Legibility

It is quiet important that if we see a text, an advert or an artwork we can understand and don’t get lost in them because they were simply badly designed. Legibility is relevant whenever we do a presentation at work or an essay for school. Although legibility doesn’t mean you can’t experiment and play around a bit with the typefaces, the sizes or the colours.

There are obvious facts; if it’s too small people won’t be able do read it, if there are too many different types they might get confused and just won’t bother even start.

An example for a really badly designed poster

You can try new things out but this is another example of someone who didn’t do his/her research before creating this flyer. You have to know your typography before creating a text. The first thing to look at when making the decision is the content. What is the text about? Is it a children’s book, and interview with a shopkeeper or a flyer for a beauty therapist? Also the text has to work with the photos and illustrations that go with it. The colour is another important part, it’s the easiest to read when the white typeface is on black background or the black typeface is on white background. You have to be careful with yellow and other vivid colours.

This text is using many different types but you can see that this time the designer knew a lot more about typography and could put the different types together beautifully.

“Less is better.” This saying is not always true but it’s true most of the times.

Visual Hierarchy

It goes hand in hand with legibility. In a text you have to highlight whatever part is more important than the rest, if everything is the same size, same colour and type the reader’s eye can get tired especially when reading a longer text. The title has to come out, so to start with the reader knows what is the content going to be. Depending on the importance, to highlight the different parts in the text you can change the colours, the sizes and you can change where to put them; up in the corner, in the middle, etc. Obviously bigger typefaces catch the attention more likely than smaller ones. People might get confused when there is a lot of information on one page but if it’s designed well they find it easy to get through. If there isn’t a visual hierarchy they won’t know where to start reading or what to look at first, their eyes might jump from one corner to another without actually finishing reading anything on the page, poster, menu, illustration, etc.

Probably the most important place in the design industry to do your job well. Road signs. They have to use big and easily readable types so even if you are moving fast you can read them without concentrating on them too much. Every colour has it’s meaning so even without reading the text or looking at the illustration on the sign the driver will know from a bigger distance what it can be about. Red is usually warning you about something; white-on-brown direction signs are for tourist attractions, etc.

Links:

http://thinkdesignblog.com/inspiration-type-designs.htm

Research & Inspiration

Anything can be inspiring. A tree, a house, the people you know, people you have never seen before. Inspiration is one thing, you have got the idea which is great for a start but you have to go deeper. You have to explore the subject. That is how you get to know more and more about it and the range of possibilities and ideas will get wider and wider.

Many things inspire me, to be honest it is hard to tell what exactly the source in most cases is, sometimes you might not even realize where the idea came from. I love to go to those proper old English pubs, just sit there and watch the people; I think the whole atmosphere of those places is fantastic, how the past and present meets together and it works. Other places I love to go and really miss them, is the underground clubs in my home city, Budapest. What they do there is, they take an abandoned building, what no one wants to use and they just let it go to rack a ruin. They decorate those places with old furniture that people donate, old lamps, pictures and other bits and bobs. The walls are covered with the works of artists from all around the country and from abroad. The best thing is that the people create these places together, that is why they are so eclectic.

Instant - one of the newest ones right in the city centre

Szimpla-kert - this place has been there since I can remember, I think they have the biggest collection of antique furniture and anything else you can think of

These clubs not only do concerts and parties but they organize a lot of art events as well as charity ones, you can go to a yoga lesson and lot of other things.

For the magazine project, the only criteria we had is, that is has to be about Birmingham. It could be anything that has any connections to the city. We decided with my group that we are going to write about the visual culture of the city which gave us a lot of possibilities. One topic that I am involved in is about the architecture in the city. Birmingham can be proud of its various types of buildings. I was always more interested in the older buildings, so I am doing that part. First I thought I am going to go around the city and just take photos of anything I like, and then I went into it a bit deeper. I chose a few of them and looked into their history. Why were they built? What is the use of it today or if they don’t use it what are they planning to do with it? In Birmingham there are a lot of beautiful, old buildings that are just standing there alone, being forgotten.

 

The other topic I am doing is about J.R.R. Tolkien. Though he was born in South Africa he grew up in Birmingham. The reason I wanted to write about him is because he got a lot inspiration from the city for his stories. Many buildings and landscapes inspired the images for things like the dark towers or “Hobbition” in “The Hobbit”. I am trying to develop my drawing skills, so I am not using a photograph for this topic. 

Perrott's Folly as some say has inspired the images of the dark towers. I draw the tower and tried to illustrate what he might have imagined while writing that scene in his book

It is a good thing to use the internet, magazines, and books for research but you have to get out there! I came to live in England only a few months ago so I have to find places to go. At the moment nature is probably my biggest source of inspiration because I don’t live in the big city, I live close to the country side which is a big change for me but I like it. Wherever you are you have to make the best out of it, have a look around and you will be surprised of the amount of things that can give you great ideas.

Links:

http://www.instant.co.hu/en 

http://www.szimpla.hu/ 

http://corvinteto.hu/english.php 

http://blublu.org/ 

Connectivity

We could just simply say that there is no original idea any more and if we look at it from one way we would be right. But that’s the whole point; we shouldn’t look at anything from only one aspect. Today as an artist you probably have a harder job to create something new than someone else who lived a thousand years ago. As we went forward in history more and more people started to create artworks for their own pleasure or to reflect their feelings. Although there wasn’t as much impact around them as much we have now, we have more things to think about, more ideas to combine.

1, Benjamin West - The Death of General Wolfe 1770 2, John Trumbull - The Death of General Montgomery at the Attack of Quebec 1786 3, Giotto di Bondone - Lamentation (The Mourning of Christ) 1304-1306

These three paintings all represent the same thing, the death of someone. If you look at the angles and the movement in the two paintings above, they have a lot of similarities, but that’s not surprising since West was Trumbull’s mentor for several years. One inspired the other and they worked together but that doesn’t mean they copied each other. Both were painting about different aspects of the war, they were using the colours differently; Trumbull also put a lot more contrast is his painting. However the position of men, how they surround the dying and the way someone’s holding his body takes after the “Lamentation" scenes. 

What is important when you create something? First of all you need to know about the history, the culture, anything that’s connected to the subject you’re working on. The more you know about it the fewer mistakes you’re going to make. That’s how you can stop yourself recreating existing works.

It’s difficult to get to a wide range of audience. People, the cultures, countries can be so different, if they like something in Europe, they might hate it in Asia, it might even offend them. The things surround us; they way we grow up make the biggest impact in our creative thinking. If you look at art from different cultures, they can be wide and varied.

1, Mihály Munkácsy - Ásító inas (Yawning Apprentice) 1868 – 1869 2, Yair Garbuz – The Yawning man 1968

 

Two artists both worked on the same idea, a yawning man. After all they are nothing like the other, the different techniques, materials and the time they lived in. This is just a simple idea, but it shows in how many different ways you can visualize something.

 

The simplest theme can become a huge success; it can be luck, the audience’s need for change or the artist itself being so exciting and unique that no one can ignore him/her. One of the most known paintings in the world, is just a portrait of a woman, still great mystique surrounds it. If someone else would have painted it, it may have never become as famous as it is now…

Leonardo da Vinci - Mona Lisa 1503-1505

 Links:

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/west/
http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/tbio?person=30800
http://www.mihalymunkacsy.org/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/leonardo/

 

Diverse

 

Overcoming Mindsets

In our culture when we are growing up we are learning the basic things of survival. Not how to survive in the nature, but how to survive in the community we are living in. How to talk to each other what body sings should we use, how to fit in perfectly in a place. This sort of kills the imagination and the creativity in a young person. But if you stand out and aren’t necessarily following all the rules, you can still fit in. I think a good artist is who can create something exciting from subjects, materials, pictures what others would avoid even looking at.

Niemann’s illustrations are very simple but he still fills the simplest image with humour, delight and criticism as well. And there is no other way, you have to be straightforward or your audience might get confused or just bored. 

No one ever publishes what he or she draws down first. You’re experimenting with angles, changing colours, taking things out, and putting new ideas in. You might not even realize how much you went through to do one piece of work, but that’s a good thing because that means that you enjoyed it. If you are struggling with something maybe you’re on the wrong path and you have to open your mind to view things from different aspects.

I have never draw a lot. I thought I wasn’t good at it but it’s all about practice and how much you put in it. Although I’m into photography I started drawing for this project at my university. They are simple but I like to put humour in them, which hopefully makes them enjoyable to look at. I like to experiment, make many variations of one picture and then chose the one that really gets my attention even if I look at it days/weeks later.

The thinking Man

Getting Rid of Assumptions

We believe in a lot of things, we believe we know a lot of things. You know what music they listen to, what places they go, that they’re happy or not from just looking at their clothes. The cloth you ware, what hairstyle you have obviously important in today’s world but making conclusion without talking to someone can be dangerous. After all you will stuck in the same false thinking. Don’t be afraid to change they way of your thinking and other’s either.

Sam Webber's painting of Cleopatra for National Geographic

As he didn’t have a lot of resources to work from, he had to create something from his own knowledge. “We wanted to show both her strength and character while at the same time evoking the mystery that has become synonymous with her legend and name” – says Webber. A very detailed artwork, like the earring refers that she killed herself with a snake.

For the magazine we are making as part of a university project about Birmingham, I’m writing about J.R.R. Tolkien’s relationship with the city.

Other then just taking a picture of places that influenced him, I’m going to make a drawing including a place that may have inspired the images of the dark towers with fictional pictures out of the story itself.

I’ll put these on the blog later on.

Links:

http://www.christophniemann.com

http://sampaints.com/