Posts tagged as:

aesthetics

A Value-Added Proposition

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The element of beauty is assumed in any design.

Does Good Design Matter?

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Does it matter if a design is good or not? Before we can deal with that question let’s ask a more basic one: What makes a design good? To answer that question, we should first begin with what good means. Without a definition, it’s unlikely that any design can be considered good or not, since [...]

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Beauty Is Not Pretty

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Let’s make the distinction between beauty and pretty.

Breathing Room: The Role of the Space In Between

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Empty space in a design is useful. Think of it in this way: If there was a room in your home where every inch of space was taken up by a piece of furniture, you would be unable to navigate through or use the room. Empty space between furniture is required for the room to [...]

Drawing The Line Between Art and Design

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Where an artist can begin with a blank canvas and pursue a serendipitous route to an end result, a designer begins with a set of criterion and remains within set boundaries from concept through completion.

A Before and After Case Study

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I was asked by a client to re-design a print ad laid out by someone else. The original layout (above, left) was cluttered and confused. The ad, for an author’s book signing events in upscale communities in Los Angeles County, was going to appear in a local cultural magazine. What was needed was a visual [...]

How Do You Define Design?

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Toward the end of my design fundamentals course I generally ask my students how they, having gone through the process of learning design principles and applying them to a variety of projects, would define design. Here are the responses from several who recently completed the course: Design is the process of externalizing many possible solutions [...]

True Lies

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Those who track and analyze cultural trends generally agree that our culture has become design-driven. It’s no longer based on business or technology but on design. We consumers generally assess the value of a product or idea based on post-modern criteria: its design, its visual appeal, how we experience it, how we feel about it. [...]

Creative Differences: Illustration and Design

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By straddling two “worlds” in my design practice, I often think about one of them while engaging in the other. For instance, while working on a design project, I’ll be musing over the illustration in progress over there on my drafting table. And when I’m in my illustration mode, I’ll be considering the next step [...]

For What It’s Worth: A Designer’s Value

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Without the aesthetic, the computer is but a mindless speed machine, producing effects without substance, form without relevant content, or content without meaningful form.   -Paul Rand  There are those who know how to write code for a web site, but not how to design one. Technical know-how does not make one a designer, just as [...]