Small & Simple Thoughts

This is irresistible:

YouTube – Expiration Date – Pomplamoose VideoSong.

Brought to you by my sisters-in-law.

After seeing this (.::: thePaperNut :::.), I feel like I wish I were a paper nut too!

Monsieur Hoefler shares a wonderful find from the Library of Congress. It is a feast of period type from a bunch of WPA posters.

I am currently reading “How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer“, by Debbie Millman. I came across the book in Jason Santa Marie’s list of recommended reading.

In it, I found this beautiful gem: Paula Scher describing her creative process:

It’s a little difficult to say what I do first. I don’t do anything in any particular order. There’s a certain amount of intuitive thinking that goes into everything. It’s so hard to describe how things happen intuitively. I can describe it as a computer and a slot machine. I have a pile of stuff in my brain, a pile of stuff from all the books I’ve read and all the movies I’ve seen. Every piece of artwork I’ve ever looked at. Every conversation that’s inspired me, every piece of street art I’ve seen along the way. Anything I’ve purchased, rejected, loved, hated. It’s all in there. It’s all on one side of the brain.

And on the other side of the brain is a specific brief that comes from my understanding of the project and says, okay, this solution is made up of A, B,C. and D. And if you pull the handle on the slot machine they sort of run around in a circle, and what you hope is that those three cherries line up, and the cash comes out.

In respone to this Debbie Millman asks, “When you’re thinking chis way, is it something you’re doing alone, or with a lot of other people?”

I could be doing it right now. I’m doing it right here. My day is very packed, and it’s filled with many interruptions. I’m thinking about the brief while I’m in an open space with tons of people, in the office, with telephones. my staff, while gossiping with my partners, while thinking about what’s going on in the world, during whatever’s going on
at that moment—plus the brief.

I am conscious of resolving the brief, but I don’t think about it too hard. I allow the subconscious part my brain to work. That’s the accumulation of my whole life. That is what’s going on in the other side of my brain, trying to align with this very logical brief.

And I’m allowing that to flow freely, so that the cherries can line up in the slot machine. I don’t know when that’s going to happen. I’ve had periods of time when the cherries never line up, and that’s scary, because then you have to rely on tricks you already have up your sleeve—the tricks in your knowledge from other jobs. And very often you rely on this.

But mostly what you want to do is invent. And to invent, you have to take the odd and the strange combination of the years of knowledge and experience on one side of the brain, and on the other side, the necessity for the brief to make sense. And you’re drawing from that knowledge to make an analogy and to find a way to solve a problem, to find a means of moving forward—in a new way—things you’ve already done.

When you succeed, it’s fantastic. It doesn’t always happen. But every so often, you take a bunch of stuff from one side of your head, and a very logical list of stuff from the other side, and through that osmosis you’re finding a new way to look at a problem and resolve a situation.

This is the best explanation of the creative process I’ve ever read.

John Dilworth’s artwork has everything I love. Geometry, Math, Design, Art, Golden Section, Patterns, History and Good Taste. I’m green with envy. I wish I was that good.

Fortunately, I don’t have to be that good – I can now buy John Dilworth’s artwork.

Only recently have I heard of Moleskine – an artistic style notebook brand. I was intrigued but held off being too interested because of price – they’re fairly expensive. When I found out they’re available in the BYU bookstore I gave in. I thought I might as well try them.

I purchased a set of three of the Cahier – small, gridded paper with a soft, brown cover. Here are my first impressions:

Likes: The size is good. I got the small size because I wanted to be able to carry it in my pocket. I’m taking a cue from my co-worker Ben on this one – he carries his in his shirt pocket. Pocket-size means I can take it everywhere and use it when inspiration strikes. The spine is stitched instead of stapled. This hand a nice handcrafter quality to the notebook. And I like having the grid lines when I want to sketch so I get good proportions, alignment, etc.

Dislikes: The grid lines are way too dark. There wasn’t a sample open at the store so I just had to commit to the purchase before seeing the grid lines. Now I wish I had just purchased the notebook with blank pages – the grid lines are that dark. And they were very expensive. 3 notebooks cost me over 7 bucks and they’ve only got a few pages in them.

Conclusion: I’ll use these until they’re full – no sense in wasting them. And then I think I’ll actually make my own. I can purchase grid paper with much lighter lines. I can wrap it in heavyweight stock for a cover. I can stitch or staple it myself. It will be much cheaper and much better. I’ll write a follow-up when I get to that point.

Aside: Along with the notebooks, I bought a nice pen – Zebra Sarasa 0.7. I really like it. At $1.50 it was a good deal.

Capless Decimo

In the city of Ube in Japan there is a four story stationery store dedicated entirely to pens, paper, and all of the appropriate accoutrements. The act of writing is an art form there and they produce tools equal to the task.

I fell in love with these quality crafted artifacts while there and miss the plethora of readily available writing instruments since I left.

My coworker and I were discussing our love of good pens when we found jetpens.com. Browsing the scores of pens made new in my memory the feeling of writing with one of these pens. For a moment, I was back in Ube.

For the affluent reader, please note the item I have just added to my wishlist.

Saying I’m late to the party would be an understatement. I only just discovered Richard Rutter‘s adaptation of a book titled The Elements of Typographic Style. Richard has titled the web version Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web. I have been painfully aware lately on the need to improve my typographic prowess. Finding this site is a two-edged sword. It illustrates in sharp contrast exactly how much I have to learn, but at the same time provides me with a way to do just that. I raise my raise my mouse to Richard Rutter and to Robert Bringhurst, the original author.

Great article about learning to be an artist, or rather make art. I particularly like this part:

We don’t start out as “creatives”. Few of us have such gifts at birth, and frankly, I’m unsure that creativity is something that is naturally ingrained. I do believe that these stories work well in film, and tie-in to the mythology which Hollywood is so renowned for; however, I’m convinced that good creative comes from training, just like good athletes become so as a result of focused coaching and hard work. Some may have a greater propensity for creative work than others; yet, I tend to believe that this rarity is overemphasized in our culture.

Read the entire article:
http://www.ideasonideas.com/2006/06/creativity_learning/

I just read an interesting article here. It is focused on creating change within your corporate hullabaloo, whatever it may be. The article encourages focus on the user, the real people that use your site/product.

Don’t focus on what the user will think about the product, focus everyone around you on what the user will think about himself as a result of interacting with it.

Do we apply these methods to art? Art has always been for me, a means of expressing myself. I think even the term ‘expressing yourself’ is one generally associated with artistic pursuits. Or at least, it was associated with art until the ‘blog’ came along. Now we blog instead of painting. It’s much more direct and to the point.

Is art just a complicated soap box? Is art the podium for the creative mind, our channel for voicing our own quirky impressions? Or do we have a responsibility to an audience greater than 1?

Or when I blog should I just talk about what interests me? From a capitalistic point of view, if you want to be financially successful blogging or painting or sculpting, you’re going to have to cater to some demographic. But financial success is hardly a sound benchmark. People and money are fickle.