Google’s Doodles

image courtesy of google

Let’s deal with a) first. Apple’s apple symbol is a tribute to Isaac Newton, and hence to science and innovation. It has been bitten on one side, bringing to mind the computer byte and the sexual frisson of Adam and Eve succumbing to temptation by eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Does everyone get all of that? Probably not. Google’s doodles say similar things (minus the sex) but so clearly that more of us notice.

Now, b). Whereas Apple’s consistency reeks of old-school corporate control, Google’s ephemeral symbols seem timelier. Whether by accident or design, they’re one of a new wave of constantly changing “dynamic identities” that feel right for our frenzied, febrile era. If dynamic identities are too slick, like AOL’s, they risk appearing formulaic — but Google’s clumsiness makes it look sincere, even to its critics.

“For a long time, I hated that logo,” Saville admitted. “But now that Google is so ridiculously powerful, it seems so wrong that I’m starting to quite like it.”

Full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/t-magazine/02talk-rawsthorn.html

H&FJ's Techniques for Combining Fonts

Article:

http://www.typography.com/email/2010_03/index_tw.htm

The Creative Taste Debate

Rule #2: Understand the difference between art and graphic design

In his book, Website’s That Work, renowned creative guru Roger Black wrote, “Design shouldn’t be mere decoration; it must convey information.” Black wrote that book in 1997, a lifetime ago, yet the principle still rings true today. That’s because graphic design is all about communication, not art. Yes, there is an “art” and a “science” to crafting messages that are relevant and meaningful to a target market. But let’s be clear, art is something we admire in an art gallery. In our homes, we use art to decorate. It’s personal. What it means to me may not mean the same to you. In marketing, graphic design is only good design when it communicates a strategic objective (usually to sell something). If it doesn’t do that, it will not matter how cool it looks, it will not resonate. In other words, no sales. Just mere decoration.

Full article: http://blog.sterlingklor.com/?p=155

The 8 Types of Bad Creative Critics

Milton Glaser on Art

"Art is fundamentally a survival device of the species. Otherwise it wouldn’t be so persistent. It wouldn’t be in every culture. We wouldn’t know about it…

How does art help you survive? It helps us survive by making us attentive. In a simplistic way, when you go past a forest and you look at it and you say, ‘that looks just like Cézanne.’ And you realize Cézanne has made you see the reality of the forest in a way that you never could have seen before. He’s made you attentive. Every work of art that you care about makes us attentive. And if it doesn’t do that—it ain’t art."

Paula Scher on Bad Work

I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear you describing some of your work as bad. Would you share an example of something that falls into that category? And is it something you felt was bad at the time, or only in retrospect having arrived at a “breakthrough”?

I was really talking about bad periods of work, not individual pieces of design. My “professional” work is rarely “bad”, it’s mostly mediocre or a “B”. That’s because I am too experienced to deliver a terrible job, and I know how to create something appropriate for a given milieu that will function appropriately. There is a TED talk I gave on this about “serious” work versus “solemn” work. Serious work takes place in extraordinarily rare circumstances. That’s when real breakthroughs are made. Sometimes the breakthroughs aren’t that well crafted because when something is new, it isn’t totally refined. It takes the second or third version of it to get the kinks out. Then it just becomes “solemn” work. For example, I think my early work for the Public Theater was “serious” and my work for the Lincoln Center institutions was “solemn”.

The “bad” work I was referring to is process work that the public never sees. To make change, I try things that are just horrific. Sometimes I feel like I don’t know how to design anymore. I put together techniques and genres that don’t really work. I lose my sense of scale or color, I try things that are awful by any standard. If I’m working on a project with a deadline, I’ll finally abandon the failed experiments and fall back on something I already know how to do (solemn work). You can coast through a career like that, but you won’t grow.

Sometimes amidst the bad stuff I see something in a new way. That’s what I’m looking for.

Full Interview:

http://prttyshttydesign.blogspot.com/2010/02/ps-interviews-ps.html