Design Storytelling

Excellent words from the great Saul Bass here - via @brainpicker

I don’t give a damn if the client thinks it’s worth anything, or whether it IS worth anything — it’s worth it to me. It’s the way I wanna live my life. I wanna make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.” ~ Saul Bass

You can find more excerpts from this documentary about Saul’s work in Maria’s post:

Saul Bass on Money, Quality Work & Creative Legacy

Oh now really, how lovely is this Manual Photography Cheat Sheet from @Yatcher on Zazzle. I just wish I’d had it with me at The Do Lectures last week when I was playing with my new camera (Canon 600D for you geeks out there, no I couldn’t lift the 5D). As it turns out, through trial and error, I did just about ok without it.

At least Wired.co.uk thought so today when they used one of my pics to illustrate a beautifully crafted feature on the Do Lectures 2011 by the talented Ella Saltmarshe (@saltsea). It’s been a not so secret ambition of mine, for some time, to get my foot through the WIRED door.

I figured it’d be the words that would work their way in first. But hey, thanks to Ella, it turned out to be a photo of the wonderful Mickey Smith instead. As this young wise man likes to say, I’m armed with a smile.

Thanks to my gorgeous sis for this cheat sheet top tip.

Very much enjoying the following three things today:

a) Adrian Shaugnhnessy’s ”The 12 paradoxes of graphic design”

1. There’s no such thing as bad clients. Only bad designers.
2. The best way to become a better graphic designer is to become a client.
3. If we want to educate our clients about design we must first educate our self about our clients.
4. If we want to make money as a graphic designer we must concentrate on the work, not the money.
5. For graphic designers, possessing verbal skills is as important as possessing good visual skills.
6. Most ideas fail, not because they are bad ideas, but because they are badly presented.
7. Designers who use the argument “I know best because I am a professional” are usually unprofessional designers.
8. We often imagine that all the good projects go to other people. Not so, in fact, nearly all jobs start off as neither good nor bad.
9. The best way to self-promote is to avoid talking about yourself.
10. A designer’s brain is capable of much more than making things look pretty.
11. If we believe in nothing, then our clients will have no reason to believe in us.
12. Designers often imagine that they need to be embedded with the clients, but there are advantages in being an outsider.

b) Tobias Bergdahl’s beautiful graphic interpretations of each paradox - see my faves (no.10) above and (no.6) below - the rest on his site.

c) Luke Neff’s excellent interpretation of Shaugnhnessy’s list with “The 12 Paradoxes of Education”

Marvellous stuff all round.

Love love love this poster design for the upcoming Modern British Sculpture show at the Royal Academy. There’s something about the smooth cleanliness of the type face and the tactile dirtiness of the rubble all over it that is enormously satisfying.

Starting 22nd January. Looking forward to it.

My New Year’s resolution for 2011. Courtesy of Andy Smith + @DoLectures.

Here’s my Art Pays for *Free article on TreeHugger about the graphic poster series from The Do Lectures team.

Right, I’m off to finish something I started a while ago.

I spotted this wonderful typographic poster for Nelson Mandela’s new book - Conversations With Myself - on the tube platform this evening. A sort of splendid Wordle portrait.

This quote seemed particularly powerful just after watching Akram Khan’s spiritually transcendent Vertical Road.

“Spiritual weapons can be dynamic and often have an impact difficult to appreciate except in the light of experience in given situations. In a way they make prisoners free men, turn commoners into monarchs, dirt into pure gold.” 

My first tattoo may well read: “I loved your signage so much it persuaded me to come in and get this tattoo” Not exactly catchy I know, but it sure would be heartfelt. I just love this signage so much! Everything from the black tile background - to the gold Butcher’s style font - to ‘The Family Business’ name - to the double building numbers. It’s just all so immensely pleasing.

Oh my words! What fun Wordle is.. here’s a cloud to illustrate my @48HrMag piece on the Dutch Hustle that is Atelier Van Lieshout. It’s so appropriate you would have thought I’d designed it myself. This really is the graphic version of an AVL sculpture: colourful, blob-like and full of crap. I must create Wordles for all my long articles.