Design Realizations

This week has been the one that I was most looking forward to since the beginning of the quarter.  I love visual design, and looking at things from a different perspective.  I usually am able to be decently creative within my own head, but once I attempt to actually make something of it, I realize my lack of artistic ability.  I have just thought that that was a part of me that would never be changed, but after this week, I think that it may just be a mindset and knowledge that I just hadn't acquired yet.  Going outside and trying to find letters in the natural world, was a spectacular way to change, even slightly, our outlook on the world around us.  That small change in focus, completely adjusted the pictures I was able to take.

In McCloud's comics, I was most struck by his depiction of images.  He mentions how we are so drawn to things that look like our faces.  Things like that have never even crossed my mind, but when I see it in the comic, it becomes completely clear.  It is shocking to me how it never occurred to me that, as he says it, "we assign identities and emotions where none exist." When we see the world, we see it in such a skewed way because we are relating everything to ourselves.  When we design, we design based on the world we see in which we are at the center.  When we went out into nature and put letters as the center instead of ourselves, an entirely new world appeared.

Realizing the minute details of things that we never seem to notice before can make a huge difference in how we view them.  For example, Spiekermann and Ginger’s notions of font show how the smallest adjustement can alter the meaning of a text.  It is incredible how often we type in our everyday lives, yet how little we pay attention to those little details.  Creating a text with a variety in fonts can have just as much impact as using strong accent words.  I personally find myself always staying with the all-to-safe Cambria, only focussing on the text, and really never taking the time to switch it up to see what could happen.  When we only stick to the Arials and Times New Romans of the world, we lose some of the artistic control that these technologies grant us.  Before this week I didn't realize how much I was limiting myself by just thinking so narrowly.  I now am able to acknowledge that my self-determined "lack of skill," actually stems from a lack of awareness and openness.