Things I couldn’t live without; 27″ iMac (Quad Core i7 w/16gb ram) + 17″ MacBook Pro (Quad Core i7 w/8gb ram), Wacom Intuos 4, Magic Mouse, iPhone 4s 32gb, Sennheiser 25HD MKII’s, Western Digital (1tb) Time Machine backup HDD, Awesome Figurines, a Big Desk + Good Coffee.
The following letters are the most beautiful letters you’ll ever read.
Inspiring, Loving and Painful all at once.
The First Letter — July 6, in the morning
My angel, my all, my very self – Only a few words today and at that with pencil (with yours) – Not till tomorrow will my lodgings be definitely determined upon – what a useless waste of time – Why this deep sorrow when necessity speaks – can our love endure except through sacrifices, through not demanding everything from one another; can you change the fact that you are not wholly mine, I not wholly thine – Oh God, look out into the beauties of nature and comfort your heart with that which must be – Love demands everything and that very justly – thus it is to me with you, and to your with me. But you forget so easily that I must live for me and for you; if we were wholly united you would feel the pain of it as little as I – My journey was a fearful one; I did not reach here until 4 o’clock yesterday morning. Lacking horses the post-coach chose another route, but what an awful one; at the stage before the last I was warned not to travel at night; I was made fearful of a forest, but that only made me the more eager – and I was wrong. The coach must needs break down on the wretched road, a bottomless mud road. Without such postilions as I had with me I should have remained stuck in the road. Esterhazy, traveling the usual road here, had the same fate with eight horses that I had with four – Yet I got some pleasure out of it, as I always do when I successfully overcome difficulties – Now a quick change to things internal from things external. We shall surely see each other soon; moreover, today I cannot share with you the thoughts I have had during these last few days touching my own life – If our hearts were always close together, I would have none of these. My heart is full of so many things to say to you – ah – there are moments when I feel that speech amounts to nothing at all – Cheer up – remain my true, my only treasure, my all as I am yours. The gods must send us the rest, what for us must and shall be - Your faithful Ludwig.
The Second Letter — Evening, Monday, July 6
You are suffering, my dearest creature – only now have I learned that letters must be posted very early in the morning on Mondays to Thursdays – the only days on which the mail-coach goes from here to K. – You are suffering – Ah, wherever I am, there you are also – I will arrange it with you and me that I can live with you. What a life!!! thus!!! without you – pursued by the goodness of mankind hither and thither – which I as little want to deserve as I deserve it – Humility of man towards man – it pains me – and when I consider myself in relation to the universe, what am I and what is He – whom we call the greatest – and yet – herein lies the divine in man – I weep when I reflect that you will probably not receive the first report from me until Saturday – Much as you love me – I love you more – But do not ever conceal yourself from me – good night – As I am taking the baths I must go to bed – Oh God – so near! so far! Is not our love truly a heavenly structure, and also as firm as the vault of heaven?
The Third Letter — Good morning, on July 7
Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us – I can live only wholly with you or not at all – Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits – Yes, unhappily it must be so – You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart – never – never – Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V is now a wretched life – Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men – At my age I need a steady, quiet life – can that be so in our connection? My angel, I have just been told that the mailcoach goes every day – therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at once – Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together – Be calm – love me – today – yesterday – what tearful longings for you – you – you – my life – my all – farewell. Oh continue to love me – never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.
ever thine
ever mine
ever ours
— Ludwig Van Beethoven. (source).
I just wrapped up my last day of work yesterday for the year. I’ve been working fulltime at Arthouse for about 10weeks now. Its been an awesome experience and I’ve loved every bit of it. Colin, the Director of Arthouse took all of us designers on a chartered helicopter tour to Waiheke Island for the day. It was spectacular! We spent the entire afternoon eating salmon, oysters, caviar and drinking a huge assortment of wines and champagne. I’ve never quite had such a job where your employer makes it very apparent that you are appreciated and its a great feeling. I’m away for about 10 days with family and then I’m back in the studio on the 4th of January. I actually can’t wait to get back to work, and I’m looking forward to the great challenges next year will bring. I’m also looking forward to working on this blog and my portfolio more, and in attempt to make them both more successful and more professional. Thanks for the views, and any comments you’ve made over the last year. And heres to a great New Year!
Music is a huge part of my life, and it always has been. I can’t imagine life without it and I listen to it constantly. Sometimes, if I’ve gone a day or so without listening to any music, I’ll feel like there is something missing and soon realise I need to listen to that particular thought or feeling provoking song.
When I was young and growing up, my father who was a music teacher at the time introduced me to instruments such as the Violin and Piano. At this stage of my life it was something I just had to do, rather than a preferred choice, but I’m grateful for the knowledge and experience now. I was soon performing in small school concerts playing the Violin, in small black outfits and little bow ties. Traditionally trained in the Suzuki method, which was popular at the time. I eventually gave up the Violin a few years later when I was 6 or 7 years old. I’m not completely sure why, but I assume I just didn’t have any interest in it. A number of years later I began having Piano lessons, from a very classically trained woman. I was drawn to the piano, and loved listening to music my father had in his collection, of the likes of Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach. I really loved the fun side of playing songs on the piano and tunes that I recognised, but I was still young and didn’t have the patience or concentration to play scales and small exercises over and over again through which my teacher required. At this stage, a notable tune that I learnt has stayed with me constantly and I can still play it with ease, ‘Ode to Joy’ by Beethoven, one of the first pieces of music I ever learnt on the Piano. Contrastingly, my mother was what some would call a hippy, and I often joined her on the beach for what was called ‘drumming sessions’ against the light cast by a fire or the setting sun. I later had lessons for a number of instruments, including the Flute, Recorder, Harmonica and Guitar. I still play the guitar today.
Later on in my life I began listening to generic popular music, when I was around 10yrs old I started falling into the downward spiral that is mainstream music and its dribble they call lyrics. I basically listened to anything and everything, not thinking about the music or what it meant, but just listening to it for the sake of listening to it. In college I continued to have guitar lessons, but becoming a member of a band was something that never interested me much. My music knowledge was becoming broader and I was now buying CD’s on a regular basis. The Internet became a wonderful resource, allowing me to preview and listen to nearly any kind of music I was interested in. Up until before I began working in a record store at the age of 20, I’d say my taste was pretty poor. Now after being around many like minded people and having access to a huge dynamic range of music at my finger tips, I’ve began toning and narrowing down what I like and dislike. I never actually thought it would happen, but I’m becoming more stubborn with music as I get older, and some of my friends call me a ‘music snob’. But I’m surprisingly ok with that title.
I think music is a huge part of society, especially in New Zealand culture. Although it is evident many New Zealand musicians struggle with success and generally can’t make a living through it. Now NZ music is broadcast all over the radio, T.V and is even part of huge motion picture movies. Music influences people’s lives in many ways, including conveying feelings, generating a mood or giving off a particular energy. This can become a lot more evident at live gigs and concerts. Advances in technology and trends in popular culture mean music is found pretty much everywhere, from Video Games and Anime, and is readily available to your ears from devices such as mobile phones and iPods. Music encourages and exhilarates me. There is nothing quite like the tingle and shiver you get from a piece of music you love and enjoy listening to.
On a final note; music influences my Graphic Design so much — that I wouldn’t know what to do without it.
I’ve been working on my portfolio. I have a lot more new work to put up soon from my current job working on a lot of projects for the film industry—so I wanted to prepare my site for all this content. Its not up yet, but the site is completely different now. Take a look.
I wanted to change the layout to display more images on screen, and more projects at once. Turns out its quite a lengthy process. More work will be up over the next few days.
I went into the city to photograph some work of mine, ended up walking the streets for hours hunting for typography.
Just My Type — By Simon Garfield is a flippin’ fantastic companion to anyone remotely interested in type and typography. I’ve re-read this book a number of times now and I can’t get enough of it. Its mostly a historical record of type and their designers with back stories on how they came to be used and more often than not modern day uses and popularity.
Not only is this book a great resource and a knowledgeable investment into the history of type and their respective designers, its also presented in a lovely fashionable way. The slip cover is a gorgeous stock and the matte texture exemplifies the lavish faces used on title treatment of the book. The authors name is set in Gill Sans and the majority of the body text throughout the book is set in Univers. Although some variation is found throughout when the author divulges into particular typefaces and wants to show them off—justifiably.
Simon covers a great range of era’s and topics. He touches on the popularity of type and how that sets them apart from un-popular type. He looks at what makes a typeface legible and un-legible. The popularity of Ampersands and their beauty. And he hits home hard with the stories behind the creation of well known type families such as Futura, Baskerville, Mr. & Mrs. Eaves, Frutiger, Optima, Sabon, Gotham and ofcourse—Helvetica & why people have a love hate relationship with it. I personally prefer to use Akzidenz Grotesk—as the uppercase ‘R’ is much more attractive than that of Helvetica’s.
Despite Simon never writing a book on Typography or Graphic Design for that matter, he has done a pretty good first attempt. It’s not written especially well—but the content and back story makes up for that. It is indeed, very informative. The front a and back cover are inlaid with a Typographic Periodic Table which I’ve seen online before but it’s nice having as a reference whilst reading.
Simon even cheekily included a great little chapter on ‘The worst typefaces in the world’ which makes for a good laugh. I don’t own a lot of books on design, and in general for that matter. And to be honest I think books are a dying breed. But I’m happy to have this in my somewhat pathetic collection of design books. It must be good if I’ve gone back to it and re-read it a few times—right?
I’d like to review a couple of other books I own, including—’How To Be A Designer Without Losing Your Soul’ and ‘Designers Are Wankers’. Both of which were religious bibles by my side throughout my study at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts.
When you don’t know what you want to listen to, or you want to discover something new, maybe you want to find a playlist that someone has created based on a particular genre, or even a mood or emotional feeling. Go no further than 8tracks. Its wonderful.
Lynda.com is one of the best resources I’ve found online. Fullstop. I can’t stress how good this resource is. Lynda.com was started in the late 90′s by Lynda herself in an attempt to teach her students more about web design. Since then it has hugely taken off and now covers not only web design, but nearly all facets of software use and development. Predominantly you will find thousands of videos on the Adobe Creative Suite, but this also stretches to things like Business, Home Computing and even Audio Engineering.
Not only is Lynda.com full of teaching and step-by-step tutorial videos, but it has nearly 50 documentaries! These are mostly on creatives, or professional industry based studios from print to web, branding to interactive. Documentaries also cover past great typographers, illustrators, photographers and the rock stars of the design world.
Lynda.com does have a subscription based service—but it is totally worth it for the amount of content on there. You can view a limited number of videos without an account to test it out but I highly recommend investing the small $25USD monthly fee to take full advantage of this site. I only wish I had known of this whilst I was studying, it would have been the best resource I could have had—who needs lecturers when you have access to lessons from the actual Adobe software developers!
Check it out Lynda.com.
My old MacBook Pro recently had an accident and went for a swim, safe to say it pretty much drowned a slow death. Anyway, after about a week of wondering if I could live without a computer, I went out and purchased a new one. I thought about getting an iMac, then I went to thinking I just needed a basic Pro or even an Air! But in the end I went with what I had previously and that was the 17″ MacBook Pro. Because I use this solely as a desktop replacement. I think its worthwhile spending a bit more for quite a substantially faster computer. The higher resolution at 1920×1200 is very nice for working on the intricate InDesign files and I have to hand it to apple, this new uni-body design is beautiful. They really nailed it. Here’s a picture of my new toy—and I’ll be back into writing for the blog over the next few days.
I don’t know the answer to that quite frankly. I mean, I guess that purely depends on what part of the industry you are in. But I wanted to write a post about dealing with clients and that struggle to constantly please and keep them happy whilst also generating a piece of design that isn’t ugly, or quite frankly—shit. I think a huge part of being a Graphic Designer, is actually in the ability to read people, to thoroughly understand them and to understand what it is exactly a client wants, as soon as possible. So many factors can interfere with this process. A Graphic Designer may very well have a wonderful vision or concept for a particular project, but if their client already has an idea that they want to have created you’re basically wasting your time generating something completely new. Being able to gauge if a client wants you to go crazy and come up with something unique or do something very basic and monotonous for them would be a very valuable skill indeed. I think all designers begin to build up upon this grounding as they progress with their career. And, I would like to think that I’m only at the starting stage, and eventually I will be able to turn directly to the same page as a client and whisk them off their feet with exactly what they want, flawlessly, every time, for every brief. Graphic Design then becomes this see-saw, a tug of rope war, or something to the effect of a bungee cord. You go backwards and forwards with ideas and compromise until ultimately the final result should be exactly what the client wanted, and with satisfaction from the Graphic Designer not only for pleasing the client, but hopefully for sparking their interest and inspiring them to be creative with whatever the project was. The best projects are when you surprise the client, but also yourself in your ability.
I’ve now been working at my new job nearly 1 month. Its a busy studio which is dominated by large amounts of briefs for the film industry including large print runs of one sheets, merchandising for sales and cinemas, from tickets—to billboards, you name it. Already, I’ve begun thinking about design differently. Well maybe not differently, but, thinking about it more. I’ve come to realise two things; one is that Graphic Design is the most important thing to me in this life, and secondly–I’m going to dedicate my life to being as good at it as I can be. You know most people are good a little of everything or whatever, I just want to be great, great at one thing. Graphic Design. I want to be known for it. I want to be seen for it. I want to be like my heroes, S. Sagmeister, E. Spiekermann, Experimental Jetset etc or never good as a result. To do this I’m going to have to work my ass off. That, I know for sure. That aside, I think the largest thing I’ve learnt and am still learning about is to understand clients better. Knowing if a client wants a simple solution like every other business card thats already out there cause they are so conditioned to be like everyone else, or if they want something unique, something special. Figuring this out at the start, would be very ideal. But not always the case
I’ll expand upon this in the coming weeks as I’m not quite sure what I’m trying to get at yet. I would like to however point out that I want to write more about design. I was never that interested in writing at college. But after numerous art history essays at university and a driving passion for design I soon came to realise writing about it could be incredibly powerful. So I will strive to do more of this. And please, comment. Tell me what you like. Tell me if I’m talking nonsense if I am! Some comments would be great.
Everyone loves looking at other peoples Art. Illustrators love to look at other peoples drawings. Graphic Designers strive to see the latest trends in using type, layout and print methods. Web Designers are constantly under pressure to out perform the next big thing online. We all love to be inspired. Its human nature. When we see something great, we want to make something greater. Its actually quite simple.
But, have you ever found yourself in that predicament where you need to reference something you have seen, or an image you have saved for reference but can’t remember where it came from to give credit or make a reference? Designspiration.net is the answer to this. I do not work for Designspiration.net, nor do they pay me money to write about it here. I am just a passionate designer expressing his love towards a simple website that makes my life so much easier, and me–happier.
Desinspiration.net put simply, is the ultimate way to reference fantastic Graphic Design you find on the internet. Its a collection of people who share the same love for great design, typography, illustration and photography. Features of the site allow you to browse through the latest additions by other members, ‘like’ images, search for images via key words or tags, look through trending tags and a whole range of other ideas. If you find an image you like, why not ‘follow’ that persons feed — that way, designspiration.net will recommend anything else that person submits or tags for your inspiration. Not only can you browse through existing inspiration, but you can add your own found images from other websites. When you add an image it automatically saves the link and lets you apply some keyword tags to the image.
After being a designer for a while now, I can’t express enough how helpful this is to keep a trail of anything you like, become inspired from or just plain want to reference at some point later on. You can follow my Designspiration.net feed after the jump.
My first week at my new job has been fantastic. Its been exciting, not too stressful and overall has been a huge learning experience for me. I’ve started out working on some low–key client projects with small print runs and towards the end of the week started on some more exciting briefs including some work for film titles by Warner Bros. & Disney. Despite having a long weekend here in NZ and huge celebrations currently underway due to the Rugby World Cup, all I can think about is getting back to work tomorrow and what challenges I will face in the process. I’m so enthusiastic about this great opportunity and I’m going to throw myself into it with everything I have.
Its a hugely different world working in a fast paced design studio. Work needs to be produced to a high standard and also produced at a fast rate. This will take me some time to get used to. Despite working on a number of freelance projects over the years, I’m still in a artist heavy focused mind set and every piece of art, design, illustration or whatever I embark on creating generally tends to take a long time to create. Now however, I need to channel my knowledge into producing solutions in a quick and efficient manner with important time constraints. University did however teach me to be efficient and work to a deadline, but nothing prepares you for the industry in this way.
The largest challenge I am going to face, is learning everything about prepress, colour profiles and printing methods for high quantity print runs. The studio I now work in does a lot of work for film studios including huge print runs with numbers anywhere between 5,000 & 20,000. This leaves small margin for error when it comes to design. But is a fantastic opportunity to get involved in some great work. Unfortunately whilst I was studying, any printing that I ever undertook generally didn’t require much prepress and the printers just carried out what ever needed to be done. Now I have to do it. Everything has to be press ready. So I have a lot to learn. On a side note– I recently subscribed to Lynda.com and I can’t recommend it enough. There is so much great content on this website its just overwhelming! From; InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator to HTML, CSS and ActionScript. I’m content at getting more knowledge with the software I use on a daily basis, and already I’ve learned so much.
I will continue to write on my experience in the design industry as this job progresses. Also, I will continue to use this site as a means of displaying any work I create outside of the studio I work for. Thanks for your interest.
