“On an average day consumers are exposed to six thousand advertisements and, each year, to more than twenty-five thousand new products,” according to Scott M. Davis in his book Brand Asset Management.

We often refer to this onslaught of media and marketing as “the clutter” and we say that good design “cuts through” this clutter, making it easier for people to chose the stuff that they take into their own little system.

As a graphic designer, I (and you other designers out there) have the task of cutting through the clutter. If not, I/we are merely adding to the clutter. One way that this process makes sense to me is to compare it to a filter. Filters work by taking a mass of matter and removing parts that are undesirable. A water filter, for example takes water that is full of, well, clutter, and as the water passes through, the unwanted gunk is kept back sending out only the clean, usable water. One notable dimension of any filtration process is that more goes in the in than goes out the out.

Graphic designers work as a sort of visual filter. We, like everyone else out there, take in thousands and thousands of visual messages each day. But! Graphic designers and other visual communicators are also sending out messages, hopefully relevant ones; the kind that cut through and stand out.

When I begin a project (an identity design project, for example), I begin by learning all I can about the company, the consumer, the product and so on. I take note of what in the mass of clutter is relevant to the project—what colors, ideas and concepts, competition, symbols, icons, et cetera relate and in turn communicate. This is where the filtration system comes into play. In order for my design solution to be effective, I have to start with more visual stuff than I ultimately send out and the stuff that I send out must be absolutely relevant.

The quality of any design solution is dependent upon not only the amount of ‘visual stuff’ that the designer takes in, but the ability of that designer to see in a truly unique way and an ability to somehow store that information in an accessible and “searchable” manner. Basically, in order to be innovative in the way we designers send messages, we need to spend enough time innovating how we receive messages. Doing so will make us very effective visual filters.

At this point, I don’t plan on elaborating on how we can innovate our methods of receiving messages, but I will argue that the really good designers seem to have a knack at such a thing.

If you have any thoughts on how we can innovate our reception of visual messages, please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Thank you!

More info about this project can be found here and here. Thanks!

When I reached the day of reckoning on this project, I pulled all the data obtain on my questionnaire and it totaled 100 people exactly. People from all over the world. That seemed perfect. My hope to get a handful of photos, poems, songs, and other ‘expression’ about hope and or fear was hardly realized and so I canned my plans for that aspect of the design. Funny thing happened though . . .

I decided to go and look at the ‘harvest’ of responses again, to see if anyone else had participated, and I was a bit blown away. Well over 1500 have posted their hope and fears. There are also a whole lot of photos, poems, mp3s, and other art! So, when I say that I am done, I am not really done. I have all this awesome data and most of it is not included in the piece I just finished designing and installing. So what now?

Well, I think I will have to write (and design, of course) a book. And I will! When? I am not sure, but I will. Right now things are really busy for me, trying to finish up my BFA program at BYU-Idaho and working freelance and being a Dad to my adorable Nina. But I will do it! I am already starting.

Anyhow, the process of this was really something. I didn’t track how many hours of work went into the project, but it was a lot of hours. Last weekend, I printed everything out, mounted it to foam core and cut it all out. It took about 50 hours to complete just that task. Then I hung it all in the library, using nails and gaffers tape.

While the project is done, it is not done. Stand by.

Illustration done with ink, marker and graphite.

Okay, okay, so specialization is also for me. I may specialize in graphic design, but that doesn’t mean that I have to ignore other kinds of art. Nope, not me. I have been known to write a little music, snap some photographs, cook some tasty meals, shoot and edit some shorts, write a little here and there and even pull out the ole drawing supplies. Why do I do this? Because it makes me a better graphic designer. See, specialization.

I was looking through some old stuff and found this pig illustration I did 2 years or so ago. I rather like it—so I am posting it. If anyone is interested in a print, let me know and we can arrange for a nice high quality giclee.

This is a book.

I am in a book arts class and I am learning some really cool things. This is the first completed project for the class. It’s called a long stitch. The examples we observed in class looked like this, and this is the style that most of the students did. But me? I don’t really like leather. So I found some corrugated plastic at my local sign shop and achieved a completely different aesthetic.

I rather like it. More images after the jump.

A close-up view of the binding. Holes poked in with a hot needle, like butter.

Velcro makes for a clean closure and a noisy opening. Also, notice the channel cut out for each 'hinge'.

Eight signatures of hefty Mohawk superfine will make for sketchbook magic (at least that is the idea).

A thousand-year-old manuscript.

The Fall semester here at Brigham Young University-Idaho starts a little late, on the 10th of September this year. But things are in full swing and I am feeling the burn. I am taking Advanced Typography, Color Photography, Book Arts, History of Design and Illustration, and an Old Testament class. All of these are great, really. The big love of my heart? Advanced Typography.

The first day of Type class was spent looking at some old old printed samples. We got to hang out with this incredible working replica of an Acorn press. I should snag some more info about it and post it on here. Below are some photos of the books and manuscripts that we got to pass around. It was really something to handle some of typography’s rich history.

Just a disclaimer, these photos were captured on my phone. Sorry they aren’t better.

An acorn printing press. This is just sitting in a room in our library.

An Ethiopian Coptic Bible.

Some detail on the Ethiopian Coptic. Look at that language! It's ancient Ge'ez.

Another look at the manuscript from above.

A sort of Roman passport. Dated back to the first century!

My entry for Veer's first Take a Picture creative contest

I just won a $200 subscription to Veer’s new marketplace! I was one of five winners for the “big and blue” contest. I ran outside with some sidewalk chalk and went to work, snapped a photo and voila! Check out this contest and join in!

Eric Gill's An Essay on Typography. The first edition was written in 1931.

This summer has been filled with some really great reading. About two weeks ago I finished Eric Gill’s, An essay on Typography. This lovely (and quick!) read was written in 1931.

Eric Gill is a very opinionated man, and throughout the book, he speaks much about type, printing, punch-cutting, paper, ink and more as it related to the industrial revolution. I was fascinated with how his concerns and opinions about the changing world relate to our changing world. Today, we are facing globalization, advances in technology, offshoring/outsourcing and so on. Gill’s essay is right in line with some of the challenges that today’s creative professional face.

“If you are going to employ men to build a wall, and if those men are to be treated simply as tools, it is imbecility to make such a design for your wall as depends upon your having masons who are artist.” p. 8

I might relate this to today by saying, “If you are going to outsource your website design to a handful of right-brained coders (now I know that there are many left-brained coders, I am not talking about you), it is imbecility to make such a brief for your website as depends upon your having coders who are artist.”

Eric Gill goes on, in his chapter on lettering, to outline some core principles in understanding what typography is and how it ought to be used. Principles like readability, aesthetic, letters are not pictures but signs for sounds, abstract forms. One thing I love in this chapter is how he relates that blackletter was not a classification to those in the gothic world, their letters were simply letters. Italic was not italic to scribes in Italy, but they were rather just letters.

An example of the diagrams that are in this book.

Another gem of knowledge is the brief chapter on punch-cutting, the process by which metal type was cut at the time. He compares the hand done process, which is vertically integrated by one man, i.e. the type is designed and cut into steel by the same man. In the machine method of punch-cutting, a designer draws the letters about two inches high. Then a draughtsman reflects the images through a lens and enlarges each form to about 12 inches high. This is then refined as seen fit by the draughtsman’s supervisor. The image is placed under a pantograph and the image is etched into a thin layer of wax laid on a metal bed. Then another removes the unwanted wax and places the wax letter in relief in an electric bath, coating it with copper. The wax is melted out and you are left with a “positive” pattern which is placed into a new pantograph where it is traced at all the needed sizes. The type is then cast. This process makes for a much faster cutting of type than can be done by hand. Gill rambles (sarcastically) about how unlimited this process is. He tells that even if all those employed by the industrial punch-cutting process were ‘in full intellectual sympathy with the designer,’ (which is very far from the case) there is still a hinderance to accuracy. He talks of ‘tame’ workers who are overseen by those interested in business, not art.

Eric Gill includes some really neat examples of type.

This elitist perspective carries throughout the book. He champions handmade inks and papers (something I am dying to figure out how to do), hand printing and hand binding. He argues that a machine so complicated that the workers are watching the machine, rather than the printing, and one that takes 18 men to operate and 800 men to build, will never be as sensitive as the hand-done process.

This book gives tremendous context to the history of graphic design and typography in the Industrial Revolution. Being such a quick read, I can’t think of a good reason why any designer shouldn’t read Eric Gill’s book.

Under Consideration's fancy Brand New logo sketchbook, complete with quotes! (photo from Under Consideration)

This week I got a little somethin’ in the mail! Under Consideration has this super neat blog, Brand New, all about brands and logos. They asked people to submit their thoughts on the importance of sketching in the logo design process. My quote was one of the thirty selected for their book!

Take a look after the jump!

My quote. Wisdom? Well, maybe! (click it to enlarge it)

Just in case you can’t read it in the photo, this is what it says..

“Bytes are foreign objects that make the computer a strange machine to me. I don’t really even understand how it works. But I know how a pencil works. And I know how paper works. I can hold these things. I can’t hold bytes.”

I needed a typeface for a print project I am working on and had a hard time finding just the right thing. So I went handmade. Rather than start something from scratch, I took some inspiration from the fantastic form of H&F-J’s Archer bold.

I am really enjoying the aesthetic of this face. I am not sure of the legal issues of distributing my take on someone else’s typeface. Since I’ve licensed it, I know I can use it, but I would like to make it available for free. More on how I use it to come.