Thoughts on Design
by
Paul M. Carhart
The
first thing I'd like to emphasize is that what rules there are can
indeed be broken. Very little is black and white. That said, it's
good to know what rules you're breaking which is why I went to school.
The
other thing to realize is, just because you've graduated from one
school or another, doesn't mean that your education is over. If
that were true, I would never have learned programs such as Dreamweaver
or Flash and would be severely limited in what I could accomplish
graphically (not to mention that the last ten years of my career
have been spent primarily working in new media, which didn't exist
when I went to school).
The
reality is that we live in a designed world. Thought has been given
to every building you may enter, car you may drive, park you may
wander and utensil you might use. Beyond what has been designed
by Man, there is an even greater design.
As
a designer, I like to think I'm following in my Father's footsteps.
A
few design basics to live by:
The
color wheel is your friend.
Some folks can just pick colors out of the air and they work. But
if you really want your design to sing and you want to eliminate
the guesswork, brush up on your color theory. A couple complimentary
colors will go a long way on your design as well as in your kitchen.
Three
is the magic number.
It's true. If you have points to make, make three of them. Graphic
elements, three is nice. If you absolutely must do more than three,
do five or seven. Whatever you do, stay odd.
All
capital letters are amateurish.
The possible exception to this is in extremely stylized headlines.
Still, even in e-mail, you're yelling. There's really no reason
TO ABUSE PEOPLE IN THIS WAY.
Brainstorming
is a treat.
The more ideas, the merrier. If we were Sith, we'd only care about
our one idea. But we are Jedi. We need many to come up with the
best stuff before unifying the vision.
Someone
has to be the visionary.
It doesn't always have to be the same person, but someone needs
to know where the project is going. It can't be a committee. That's
not leadership.
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