Tuesday, February 23, 2016

The moment I realized I wasn’t an “artist”…

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…and how it transformed my design career forever.

I’m going to share with you one of the most profound moments in my professional career. My hope is that this little piece will help not just creatives but anyone who is still trying to figure out what their passion in life is.

As a designer, I consider myself remarkably fortunate to be able to work hard and to do what I love every day

As a designer, I consider myself remarkably fortunate to be able to work hard and to do what I love every day for the last 10 years. Now with that being said… I’ve never really considered myself an “artist”.

“What?!”

Wait let me explain, I mean an artist in the traditional sense. If you ever find me sketching the landscape from my front porch wearing a french barrette, play the lottery my friend. Don’t get me wrong, though, I love being creative, building things and giving something new life.

Like many visual designers, I started at traditional art school from elementary on up. That period of time was a huge moment of growth for me as a designer and even more so as a human being; I still never felt exactly “at home” in the art community. Maybe it was the thought of being in a classroom and having an exact assignment, but I never felt like there was enough freedom for me.

You will hear that word from me a lot.

Freedom, freedom of creativity, the beautiful process of allowing something that is already free to be out of its own cage and allowing it to traverse a new terrain. I wasn’t the kid walking around with a portfolio half his size nor covered in gesso, acrylic paint, or charcoal (most of the time). Unfortunately, for a long time, I thought that’s what a real artist was. That if I didn’t act or feel that way, then I wasn’t a true artist.

I didn’t have that visceral connection that my peers seemed to have

As you can imagine that train of thought started a long road of searching. I began to enter every extracurricular art program that came my way. Painting, sculpting, photography — you name it I did it or was around it. I still do many of those things every blue moon. The problem was that I soon found out that I didn’t really enjoy them as much as I thought I should. Although I feel as if all of the work over the years helped me move from medium to medium as my career progressed, at that point in time I just couldn’t connect.

I was always more intrigued by scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers than I was with the Van Goghs, Jackson Pollocks, and Edgar Degas. This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy painting and art history! Quite the opposite actually, but I didn’t have that visceral connection that my peers seemed to have. I just knew that I wanted to create. Simple.

I did not realize my true passion in design until I began working in experiential design, UX, and programming around the age of 21–22 at an ad agency. This new way of creative thinking truly opened my eyes and seemed incredibly more meaningful to me than the mediums I had worked in. I was affecting people and solving their problems by combining technology and creativity.

As I grew in my field it finally dawned on me that what I was really attracted to was problem-solving and using creative solutions to address problems and to achieve an emotional response from the user or audience.

What an awesome realization that was.

Freeing myself from those societal boxes opened up an infinite world of creativity and technology to experiment with. All of a sudden there were no rules and that freedom spilled over into my contracted work as well as my passion projects. Inspiration began to come from everywhere and my experiences expanded. I was now working on films, projection mapping stunts, web design, and many other projects.

Freeing myself from those societal boxes opened up an infinite world of creativity and technology to experiment with

This also allowed me to meet and learn from many incredibly brilliant creatives. These chance meetings would never have happened if I just remained within the “artist” box that creatives are too often placed into. Everything became a beautiful challenge.

To this day still I love problem-solving and art with all my heart. I‘ve written all of this to say that it’s okay if you don’t feel like an artist in the traditional sense at the beginning of your career, or ever. It’s okay if you don’t fit the pre-existing mold for your specific career. Break it. Create outside of your comfort zone. As humans (and especially creatives) we are not meant to be categorized and put into a one size fits all box.

We are all living a unique human experience which should be expressed in different ways. Focus more on what you truly enjoy. Absorb as much knowledge as you possibly can, practice every day for several hours — no matter what your discipline is, the medium and the answer, will eventually find you.

[– This article was originally published on Medium –]

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The Met’s new logo polarizes opinion

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New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art—The Met, for short—has just redesigned its well-loved logo. The Museum has gone by a single letter since 1971, using a straightforward M as its logo. All that’s totally gone out the window in a radical update that’s been harshly criticized.

The Met will use its new logo on its website and print materials from March. (Currently, the old logo is still on display on the homepage.)

The Met’s new logo embodies its nickname, which is what it’ll be known as from now on. Accordingly, the museum’s new logo is the words “THE” and “MET” stacked on top of each other in bright, red letters. This has prompted some critics to demean it as a “red double-decker bus that has stopped short, shoving the passengers into each other’s backs.” The criticism makes oblique reference to initial objections that the museum outsourced the rebrand to a London-based design studio—in fact, although the company in question, Wolff Olins, does indeed herald from London, the studio responsible was actually their New York office.

It’s quite a change when your logo used to be a single letter for the past 45 years, but it’s with good reason. The Met has a longer-term goal going forward: it wants to give its graphic identity a facelift to make the museum more navigable and aesthetically consistent for visitors.

The logo itself is a study in technique and fusion. Crafted by British designer Gareth Hague—also responsible for the controversial typeface used for London’s 2012 Olympics—it features a combination serif face, sans-serif touches, and calligraphic influences. The six letters form a design that’s clean, modern and stripped-down. The individual letters seamlessly flow from one to the next, like a collection of ligatures; think of the connections as making a bigger statement on the Met’s history that’s both subtle and significant. Since the Met features modern art and medieval pieces, the ligatures symbolize that the Met’s past is connected with its future.

The redesign includes two, distinct typefaces: Austin, a serif typeface and a sans serif typeface with Calibre influences. There’s also a bold and vibrant color palette along with a dotted line featuring diamond-shaped icons that are being dubbed “ornaments.” These design touches will be featured on the Met’s maps, digital platforms, signage and info material.

The philosophy behind the wider redesign was to focus on accessibility. The new brand’s designers say that they wanted to communicate accessibility to the museum’s visitors. Therefore, the typeface choice—as well as the color palette—is simple, friendly and global. For an institution as big as the Met, this redesign strategy makes sense, as simplicity is a way to link all of its different components for worldwide visitors of different backgrounds.

In total, this new design represents a broader, new brand identity for the Met. It’s the culmination of a two-year relationship between the Met and Wolff Olins. Whether or not the Met ultimately succeeds with the aims of its new logo is anyone’s guess at this point. One thing should be kept in mind, though: when longstanding designs change, the updates are often criticized, only to be gradually accepted as time wears on. It’ll be interesting to see if this happens with The Met’s new logo.

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Monday, February 22, 2016

Essential design trends, February 2016

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Looking for a website refresh and don’t know where to start? Some of the trendiest elements in web design right now are fun aesthetically and pretty easy to use.

Adding a trendy feature to your current design, or new build, can help create a modern vibe that can help drive visitors to your site. And what’s particularly nice about this tri of trends is that you can use them with existing elements, color and typography palettes and branding.

Here’s what’s trending in design this month:

1. Duotone color schemes

Duotone color palettes have been around for a long time, but the recent take adds a color wash effect to a duotone gradient for a full-screen, high impact effect. It’s something that trended out in a major way with flat design, but thanks to stunning usage by Spotify duotone is back.

So what exactly is duotone?

It is the use of two colors to form a palette. In the most basic form, duotone is a complementary combination from the color wheel. In more complex uses, designers are using all kinds of color combinations and breaking the rules with pairings.

Most of the duotone effects feature a brightly-colored overlay on top of an image. The duotone effect highlights darks and lights and creates visual impact with stunning color. Spotify uses it in a great way to make standard artist photos that you’ve likely seen dozens of times look just different enough to be attention grabbing.

It’s a technique that you can use in a variety of ways. It works with almost any design concept and can be used as a full-screen element, such as many of the examples above, to create dominant art. It can also be used to create an interesting background, to accent user interface elements or to help add emphasis to a specific part of the design. Duotone works best when used for a single design element. The technique can be overpowering and should be used in moderation.

2. Spilt-screen design

Websites featuring a split-screen design are growing exponentially. The design technique features two panels of content side-by-side. Most of these concepts use a symmetrical outline so that each side of the screen has the same size and shape.

The result is a cool, dual content experience on desktop computers and (when coded properly) a great screen-by-screen experience on smaller devices, where the panels collapse and are stacked scrolling elements.

The design opportunities with the split-screen trend are limitless—half and half splits, splits with cards or grid-style elements, a subtle split and the list goes on. Each side of the design can also drive users to different types of content and help you glean valuable user analytics about the type of content that people want to see and click on.

Split-screen designs are user-friendly, work well in responsive frameworks and don’t overpower other design techniques that you might want to use.

Here are a few ways to split the screen effectively:

Pair color and typography when you don’t have strong visuals.
Focus the attention of the user with left to right movement that results in an action.
Use color blocking to split the screen and give your message plenty of room while increasing readability.
Think of a split-screen as oversized cards. Stack container elements in a mosaic or masonry style pattern to showcase different pieces of content.
Keep each “screen” simple. The trick to this design concept is the split screen. A minimal style can help add emphasis to the content therein.

3. Typography in a shared space

This is one of those trends you almost have to see, to understand: typography is extending into shared spaces in the design. Look at most websites and there are images and backgrounds and type. Elements are either made together, such as type on an image, or they are completely separated.

More designers are breaking out of that format and creating projects where type extends into the spaces of other elements. It’s interesting and fun to look at.

It can also be a challenge to create, because of concerns about readability.

The technique works best with simple typography, such as a medium-stroke sans serif. Text should have plenty of contrast to stand out from the background and any elements it crosses into or across. For this reason, most of the designs using this technique use white or black lettering.

Text also needs to have some size for this to work. Almost as important as color contrast, is contrast in size and space. You also have to take special care in how the text moves with different screen sizes or breakpoints so that letters do not cover areas of the image that are vital to your message.

One of the most stunning examples of this is from Deux Huit Huit (you’ll want to visit the site for the full effect). Lettering moves across and through the main image on the homepage. The words are readable as they “fall off” the image and cross the space between the photo and background.

Conclusion

While a lot of design trends come and go almost as fast as you start to recognize them, the ones that stick around often work well with other time-tested techniques. That’s what stands out the most about this trio of modern styles. Each can be worked into a layout for a touch of newness. These techniques are fairly easy to implement (and remove later) without destroying your entire aesthetic.

Try one of these techniques for a visual refresh. Think about getting out of your comfort zone a bit with bold color choices or a change just to your homepage. Or go a little more bold and try a combination of trendy techniques for a design that really stands out. (Did you notice the website for Stikwood uses two of the trends – split-screen design and typography in a shared space?)

What trends are you loving (or hating) right now? I’d love to see some of the websites that you are fascinated with. Drop me a link on Twitter; I’d love to hear from you.

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Sunday, February 21, 2016

Popular design news of the week: February 15, 2016 – February 21, 2016

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Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that were posted, so don’t miss out and subscribe to our newsletter and follow the site daily for all the news.