Download Episode 40 Talking 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'd like to announce my sponsor for the coming episodes. Yes, I have a sponsor. And that'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...
Jun 04, 2010
Download Episode 39 Design Guy, Episode 39, Talking About Type: An Introductory Word Design 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'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'...
May 27, 2010
Download Episode 38 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Today we'll discuss why, sometimes, you've got to get negative to be positive. No, we're not talking creative mood swings here, or how to channel your anger into your work, or anything like that. We're talking about "negative space." And how giving attention to the negative space can strengthen our design compositions. Okay, so what exactly is "negat...
May 27, 2009
Download Episode 37 Design 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'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'd screen for the best talent. There would be a li...
Mar 04, 2009
Download Episode 35 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Today, we'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's more to Gestalt than what we've covered in this series, but I trust this has given you a foothold on the topic. But let's get right to it. Proximity Proximity is something we understand intu...
Dec 04, 2008
Download Episode 34 Design 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've been discussing the Gestalt Principles, and to remind once again, this is all about perception, and even closer to home, it's all about our goals in composition, that is, it's about how we perceive a unified whole, and how that whole is actually greater than the sum of its parts. Today, we'll look at the next ...
Oct 23, 2008
Download Episode 33 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Well we're in the midst of a discussion on Unity, and as a part of that topic, we've taken a detour through what are called the gestalt rules. So, if you're joining us midstream, let'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...
Oct 04, 2008
Download Episode 32 Design 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'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's a way of putting designers in the driver's seat. In other words, these concepts help us control how our audience sees what we put in front of them. It all...
Sep 13, 2008
Download Episode 31 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We're talking about Unity, which we've described as the compositional goal of taking many elements and fashioning them into a cohesive whole. In other words, we don'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 fe...
Aug 27, 2008
Download Episode 30 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We'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...
Aug 01, 2008
Download Episode 29 Design 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's book, The Elements of Graphic Design. White tells us: "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 constitue...
Jul 10, 2008
Download Episode 28 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We'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. Ale...
Jun 19, 2008
Download Episode 27 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Now these days we'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 symme...
May 24, 2008
Download Episode 26 Design 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...
May 16, 2008
Download Episode 25 Design 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're always striving for. In our compositions, designers have the unique advantage of seeing balance, and of actually visualizing its dynamics. And yet despite tha...
May 08, 2008
Download Episode 24 Design 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'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...
Apr 17, 2008
Download Episode 23 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Or as Emerson once exhorted, "If you learn only methods, you'll be tied to your methods, but if you learn principles, you can devise your own methods." If we update that advice for today, we might say to designer, "Learn how design works, don't just learn software applications." We're talking about the formal elements of two dimensional design, which...
Apr 07, 2008
Download Episode 22 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We're talking about the formal elements of two-dimensional design. And these are the building block elements, the fundamentals at work in our design compositions. So far among these elements we've identified Line and Shape and Color. And with the last discussion of color fresh in our memories, today we'll consider Value. And Value simply describes th...
Mar 30, 2008
Download Episode 21 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We're talking about the Formal Elements, which we've defined as the building blocks of two dimensional design. To that end, we've touched on Line and Shape so far, and just enough to convey their importance without getting too in-depth or technical. And I'd like to do the same today with Color. Now, Color is a pretty broad topic. We could speak about...
Mar 11, 2008
Download Episode 20 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We're talking about the Formal Elements, which we previously described as the building blocks of two dimensional design. In the last episode, we explored the idea of Point, and how Point becomes Line as we move it about the surface of our chosen medium. Today, we'll talk about the next thing that happens in this process. Which is to suggest that thes...
Mar 04, 2008
Download Episode 19 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. As I've mentioned before, our focus here is on principles, rather than software tips or industry events. Not that there's anything wrong with those things - we all need to keep up. But it's the principles you can depend upon as your constants - principles act as footholds in a world of rapid change. And once grounded in them, you'll probably even sav...
Feb 15, 2008
Download Episode 18 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Well, it's high time we spoke about the basic elements of 2-dimensional design, the so-called formal elements. But before we get into specifics, we should be aware of a general principle. And that's that there's power in simply being able to name things. In any arena, there's an authority we gain merely by learning the names and faces, the do's and d...
Jan 30, 2008
Download Episode 17 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Now, we've spent some time trekking through that terrain known as the creative process, and on our way we've looked at a few ideas that will help us to gear up for the challenges we can expect to face as we traverse our projects. Today, we'll bring this series to an end today with some parting thoughts. But since this little excursion has been by no ...
Dec 28, 2007
Download Episode 16 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design, and explains them simply. We've talking about creativity in recent episodes. And, continuing this line of thought, I'd like to start today's episode with a quotation. It's by Saul Bass, who remarked in an interview about a problem encountered by young designers and students: "They are not privy to process," he noted. "They have the illusion that these things really spring fu...
Dec 17, 2007
Download Episode 15 Flow vs. Edit Design guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. If you're just joining us, our motto here is "Principles First." Or to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, "If you learn only methods, you'll be tied to your methods. But if you learn principles, you can devise your own methods." Which is why we don't spend time on specific software tips or methods. Now, there are excellent shows that cover thos...
Dec 11, 2007
Download Episode 14 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We're talking about the creative process. The last couple of shows, we gave attention to the creative mind. We spoke about the mental patnership of our conscious and unconscious levels of awareness, and also about the priority of loosening up and having fun. Along these lines, we reasoned that if creativity is the mind at play with materials it loves...
Nov 21, 2007
Download Episode 13 Design Guy, here. Welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We're talking about the nature of the creative process, and the things we can do to get a handle on it. Last time, we spoke about the creative mind. We described how the conscious and the unconscious parts of our minds work together to help us solve problems and combine elements into ideas. And we likened this mental partnership to making a stew, or...
Nov 14, 2007
Download Episode 12 Design Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. We live in a create-on-demand world, and, whether you're a graphic designer or a college student working on a writing assignment, or a podcaster trying to come up with his next episode, the question is the same. How can we gain some control of the creative process, so that our minds and imaginations are productive when we need them to be? As we estab...
Nov 08, 2007
Download Episode 11 Design Guy, here. Welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply. Now, we're talking about the creative process. And in earlier episodes, we discussed the preparation that precedes creativity, which namely takes the form of information gathering. In graphic design, there's always a message at stake - one that we need to craft for an audience. So, we're concerned early on with doing our homework. And once we've lai...
Oct 27, 2007
Download Episode 10 Design Guy, here. Welcome to the show. This is the program where we set aside the technical manuals and focus on the timeless aspects of design. Software versions come and go, and new forms of media emerge, but the principles behind our work stay pretty much the same. So, it's my hope that these brief discussions will be worth the time investment, since we can commit these principles to long term memory. Better yet, we can put them into practice, knowing they'll serve us thro...
Oct 19, 2007
