You can get obsessed with grids. Grids act as the skeleton or backbone of most design work and are considered integral to the process of balancing aesthetics with information exchange. Grids are beloved by some and bemoaned by others – some find the rigid parameters invaluable to harmonious design, others find it limiting and constricting. I find myself falling somewhere in the middle – there’s an inner geek inside of me that loves to find a clever way to break up space, but there also the anti-establishment side of my personality that likes to break rules and push the boundaries. For that reason, I like using grids as I see it as an opportunity to act as both lawman and outlaw, I can be both the cops and the robbers.
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Category Archives: Design Thoughts
Grids, Guides, Proportions and InDesign Math
Old School Hip Hop Party Flyers
The design of these flyers goes against all design principals. Absurd amounts of fonts per page, center justified text, questionable illustrations, filling the pages entirely with text etc… But that is what makes them AMAZING! They are so much of a time and place and truly represent the energy and fun of these parties. The design style is also indicative of the technology available at the time (much like punk rock flyers from the same era)
InDesign
I believe that Adobe InDesign makes you a better designer. Part of it is that from the outset it looks very simple and not too overwhelming. Another reason is that you can take the work that you’ve made in other programs (Photoshop, Illustrator, Word) and spread them out on a virtual page and begin moving them around without destroying the content. Another reason is the use of the grid, even without pages being too architectural or structured, the grid helps organize content in a 2-Dimensional picture plane, it makes the design rational and intentional (even if the intention is to look chaotic and scattered)
If you are not already using Adobe InDesign (or Quark Xpress for that matter) then I highly recommend learning how to use it – trust me, it will make you a better designer.
Unintentional Non-Design
Good design is intentional. Meaning, there is a meaning to whatever madness (or organization, or any stop in between) that is presented in whatever form the designer, artist, craftsperson chooses to present their work. Haphazardness, randomness, chaos is a choice and there are good reasons why it is being used and a lot of experimentation in order to achieve the desired result. This isn’t to say that I don’t like the happy accident or the mistake that makes you re-evaluate your work, I do indeed like them, but believe that when they happen, they need be examined and perfected in a way that it is reproducible and able to be experimented with.
The following collection of photos, on the other hand, are examples of unintentional non-design. The end result of when a sign needs to be made without any forethought to the size of the stock letters being used, or the wonderfully really bad drawing style or just the chaos that results from layers of stickers and graffiti.
I think it’s important to look at images like this to understand what it takes to achieve true randomness, or make something intentionally bad, you can’t just wing it (I mean you can, which is the reason for this photo collection, but we are striving to do work WITH intention)
[postcasa size=xl]http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/nick.cassway/albumid/5499476629525903057?alt=rss&kind=photo&hl=en_US [/postcasa]