letterforms for our eyes to move across, as a path. And, on the other hand, in the case of long, narrow columns of newspaper type, we&#39;re cued to read, not so much from right to left, but from top to bottom. And, of course, the narrower the column, the more we suggest speed. And this is why typographers avoid those big, dense, margin-less blocks of type, with over-long measures. It just feels like a brick wall, it feels inert, the opposite of something that would offer our eyes visual momentum or continuation.But in the final analysis, continu

Design Guy, Episode 34, Visual Momentum (Continuance)

Download Episode 33Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.Well we&#39;re in the midst of a discussion on Unity, and as a part of that topic, we&#39;ve taken a detour through what are called the gestalt rules. So, if you&#39;re joining us midstream, let&#39;s recap a few points.Fist of all, Gestalt theory gets its name from a School of thought in Psychology, which began in the early 20th century in Germany. And this school of thought says that, when it comes to studying human behavior, we need see the big picture, we need to discern broader patterns of behavior, not just isolated psychological events. It&#39;s in the big picture that we get our insights.But this concept carries over to visual studies as a way to explain how we can achieve a unified composition out of individual parts. And it even goes beyond that to assert that a unified whole is greater than the sum of its parts.And so far we&#39;ve discussed a couple of gestalt concepts, namely figure-ground and closure, which you can catch up on by downloading those episodes.But moving right along, I&#39;d like to step though some more gestalt rules today, starting with the rule of Similarity. And as we take these one by one, we&#39;ll see that they&#39;re really pretty simple and straightforward. The hardest part might be remembering the terminology.Now, the rule of Similarity, just as you&#39;d expect, says that a composition looks more unified if the elements are similar in some respect. If objects are similar, they look related. Just like people. Identical twins are obviously related to each other. But brothers or sisters that share physical characteristics can also look obviously related. It&#39;s when siblings don&#39;t look much like each other that people express surprise that they&#39;re actually related. They scratch their chin and say, &quot;Really? I just don&#39;t see the family resemblance.&quot; And this is what it&#39;s like in our compositions. As we compose, we can put the same traits in elements if we intend for them to look unified.And those traits can include shape, or size, or color or value. If you&#39;re a media designer, we might include similarity of motion, or any other attribute that will demonstrate similarity. If they look related, people will see them as a pattern or group, and your composition will convey a stronger sense of unity. And, again, its just like how we can intuit a family if we see a group of people that share genetic traits.On the other hand, once we&#39;ve established that pattern, once we&#39;ve got a unified pattern, then we can go on and do more interesting things. We can direct attention to where we want it. If, among a row of black dots, one solitary dot is colored red, then it stands out, and we&#39;ve got a device that will direct attention.  Or if one of those dots is oversized compared to the rest, we&#39;ve got a point of emphasis in an otherwise unifie

Design Guy, Episode 33, All in the Family (Similarity)

Download Episode 32Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.In our continuing series on Unity, we&#39;re exploring Gestalt Theory - which is about perception, and how our minds make meaningful wholes out of incomplete parts. But as a topic of design study, it&#39;s a way of putting designers in the driver&#39;s seat. In other words, these concepts help us control how our audience sees what we put in front of them. It allows us to control the points of emphasis, among other things, so we can communicate in a more controlled way.So moving right along, the next Gestalt concept we want to cover is Closure. Closure describes something that our our minds do to help us fill in the blanks. If a square is composed of a broken or dashed line, we understand it to be a square. We accept it as a square. It&#39;s not truly a square because of the spaces between the bits of line, but our minds of forgiving of this, and accept it as a square. If we see a half-shadowed face, we fill in the blanks. We accept that there is another side of the face. Otherwise, we might scream in horror over missing eyes and ears.And this is a really good thing to know if you&#39;re ever stranded on a desert island. You can have full confidence that when you form the word, &quot;S.O.S,&quot; out of rocks on the beach, the rescue plane pilot won&#39;t just see a bunch of scattered stones, he&#39;ll recognize your distress call for what it is and pick you up.But Closure does another important thing for designers. It teaches us an important sensibility. And that&#39;s that you don&#39;t have to be super-explicit all the time. You don&#39;t have to overplay your hand to get the job done. Your audience can put together a whole lot of meaning out of a few elements. And this reminds us not to visually over-explain, or to underestimate our audience. We can take a less-is-more approach with assurance that they&#39;ll &quot;get it.&quot; So go ahead and imply a human face with a few odd, unlikely objects. Your audience will discern that face and smile at how clever you were, and how clever they were for being able to see it. Or go ahead and suggest additional letterforms using the figure-ground technique we discussed last time. Your audience will perceive that letter, and you&#39;re client will thank you for making a slicker logo for them.But, that&#39;s Closure. And the stronger the gestalt effect is, which is a function of strong grouping, the easier it is for your audience to see the intended effect. In that SOS example, imagine if the stones on the beach were left unattended, and the tide began to move them apart, weakening the grouping. That would certainly make it harder for the pilot to see those letterforms. So, like most things, there&#39;s a balance you&#39;ll want to strike between clarity and ambiguity. And it&#39;s up to the designer to make that call.Well, that&#39;s it for today. This one was b

Design Guy, Episode 32, We're All Seeking Closure

Download Episode 31Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.We&#39;re talking about Unity, which we&#39;ve described as the compositional goal of taking many elements and fashioning them into a cohesive whole. In other words, we don&#39;t want our audience to be distracted by the parts and pieces of a thing, we want them to see the big picture, and want them to see it in way where everything ties together, everythings feels integral, everything hangs together as one piece, and creates one effect. And as we pointed out, this is essentially the definition of design, itself.So, in keeping with this idea, we&#39;re taking a short tour through Gestalt theory, which is about perception as a dynamic process. It&#39;s about making meaning out of what we see, and how our minds want to make meaninful patterns out of chaos. And we do this by perceptually organizing what we&#39;re looking at. As we look around, as we survey our environment, we begin to infer a sense of structure and relationship among the things we see. And we do this so we can quickly come to terms with it all, to make sense of it all. And in a survival sense, it makes sense that our minds want to know what we&#39;re up against, so we can react appropriately.In visual design, we learn how to apply these principles of perception so we can aid that process. Generally speaking, we want to make things as intuitive and as instant as we can. Because the goal is communicate, to transmit meaning rapidly, and make sure people get the message.So, I&#39;d like to give a quick rundown of these Gestalt rules, or tools, starting with what&#39;s called figure / ground. Figure/Ground is a way of understanding the visual field before us. If we see a man, for example, standing in the street, we see the man as the figure, and everything else as ground. And depending on how clear that distinction is to us, we&#39;ll have a stronger or weaker sense of which is which. The distinction between figure and ground is usually achieved by contrast. The darkness or lightness of a figure, for example, will clarify it as the figure. Or maybe the background is blurry, whereas the figure is in focus. Or maybe the distinction has something to do with the composition, since the placement of the figure can influence our perception of it. As designers, we want to get skillful at controlling the balance of figure and ground, and sometimes even making it purposely uncertain, in order to achieve a certain effect.And I&#39;ll ask you to call to mind the famous optical illusion of the faces and the vase. This is the one that usually depicts a white vase against a black field. I remember personally encountering this for the first time as a kid on a cub scout trip to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, which is basically a science museum. One of the exhibits featured this image. And I remember that as I looked at that vase, an unexpected surprise

Design Guy, Episode 31, Figure-Ground

Download Episode 1Design Guy here, welcome to the show.This is our premier episode, so, by way of introduction I&#39;d like to explain what the show is about, and how you&#39;ll benefit.We live in a design-driven age. We&#39;ve witnessed a productivity revolution and the spawning of vast amounts of new products and services. Along side of that, we see the rise of design as the high ground or competitive advantage, the differentiator, really, that allows business to stake out and hold unique market positions longer.The other amazing phenomenon that&#39;s occurred is this power-to-the-people shift that places creation tools in the hands of us all. Desktop publishing, of course, is old, old news by now. But across the board, whether your arena is the graphic arts or publishing or music or film, the cost of entry and the ease with which people from all walks of life can participate has become democratized. The tools just get better and cheaper every day. So, there&#39;s a sense in which everyone is a designer, or at least it feels that way. We&#39;re all design guys, and I mean that in a gender neutral way, of course. The impetus for this new program, therefore, is to recognize these facts, and help make the principles of design accessible to professionals and ordinary folks, alike.Now, there&#39;s lots of stuff out there about design, including podcasts. So, why this one? Well, often, these programs focus on technique. Others keep us abreast of industry happenings. And, while these, indeed, are helpful, and while I&#39;ll probably refer you to these programs from time to time, that kind of information tends to have a short shelf life.What I&#39;ll endeavor to do, instead, is point up the timeless stuff. I want to impart information that doesn&#39;t change. Ideas that don&#39;t expire with successive software releases or date themselves to current events. This way we can concern ourselves with principles that&#39;ll stick in our long term memory, rules we can recall when we&#39;ve lost our way, creatively speaking.Ralph Waldo Emerson once said,If you learn only methods, you&#39;ll be tied to your methods, but if you learnprinciples you can devise your own methods.My own background is graphic design. And while I&#39;ll be speaking to it in particular, I think we&#39;ll find that many principles relate to design in general. So, whether you&#39;re engaged in print or web or film, or anything else, a lot of these concepts will apply because they transcend the media you&#39;re working in.A few words about the format of the show....And I know some of you have got to be wondering - how are we supposed to discuss visual media in an audio format? I suppose it&#39;s a reasonable concern. But, what I intend to do, is to point to the pictures we&#39;ve all got in our heads. The coca-cola logo. Or the proportions of a human being. And I think we&#39;ll do just fine. As far as length is concerned..My aim is to keep each episode brief, so that in mere minutes we ca

Design Guy, Episode 1, Intro Episode

Download Episode 30Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.We&#39;re talking about Unity. And when we began this discussion last episode, we said that unity is a goal of composition - unity describes how a multiplicity of elements combine to achieve one efffect. And this concept hearkens back to the fundmental definition of design we layed down in our earliest episodes, when we said that Design is the process of creating order out of chaos, as we fashion many disparate elements into an ordered unit.But how does Unity work? How is it that one design is perceived to be more unified than another? And that&#39;s the key phrase, &quot;perceived to be.&quot; Because this discussion lands us squarely in the territory of perception. And it&#39;s all perception, when you think of it. Our designs are nothing but bits of paper and ink, or illuminated pixels. It&#39;s what our minds of make of those bits and pieces that matters. And while we may not entirely understand how our minds work, we know we can aid cognition by understanding some principles of perception.So, today I&#39;d like to introduce the ideas behind what is called Gestalt Theory. And don&#39;t let the terminology scare you, Gestalt Theory is concerned with how our minds connect the dots, so to speak, forming a coherent whole out of incomplete parts. A puzzle with missing pieces still provides enough relational and contextual clues for us to discern that emergent whole.And you may recall that we touched on this idea somewhat in the episode on Shape, when I said that this was a cognitive imperative, the way our minds compulsively and continuously make meaning out of stimuli around us, even connecting random things. And I can&#39;t help being reminded of the scene in Woody Allen&#39;s Take The Money and Run, when he tells his analyst that the ink blot looks like two elephants making love to a male glee club. But I digress.So, what Gestalt theory does is make much of context and relationships. When it comes to meaning, it&#39;s all in the WAY we put things together. Where is the element? What&#39;s next to it? Does this element stand alone or is it part of a group? These are the kinds of questions that are important.One Gestalt analogy is how we can take a collection of individual musical notes and organize them as a unified melody. We can even transpose it to another key, which makes us use a different set of notes, yet we still recognize the same melody. The unity is persistent because the relationship of the notes has not changed. The intervals and duration and sequence are still the same. So, carrying this idea over to design, it makes us think in compositional terms, because the unity that we hope to create on the page has altogether to do with context and relationships.But more on that next time, I think we have enough to chew on for today.For now, let me remind you that a transcript of today&#39;s show c

Design Guy, Episode 30, Seeing Unity (Gestalt)

Download Episode 29Design Guy, here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.We concluded our recent series on balance with a quotation from Alex White&#39;s book, The Elements of Graphic Design. White tells us:&quot;Balance is an important route to achieving unity in design. If the various elements are seen to be in balance, the design will look unified. It will make a single impression. If a design is out of balance, its constituent parts will be more visible than the overall design.&quot;(end of quotation.)These remarks provide a nice segue into the topic of unity. And they also echo the very first definition we laid down for design itself. To refresh your memories, we said that Design is the process of creating order out of chaos, of taking many disparate elements and forming them into an ordered unit, or a unified whole.So, that idea of wholeness, the E Pluribus Unum of Design, if you will, where from many things we attain one thing, or we achieve one effect is a very important concept both to have and to maintain as we&#39;re working. Especially on projects of any scope or scale. My own work experience has consisted of large-scale projects, spanning months or even years, contracts requiring multiple teams of people to execute, with a variety of taskings.When you find yourself in this situation, you can easily miss the forest for the trees. You find that you&#39;re working on your own tree, and that, after a while, that&#39;s potentially all you can see. So achieving a unified effect becomes an even greater challenge on large, complex projects. And this is why direction is necessary. We need directors on large projects to maintain alignment toward a unified vision of an end product.Movies are a perfect example of this. And the more you think about it, it seems almost miraculous that so many elements can come together so well in spite of the scale of a modern motion picture. There&#39;s the music, the special effects, the casting, and the myriad of other components of such a production. Then there&#39;s the screenplay itself - often having been passed through many hands after having been in development hell for years. Then there&#39;s the director&#39;s vision, the studio&#39;s input, the test audience results that influence the final product. It&#39;s a miracle that films turn out as coherent as they tend to be. And so it&#39;s also no wonder that there are many films that just don&#39;t work. Whose elements don&#39;t come together gracefully at all.But that&#39;s the singular idea I want to impart today about unity. Unity achieves one effect. Everything works as a balanced whole.On the other hand, where unity is weak, we find ourselves too conscious of the parts, we&#39;re distracted by the parts and pieces. We see the trees instead of the forest. And again, going with the movie analogy, this is a bit like when a supporting actor winds up stealing all the scenes, upstagin

Design Guy, Episode 29, Unity: Out of Many, One

Download Episode 28Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.We&#39;re in the midst of a discussion on balance, and in the previous episodes we discussed how elements act as optical weights within certain balancing schemes - and those schemes are typically classified as either symmetrical or asymmetrical. And we spoke about some of the implications and the effects - the feel that we get - out of those schemes.Alex White, in his book, The Elements of Graphic Design, defines balance, and also sums up those balancing schemes as follows:&quot;Balance, or equilibrium, is the state of equalized tension. It is not necessarily a state of calm....Symmetrical, of formal, balance is vertically centered and is visually equivalent on both sides. Symmetrical designs are static and evoke feelings of classicism, fomality, and constancy.Asymmetrical, or informal, balance attracts attention and is dynamic....(and it) requires a variety of sizes and careful distribution of white space. Asymmetrical designs evoke feelings of modernism, forcefulness, and vitality.&#39;(end of quotation.)And that&#39;s more or less what we concluded, except that we emphasized the notion that if symmetry is essentially static, then asymmetry, on the other hand, suggests movement, because the equilibrium we&#39;ve achieved is a dynamic one, made up of unequal parts, in an imperfectly resolved layout.Now, before we get too conclusive about this distinction, I&#39;d suggest that symmetrical designs can suggest motion also. Think of a paint spatter shape. Now if the splash radiates out pretty equally, we could call it an example of formal balance, or its close cousin, radial balance (to introduce a new term), nevertheless its shape is highly suggestive of action and movement. Not to mention the choice of color and and other elements that we could employ to further heighten our sense of dynamism. Like a tie-died t-shirt, symmetrical designs can be extremely dynamic if there are other things going on besides balance.So, I wanted to provide my own counterpoint to the general truisms that we outlined before.Now, finally, there&#39;s one more kind of balance we should touch on before moving on to another topic. This one is called &quot;Crystallographic Balance&quot; otherwise known as &quot;Overall balance.&quot;This describes those compositions that are set up in a mosaic or grid. If you&#39;re familiar with Mondrian, think of one of his grid compositions, consisting of primary colors and black grid lines. Or maybe Warhol&#39;s painting of Mao Tse Tung, where the same portrait appears in three rows of three. These can be done well, but in general they tend to lack any point of emphasis or distinct focal point, so graphic designers will want to create a better sense of hierarchy and order by staying away from the purest form of Overall balance, which tends to just have too many elements everywhere. By creating

Design Guy, Episode 28, Balance On Balance

Download Episode 27Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.Now these days we&#39;ve taken up the principle of Balance. And having established the concept of optical weight, and the way our page becomes a kind of balancing beam as we add visual elements to it, we turned our attention to the idea of Formal or Symmetrical balance. And we described this as a mirror image type of arrangement, where elements are symmetrically balanced on a page with respect to its central axis. And wee also pointed the implications of formal balance, the effect achieved by symmetry. Which is a feeling of equilibrium, and a sense of stasis and stability. And if I&#39;m recapping too many concepts, too quickly, just take some time to listen to the previous programs, where I explain each idea in turn.But moving on from there, the next concept we need to identify is Asymmetrical Balance, also called Informal Balance. And the typical example of this kind of balance is when one large element is counterbalanced by several smaller objects. Or if you&#39;ll recall the role of value that we described, we may have a situation where a smaller, dark object, is counterbalanced by a larger, light-colored object. At first glance, we might think these kinds of compositions aren&#39;t balanced, because they don&#39;t have the obvious symmetry that makes the situation feel all the more stable. But on closer examination, we realize that the teeter totter of our page is balanced, after all. And though the objects distributed on either side of the central axis may be very different from each other, the optical weight of each side appears to be about even.An even more clever example of assymetrical balance is when a large object on one side of the page is balanced by a smaller object placed at the very far end of the opposite side, mimicking the physics of leverage.But, as we explained last time, the visual designer is usually more concerned with the effects or implications of the type of balance being employed. And where we said last time that Formal balance imparts a conservative and a stable feeling to a composition, Informal balance, on the other hand, with its lack of symmetry, achieves quite the opposite. In fact, the effect is what I&#39;d call a dynamic sense of order. And that&#39;s because there are differences in the page. While it feels resolved in terms of balance, it isn&#39;t equalized, the way water seeks its own level. And in that sense it&#39;s unresolved, but in a good way. It&#39;s got a dynamism, and so informal balance implies movement.So, look around. Pay attention to compositions in ads and books and magazines. And you&#39;ll see what I mean. Those ads for Absolut Vodka, with their perfectly centered single bottle, and the perfectly centered caption are always symetrical and formally balanced. And that stable feeling we infer from those layouts is a good thing, because that bottle h

Design Guy, Episode 27, Asymmetrical or Informal Balance

Download Episode 26Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.In our last episode, we took up the principle of balance. And to lay the ground work for this discussion, we introduced the phrase, optical weight, which, in a nutshell, describes the phenomenon of how elements on a page have visual gravity. Depending on their size, and depending on their value, which refers to their lightness or darkness, an element can appear relatively light or heavy. And in the balancing beam that is our page, this influences our perceptual sense of balance.Today, I&#39;d like to introduce the idea, first, of Symmetrical Balance, also referred to as Formal Balance. And as the name implies, this kind of balance has an even symmetry, or mirror image distrubution of elements on the page with relation to the central axis. So, like the appearance of a butterfly, or a rorschak test folded perfectly in half, we often have a perfect parity, and close left hand / right hand shape equivalence. Now, this doesn&#39;t mean that we necessarily have identical objects on either side of that central axis, but we&#39;ve got similarity in terms of numbers and sizes and value of objects, and they&#39;re more or less arranged in mirror-image fashion.The simplest example of this is the center justfication of type. When we center-justify type on a page, we clearly see that mirror-image shape occurring. In other words, whether the measure of a line of type is long or short, their position will correspond to a central axis. So, if we squint at a page of justified type, we&#39;ll discern a grayish mass with identical contours on each side. Kind of like a rorschak shape. So, here we have an example of type brought into formal balance.Now, the more thoughtful typographers employ formal balance with purpose in mind. They have a reason for doing so. But to understand that purpose, one has to appreciate some of the implications of formal balance.If we take wedding invitations, for example, it seems that they&#39;re always center justified, which tends to befit these very formal, somewhat decorative documents. And because they are center-justified, or formally balanced, we get kind of a tranquil, sedate effect out of it. Formal balance just feels safe and stable to us. And the reason it does, the idea behind it, is that everything is equal, everything is in an equilibrium. And what that implies to us is a static state. There&#39;s no movement implied by stasis or equilibrium. Like a pyramid, its a stable form. And, yet, if you think about it, it&#39;s not always exciting to play it safe. Things that are static, in a state of equilibrium, with no implied motion, can become quite boring, actually. So, when it comes to layout decisions, we&#39;ll want to reserve symmetrical or Formal balance for material that&#39;s suited to this type of arrangement. Ofttimes, that will make sense for conservative kinds of things.For

Design Guy, Episode 26, Symmetrical or Formal Balance

Download Episode 25Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explore timeless principles of design and explains them simply.Well, we may not be able to bring balance to the force, but we can speak to the principles of balance that will help us in our design work. In life, as in many arenas, balance is something we&#39;re always striving for. In our compositions, designers have the unique advantage of seeing balance, and of actually visualizing its dynamics. And yet despite that advantage, designers still need help with balance, they need help with how to think about balance, and so this is a topic that&#39;s worthy of our time and attention.But let&#39;s start with a basic definition. The standard dictionary entry describes balance as an even distribution of weight, allowing a person or thing to remain upright and stable. When something is stable, it tends not to fall over. When a person loses their balance, it&#39;s because their weight has shifted in a way that won&#39;t allow them to maintain their stance. And so we begin to fall over, and if we can&#39;t recover, we take a tumble. The greater the shift in weight, the less chance we have of regaining our balance. So, balance is something we&#39;re constantly trying to maintain, even on an unconscious level, as we stroll down the avenue on a carefree, sunny day.And so it goes with our design compositions. The balance we maintain is often something we&#39;re not even consciously thinking of. We just make the adjustments to our layouts as we go, intuitively, without much thought or concern.And yet balance merits a bit of study, especially when we&#39;re starting out, and are forming our habits of thought and approach to our work. So, what I&#39;d like to do is discuss the different kinds of balance, and their implications on our work.Now, with that definition of balance as an even distribution of weight, or weights, we&#39;ve got a pretty good leg up on things. In fact, I&#39;ve heard designers compare the weight and balance aspects of their compositions to a teeter totter kind of dynamic, recognizing that as they place elements on a page, each element has its own optical weight. And by the way, do make mental note of that phrase, &quot;optical weight,&quot; because it&#39;s a good concept to have in mind as we approach other subjects of design. But in balancing the page, we know we&#39;ve got a central axis, a conceptual line down the middle of the page. And as elements stack up in various places on the page, our sense of balance is affected. Our page will fee like it&#39;s see sawing to the right or left if the weight of those elements is distributed unevenly.So, what contributes to optical weight? That is, what makes an element feel relatively light or heavy on the page? The main contributors are size or scale, and value. The bigger the object, the heavier. The darker the object, the heavier.For example, picture a page in your mind with two black orbs, two filled-in circle

Design Guy, Episode 25, Balancing Act

Download Episode 24Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.Today, we bring to a close our series on the formal elements of two dimensional design. Having surveyed line, shape, value, color, and texture, today we&#39;ll wrap up our discussion with some thoughts on format.And what is format? To lay out a definition, Format refers to the shape and size and dimensions associated with our chosen medium. Specifically, that could be a business card or a book jacket or a label for a can of beans. All these are examples of formats, each with their own possibilities and challenges and constraints. And every one of these formats deserves thoughtful consideration before we set to work.Unfortunately, however, Format is the forgotten element. Or if that&#39;s too dramatic a statement, we might at least agree that it&#39;s frequently the overlooked element. Like the phenomenon of something that&#39;s hidden in plain sight, format isn&#39;t always given the consideration it deserves.This syndrome reminds me of one of those classic monster movie scenes where someone is being told where to look for the creature&#39;s footprint, but they just can&#39;t see it. &quot;Where? Where is it?,&quot; they ask. And it&#39;s not until the camera pulls back, creating a wide reveal, that we, the audience, can see that they&#39;re actually standing in it. The footprint is enormous--the work of Godzilla or King Kong.And this is why we overlook format. It&#39;s our context.  And we tend to miss it or to take it for granted. And what we tend to do, is to default to the tired, conventional uses of certain formats, without giving it a whole lot of thought.Robin Landa, in her book, Graphic Design Solutions, says it this way.&quot;Whether it is a page or a business card, whatever you start out with is the format. The format is a vital element in two dimensional design. Most beginning students take the format for granted, not realizing that it is an active element in design. If you think of an average page as two vertical lines and two horizontal lines joined at right angles, then the first line you draw on a page is actually the fifth line.  Like that fifth line, all of the other formal elements are contained by, and interact with, the original shape of the format.&quot; (end of quotation).So, Landa is emphasizing format as an active element that should be given as much strategic thought as we would give any other element.There are some classic examples of how designers overlook format. Thinking of a business card only in horizontal terms, for example, as if it can&#39;t be turned vertically. Or  assuming there&#39;s only one fold scheme possible for brochures, the tri-fold that everyone else uses. Even formats that offer tremendous flexibility go unexploited. The format of a book, its shape and size, its orientation and thickness, is determined by the choice of trim dimensions and paper, well withi

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