One Element, Many Patterns

Our pattern assignments look beautiful in the gallery wall, don’t you agree? I love the many interpretations and creative approaches to patterns in your work. Great job!

Final Project Recommended Reading

Check out the school library or your local bookstore for these books for inspiration and insight into the brilliant minds of Stefan Sagmeister and Tibor Kalman.

Made You Look by Stefan Sagmeister
Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist by Peter Hall and Michael Bierut

Design=Heart? Stefan Sagmeister asks design students: Can design touch someone's heart?  →

Very informative article to help you with the final project.

Stefan Sagmeister shares happy design

Graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister takes the audience on a whimsical journey through moments of his life that made him happy — and notes how many of these moments have to do with good design.

This is the video we watched in class as an introduction to the Final Project. What did you think of all the examples we saw in today’s lecture? How can you use your work to make a positive change in your community?

14 Best Patterns Inspiration

There are many artists, designers, and architects that employ beautiful, intricate and complex patterns. I’ve compiled the “best of” collection to inspire you for your Patterns Assignment. Each image is accompanied by a short description of the artist/designer/architect/etc., and each name is hyper-linked to their website (if applicable), so you can get more details on the people that inspire you the most.

1. Sol LeWitt, whose deceptively simple geometric sculptures and drawings and ecstatically colored and jazzy wall paintings established him as a lodestar of modern American art.

2. Buckminster Fuller is an author, scientist, artist, inventor, architect, engineer, philosopher, mathematician, metaphysician, cartographer, visionary, social historian, creator of dymaxion engineering, geodesics, synergy, synergetics, World Game & world resources inventory, arguably the first modern futurist.

3. Organic and geometric structural patterns of artist Kenneth Snelson, whose work focuses on the patterns of physical forces in three dimensional space.

4. Andy Goldsworthy is a brilliant British artist who uses nature to make his intricate, transient, and ephemeral patterns. His goal is to understand nature by directly participating in nature as intimately as he can. He generally works with whatever comes to hand: twigs, leaves, stones, snow and ice (my favorites), reeds and thorns.

Icicle Star, joined with saliva

Oak Leaves and Holes

Rowan Leaves & Hole

Pebbles & Hole

Twigs & Hole

Pigeon Feathers

5. Le Corbusier (born Charles-Édouard Jeannere) was a Swiss architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called Modern architecture or the International style.

6.Bridget Riley is is a British painter and designer. She shows a complete mastery of the effects characteristic of Op art, particularly subtle variations in size, shape, or placement of serialized units in an overall pattern.

Blaze

Breathe

Cataract

Descending

Two Blues

High Sky

7. Robert Zakanitch paints lace and embroidery. His patterns are beautiful and speak to the shifting instability of texture.

Red Squirrel

Blue Birds

8. Take a close look at the figure-ground relationship in the works by M.C. Escher, who is most known for his impossible architecture and landscape drawings, showcasing his play on perspective and point of view to create structures which ultimately cannot exist. I have always been more captivated by Escher’s pattern works. His ability to create a fluid and seamless plane of repeated images fitting perfectly together is both unrivaled and inspiring.

Horsemen

Angels and Devils

Geckos

9. One of my absolute favorites has to be Islamic art & architecture. I love how everything is extremely intricate, yet uses very simple shapes.

Detail of Islamic art from Golra Sharif in the Punjab of Pakistan (near the capital Islamabad). This is classic Islamic abstract work.

Typical Islamic design on a pillar from the mosque of Wazir Khan in Lahore, Pakistan. It was built in 1634 during the rule of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, a period acknowledged as the golden age of Mughal architecture in the subcontinent. It was during this period Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal in memory of his wife Mumtaz.

If you want to witness the splendor of Islamic art and design then get down to Granada, Spain. Beautiful detail of geometric patterns.

10. Japanese paper is another beautiful source for pattern inspiration.

11. Navajo Weaving has a unique look, drawing from its Spanish and Pueblo history and nomadic way of life.

12. Traditional Amish Quilts lend patterns that have beauty in simplicity. Modern quilt artists are using black with solid colors and discovering the beauty in such basic designs.

13. Fractals are mathematically-based functions that produce the most stunning patterns in nature.

Romanesco Broccoli: this variant form of cauliflower is the ultimate fractal vegetable. Its pattern is a natural representation of the Fibonacci or golden spiral, a logarithmic spiral where every quarter turn is farther from the origin by a factor of phi, the golden ratio.

Many plants follow simple recursive formulas in generating their branching shapes and leaf patterns.

Crystallizing water forms repeating patterns in snowflakes and on frosty surfaces.

14. African Textiles are infused with spiritual and mythical meaning in the actual pattern designs on the cloth. Specific patterns are also used as a form of identity with each tribe having their own unique patterns.

Asante Kente Cloth, Ghana

Kuba Textile, Congo

Karibu Textile, Tanzania

Can you find more patterns inspiration?

Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight

Here is the documentary film, Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight we watched in class on Thursday for anyone who missed it, check the library for a copy, or you can purchase it on Amazon. Remember to comment on the blog with the name of the designer you’re choosing for your presentation! Looking forward to everyone’s presentation next week.

Part One: Abstract Type Compositions

Very effective and successful compositions using type and found materials.

Designing a Visual Narrative: Found Materials

Don’t be original, just be good.

— Paul Rand

Reminder: please take a look at the supply list for the Bookbinding Workshop on March 9. Everyone should have all the materials by March 9. To help you get started, here are photos of some of the supplies. Please note that not all of the materials from the supply list are pictured above, but this is just to get you started and familiar with the supplies.

Paul Rand Video

Here is the video we watched in class today of Paul Rand’s work and explanation of design principles. What do you think?

Creating a Visual Language

Primary Geometric Shapes

There were a lot of great compositions for the Primary Geometric Shapes assignment. The biggest improvement I saw was the attention to craftsmanship and relationship of the shapes to the margins. 

How can you challenge yourself to push abstraction through your forms and compositions?

What kind of composition achieves an effective figure/ground relationship?

After today’s lecture, you should be more comfortable with the foundational Gestalt principles of design. A firm grasp of these principles is probably the most powerful tool at a designer’s disposal. Alternately, those who don’t have a deep understanding of Gestalt are often lost when faced with design projects and imitate compositions from other designers, being relegated to cliché motifs and layouts. Resolve to learn the Gestalt principles of perception and you will see how your work improves.

You can find more information on today’s lecture by going to the library or bookstore and browsing for books on Gestalt Principles of design. You can also find good resources online.

Do you have any interesting links on visual language that you’d like to share with the class?

Saul Bass and Figure/Ground

I was intrigued when saw the posters for the 2010 Alamo Drafthouse / Levi’s Rolling Roadshow tour. The series of nine posters, designed by artist Olly Moss, are an homage to Saul Bass’ poster designs of the 50’s and 60’s.

These posters are so simple and elegant in their design; yet each composition contains many subtle layers of nuance. I love seeing such a masterful use of color, composition and figure/ground!

Tangram Assignment

Thanks for a great inclass critique of your tangram solutions. Your comments, feedback and participation was great. Overall, the solutions were creative, dynamic and unexpected.

A few tips to improve your composition in future assignments: consider relationship of the form to the margin, activate the whole space, evaluate the figure/ground relationship (design the positive AND negative space), and pay attention to craftsmanship. 

Good job everyone!!