As a photographer I am really into Nike’s designs. They love dark gradients, and that really sells if for me, because Nike shoes are so colorful. The visuals that you will always see in Nike is that when they design they keep the same pallet. like lime green shoes, with a link bar with the same effect.
So I am doing my favorite site, Prentice Danner. Danner is a photographer and as you can tell by the website he likes things to be simple clean and not distracting. Sure I love website with lots of elements and creativity, but when it comes to the mind of this photographer, I want to be consumed by his work and not the other things. The navigation is simple and too the point. I promise to be colorful again next week.
So whats is FLCL? Fooly Cooly, furi kuri, a weird dance made up in the Gundam series… Well no one knows, and I guess its better that we don’t get into that tonight. So here we have a vector work of the show’s main character, Ta. As you can guess the artist was some pompous jerk that was trying to be abstract with the design. Really dude, its only half of a face and I am supposed to feel some sort of emotion from this…..
Well, Like every post. I digress. The artist used Adobe Illustrator so that he could use the artwork in any size. Using the pen-tool he made each section separately in various layers. IE hat, mouth, eyes. He used the sloppy style to give a sorta pastel effect. Very nicely executed, but I would still call the artist a jerk….If I ever met him,.
Dictated, but not read.
Typography is interesting good typography can really shock something out, but the bad version, can really make you think “what the hell were they thinking?”, but as I’ve learned this week, black layers on white paper is only a fraction of typography. There are bold elements that we can use, like a vibrant red to express the point. I just want to really comment on the fact that when typography is good it’s really good, but when it’s bad it can look like, as Professor Golden would say “total crap”. So simply less is more in typography.
I prefer to use simple statements in my typography. So personally I am fond of the impact font. For my style and designing I generally lean towards white impact fonts on top of full color images. It gives the impression of a stamp on a photo sort of like the stamp of rejection or approval.
Sincerely,
The Office of Torrey Lee
(Warning: Torrey Lee is talking in jest in most of this piece and depiction’s shouldn’t be taking as fact. Its just meant to be satarical to make you read everything. He actually loves Neil Carter, Ron Clements and John Musker. Except for the Princess and the Frog…You know what you did.)
Oh the days when Disney Princesses ruled the magic kingdom. I mean seriously, what do men get out of the deal? Aladdin was technically a Disney prince (after the whole street rat deal.), but who gets the thespian running around the parks to take photos, PRINCESS Jasmine… Where’s the justice? Lets get back on point before I get into a rant.
I love The Little Mermaid poster. Might it have been me as a seven-year old crushing on an animated hottie, or the future teenage me cheering on a rebelling aqua-human teenager.
This poster has all the elements to sell the idea. The wordmark used accents that cater to the water aspect of the movie. A majority of the movie, you are watching a pissed-off teen singing about living under the sea. Apparently the graphic designers of this poster wanted to showcase the feeling of someone yearning for a new world. Though her life is pretty fun, and she’s the favorite daughter of the sea-king, the artist depicted her in darkness (depression) looking for more. Well done, senior graphics-guy.
Though really, he didn’t’ have much to work with in this piece filled with racism and misogyny. Come on, we all know that Ron Clement and John Musker were sitting around saying;
Ron: “Dude, how I am supposed to make this chick depressed? The movie can’t progress.”
John: “Well you were the one that wanted her singing with that Jamaican crab.”
Ron: “Hey! He’s Caribbean! Besides, they’re a jovial people.”
John: “Alright, Alright. You just need to make her shut up for half of the movie.”
Ron: “I got it! A sea-witch steals her voice. What’s that fat lady’s name from Gimme a Break?”
John: “You mean Neil Carter?”
Ron: “Perfect, we’ll name her Ursula.”
John: [sighs] “I’ll prep the legal team.”
Though in all seriousness, I liked the poster because it’s simulated use of light. Back before those days, artist just drew a character in darker shade and assumed that would display a lack of sunlight. The artist had to incorporate the coldness (color temperature) of the sea while showing Disney vibrance. Then again, the artist get’s one for two in his designs…You’ve seen the other with the phallic castle right? Yeah…look real close…
Okay, so let’s talk about wordmarks. I am taking the approach of looking at the new and the classic. There are two minds to design in my opinion. There is the classic that gives the audience a sense of nostalgia. You know, like when we talk about America and we think of a woman with rolled hair putting an apple-pie on the windowsill. Then there are the new designs that give you the feeling of…Well I guess branding would be the best way to describe it. We look at “5” gum and we think of cool, sleek and even cold metal for the most part. That brings me to my first choice, the PS3 logo.
The reason I like this wordmark is because it’s both new and nostalgic in the same design. No I am not saying nostalgic like PS1, I mean true nostalgia. Think back in the days of IBM. We look at that old logo with the lines, and the line-printers, (and if you’re old enough) you think of the perforations in the paper. I don’t know about you, but I drove my mom crazy when I would throw those around the house.
Though back then, we looked at technology as a big box. It took up space, it was considered something powerful and should be revered. Smack one of your knucklehead kids if they even looked at it the wrong way.
Oh, so that just my childhood….awkward.
Though I digress. Computers and technology became so much more over the years. We stopped revering the technology, in the sense of, we didn’t buy giant furniture to house our huge floor-model televisions. Technology started adapting to us. That’s the sense that I get from the PS3 logo. The way the lines contour, they are saying that technology is sleek and flexible.
Like what audience?
Like humans.
Now I say this as I hate video games and don’t even own a PS3, but its a cool logo. Now let’s talk about real classics.
Oh Newsweek, let your print format rest in peace. I spoke about the nostalgia of certain things, and what it makes you feel just by looking at it. When I see Newsweek, I think, “Now this is NEWS. They mean business.” There is the old english script, which looks as if a scribe got high off the fumes and just went with it. But this Newsweek logo says something different. News has become efficient. Quick, clarity, and straight to the point. You get that by the block text, that the organization doesn’t have time for games. You get what you read. The news of the week. Though to me honestly; it says professionalism. Something that at times can be lost by our very creative (but sometimes overzealous) designers.
Less is more… Well thanks for reading.
TWL
