pantagruel

creative differences

I need that as a poster for my office.

Technorati Tags: art direction, augh

Six categories of design firm promotional phrases

In Design Patois: Voice: AIGA Journal of Design: Writing: AIGA: Steven Heller points out that for all the differences in individual designers' styles, there are only six categories of design firm promotional phrases.

1. Happiness Is a Warm Client

• Our primary concern is with our client’s success in their business.
• Our goal is to meet our clients’ visual communications needs by applying an approach based on discipline, appropriateness and ambiguity. [huh?]

2. Style? We Don’t Have No Stinkin’ Style

• Our belief is that any one visual problem has an infinite number of solutions.
• We don’t have a style or philosophical framework. We simply want to understand, then solve the problem.

3. Meaningful Relationships

• Our professional ability has been developed and tested for 20 years in a highly competitive environment and has been the basis of many enduring relationships.
• We nurture the client from beginning to end.

4. Touchy-Feely-Squeezy

• Graphic design should touch the viewer as well as inform.
• We try to balance our own personal insight with the client’s particular needs—design is a magical balance.

5. Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Our Lives

• Every client, project and problem is unpredictable. Each is unique. Our mission as a group is to solve the unique problem, manage the unusual project, and serve our wary client the best quality design available.
• Our experience allows us to approach a range of design problems in a fresh way.

6. How Do I Love Me?

• We take great pride in a body of work that has received national recognition for excellence, and in the roster of prestigious clients who hired us to create it.

One has to wonder whether these designers and firms read each other’s promotion or whether these pearls just develop over time in their own hermetically sealed environments. Design firms tend to stink of their own perfume. In fact, virtually all of the designers represented by the statements above are fluid and literate when talking about their work. But put them in front of a keyboard and they choke up.

Preach it, Steven! That's all so very, very true. He's got many more great examples of the blather, which are good for a laugh.

On a previous version of my website, I simply broke down the different kinds of things I do: design, writing, and illustration. I didn't have anything about my design philosophy. Then, after getting asked repeatedly by clients, 'So, what's your philosophy on design?' I grudgingly added one: Good design should be invisible. This still wasn't enough of an explanation for the small businesspeople I was working with, so I added a bit more, talking about how the design should get out of its own way, how the message should be important, blah blah blah. I hated it. If I have to explain what my design philosophy is and it's not apparent in my portfolio, my work has failed. It should be invisible, people! If it's not, then it's an EPIC FAIL.

I swear, sometimes, the most difficult part of being a designer is explaining what it is I do. I like to say, 'I make pretty trash,' which makes people laugh, once they get it. Now that I'm an art director, it gets tougher, because I have to explain to clients what my designers do, and if I'm a smartass, they get riled. I can't say, 'Well, we sit around and drink coffee and snicker at your choice of Bookman for your memos,' or 'We make jokes about how you can't make up your mind about capitalization, and you write a bunch of crappy jargon and call it copy.' Nope, that wouldn't go over well at all. So instead of telling the client what we really do, I have to make something up. But trust me, it won't be blather like that promotional design twaddle.

Technorati Tags: art direction, design, designing, work

black & white grisaille; birthday weekend

Here's the results of Saturday afternoon in the studio, a grisaille:

In the next sitting, I'll be glazing color over this black and white underpainting.

Looking at it after some sleep, I'm not sure about the tooth cylinder dimensions -- it seems like maybe I should make the distance between the nose and the bottom of the jaw taller -- but then, there is that shadow on the jaw, which is making it look smaller than it really is. I also might take a fan brush to it, to smooth out the edges a bit and make it less choppy. Actually, I will do that, because I forgot to on Saturday.

In other news…

• Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes! That cheered me up as I celebrated my birthday LA-style, by sitting in traffic (A grand total of six hours in the car, on Friday. Oof.). Amandarin took me to lunch at the Stinking Rose, which I'd never been to before, and must go back to very, very soon. Then I went to dinner with the man with two silver earrings and his wife, and then we saw Iron Man. My, Robert Downey Jr. has gotten more handsome with age. But in spite of his hotness, I still nodded off a couple of times during the film; that whole 2.5 hours of sleep the night before and six hours of driving was not a good combination.
• The Art Cave's appliance insurrection continues: now it's the washing machine that won't pump water, and an outlet in the living room that refuses to power anything. Ah, the glamourous life I lead, I thought, as I was hand-washing loads of laundry last night, and then pitching them in the dryer.
• I must hack through all the commissioned work I have to do, and all the homework. I'm getting to the point where avoiding my easel and drafting table, and instead scrubbing the floor seems like a very good idea. That's a bad sign.

It started raining just as I was leaving for work this morning, and I thought hard about calling in and staying home, in bed, listening to the rain and catching up on sleep. I drug myself in, though, and now am sorting through the small legion of things to be done this week.

But first, more coffee.

Technorati Tags: art, mornings are hard, painting, studio

email housekeeping

Hi all -- If you're not getting any email from me, it's not because I've not sent any. I've sent a ton. Really. I promise. Just because Mommy and your IMAP server are fighting doesn't mean we don't still love you. Remember, you can always reach me at Saltmine U.

Technorati Tags: blah

tribal bellydancer digital quick sketch

Here's another one of Sabrina, who stayed to pose for the night's digital illustration class. 20 minutes. It's rough, but I like the feel. The little quick sketches are rough for me; I usually need much, much longer to get anything that looks like a form down. If I can just get the form to roll and the values correct in that short time, I consider it a win.

Oh, and I need more coffee. Seriously. Up at 4:30 this morning, to leave the house by 5, to make it into work by 6. When did I get to bed? 2 a.m. If I keep telling myself I love freelance work, maybe I will believe it.

Technorati Tags: art, mornings are hard, painting, studio