May 18th, 2007
Starting with Pen and Paper
Posted by Chip McElroy at 9:35 am in Method | No Comments
Coming from an age when creative brainstorming happened first on pen and paper. The students of today jump right to illustrator or photoshop and start creating “finished†works of art. Becoming desensitized to the creative process and what is involved with coming up with a unique concept. Locking themselves down to what they know how to create comfortably on the computer. Pencils up students. The success of the finished product is only as good as the concept. If you are the most technically sound designer there is but haven’t harnessed your process for coming up with solutions, you will just be an average designer. If you are a free thinking, tactile creator that hashes out their concepts on paper first, you have the potential for greatness.
What do you think design world? Is the art of pen and paper dead?
Peace.
May 16th, 2007
The World Wide Web
Posted by Chip McElroy at 11:34 am in Web Design | No Comments
Mobile devices are moving at light speed travel. Handheld devices that surf the web. So web design has come full circle. From table built sites, to fully flash-driven, back to simple designs. Controlling a viewer’s experience on any and all devices demands simple flexibility of the web pages.
What do you think the future holds for the art form? A blend of flash embedded navigation and movies along with table built pages? Mostly text and few images for loading-time management? I welcome any and all comments on the topic.
Peace.
May 14th, 2007
Lost Art
Posted by Chip McElroy at 10:05 am in Poster Design | No Comments
The lost art of the poster design. A design format that allows creativity, flexibility, and an all out open palette to creativity. The requirements of a poster is to communicate that causes the audience to stop, take a look at what it says, and act upon its request. Besides that, all is fair game. And you will see from artists like Luba Lukova, many things are open to personal interpretation and your unique style can be translated loud and clean in the poster format. A favorite artist of mine, Lucian Bernhard, with posters such as the Priester Matchstick poster and the Steinway Piano Poster. Big cities are bringing back the art of the poster because of the necessity for foot traffic and travel to get around. The perfect audience for a clever poster.
May 13th, 2007
Stamped
Posted by Chip McElroy at 8:32 am in Logo Design | No Comments
In a world of mass media and sensory overload, I had an instructor once give me the best advice on design that I have received to date. We were working on a logo design assignment and he told the class…â€You know you have a good logo concept when you can scale it down to the size of a stamp and convert it to black and white.â€
In the age of digital presses, it is easy to get carried away with image overlays and complicated blends and lose sight of the old saying “less is more.†So for all you technology junkies out there, I challenge your next design problem be solved in black and white, the size of a stamp, and with type only. Keeping in mind that all type is actually a symbol that represents something in our English language that can be used strictly for its effect on positive and negative space.
Send me your solutions and I will post the best of the bunch.
Peace.
May 12th, 2007
Melting Pot
Posted by Chip McElroy at 9:32 am in Introductions | No Comments
In a country that is considered the melting pot of the world, it’s a given that the design produced here would be a vast variety of styles, colors, languages, and topics. My name is Chip McElroy. Program Chair of the Graphic Design program at Southwest Florida College in Fort Myers, Florida. Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. I came to NEPA in 1994 seeking a BFA in graphic design from Marywood University. In 2001, I left with both a BFA and an MFA in design from the university.
I’ve been asked to forum a section dedicated to the world of graphic design through my eyes. With that being said… the beauty about the business I so happily call my career is that it is based upon subjectivity and opinions a plenty. But that is ok. That is what makes it so exciting.
So feel free to comment on any and all topics that filter through this forum I call “Stampedâ€. My first posting will talk about the origin of the name.
Peace.
