#studentopinion

Killing our copyright integrity?

With the increase of online sharing and stock files creates an opportunity to be their own graphic designer (and for cheap most of the time). However as a designer and as a graphic designer I believe there is little value in having such a vast compilation of designs and pre-made business solutions. They not only take away work from us as designers but also create a marketplace where everyone has the same or similar imagery styles and layout elements. While this is not a new problem for creative professionals such as photographers. It is further encouraging the use of unpaid stock photos and free templates for graphic design. However there is a counter argument that all should be provided with equal opportunity and resources, but that fails to define the qualities and strengths of a business or marketing plan.  A design should not only reflect the money that was spend on it, but also the use of time, careful planning, and differentiating it from the competition on values.  

Ultimately if the design was so closely replicated in cases such as stock logo designs, there would be uproar from the designer or design company for copyright infringement. By providing so many branding identity designs for such a little or no cost it devalues the design exponentially. 

Examples

https://www.stocklayouts.com/Templates/NewReleases.aspx

https://stocklogos.com/

The Dieline is some that I subscribe to and will show up constantly in my Pinterest feed. This post was written just to my interest too. 

The new and friendlier option.

As designers we love our tools, working away hour after hour, relying on the function to drive our concepts into solutions. With an interactive laptop, or a touch capable work space, I researched what my options were without buying an additional graphics tablet. 

Ultimately I found my list of comparable products, consisting of:

The Apple Pencil 

The Adobe Ink and Slide 

The Surface Pencil 

and the Bamboo Ink + the Bamboo Sketch 

While the Apple pencil offers competitive technology, its range of supported devices are so minimal you have to almost exclusively work on the iPad Pro and while there are Adobe Suite Apps, there is little possibilities of completing a project solely on the iPad. 

The Adobe Ink and Slide had many of the same problems, they offered an increased range of support on the iPad’s, supporting the newer generations of the iPad in addition to some of the iPad Pro models. 

The Surface Pencil both marketed and performed similar to the Apple Pencil, although because it was released first, it does not offer the same level of technology (tilt detection for example). The Surface Pencil was also one of the most restrictive, built initially for work only on the Surface Pro tablet it left users disappointed with the promised compatibility on other Surface models. 

The Bamboo Ink and the Bamboo Sketch are a newly released WACOM digital stylus’ available for both IOS and Windows. They were released around March 2017, and available for sale in June 2017 in the UK. They are the first company to offer both a Mac and Windows supporting system, with all the technology and a continually increasing platform for app capability. Not only do these allow for new technology but the Bamboo Ink is fully supportive of Windows Ink, allowing it to be used directly in Adobe Suit apps on supporting laptops and tablets. 

The fine line between quality and cost, designing furniture to last a lifespan not a lifetime.

The ideal outfitters for completely redoing a room or when moving into your first home. Put together with a small booklet of information and a packaged pre-sorted assembly kits. IKEA is known for doing average and above average offerings. These however are not timeless, are not recycling friendly and are not moving friendly. Not quite fast fashion and not quite classics, the Ardines in a world of Bluenotes and Bootlegger. Reasonable price for quality and designed for personal assembly with no prior skills. 

Explaining typefaces vs fonts to a non-designer.

General exposure to the word “font” is that of the Word Processing drop down font menu. With this perception that the “font” holds the style and additional options of Italic, Bold, and Capitals. While designers know that the style of the characters are built in by the Typeface and the font is a resulting set of characters derived from that style. Common derivations of English (Latin-English most commonly) words however would suggest a type “face” would be the visual result of this style. Each character literally being a face of the designed style. While we know this not to be the case, it does seem a reasonable explanation. 

Explaining the concept is that a typeface is that of the signature or style and that a font is the character set that is visually presented and chosen.

 In a blog called NERDPLUSART they put it eloquently by analogy,

What does fear do to our design?

Does fear push us to be successful, past our comfort zones, and into the unknown? What about the different kinds of fear, fear of failure, embarrassment, deadlines, or the unknown.

Some people report working well under pressure of with fear driving the self-perception of the project. Allowing fear to build the fire of hard work and passion, fear forcing us push past the meek suggestions that may not be “good” enough. Fear is a driving force and an emotional state both created and situated in where we choose to be mentally and physically. We chose to either be motivated or burdened by fear. 

Fear of failure in design can allow us to focus on the specifications and constraints of a design, reminding the use of the design, the user safety, durability and codes. Creating a successful, conscious design where fear is an instrument.

All design should be true definition minimalist

Recently after watching the Netflix documentary “Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things” it inspired further research into the general perception of what minimalism actually is. One thing that really resonated with me was something that Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus mentioned in the film was that it was not a set of restrictions that defined minimalism but by the removal of anything not essential or without value (“the minimalists”). This meaning that if you wish to collect hundreds of figures or collectable items, then have them only if they bring value into your life. An object brings you happiness, minimalism does not require you to get rid of it. Minimalism requires you to reduce everything else so you have time for that object or that activity.