Jen has asked me to make her wedding invitations for her, which both made me feel really honored and scared the crap out of me, a little like going to China with Laurie to pick up her new baby does. It's somewhat scarier than a trip to China though, believe it or not, because I don't yet really think of myself as an artist or designer of any real talent, and I basically had no idea beyond the image Jen had suggested, what the heck I was going to do. So her faith in me is really touching, based as it is on one book I only helped design (Ruins), a goofy flag book, Mom's memorial card, and the books I'm doing for Carlos. Eeep!
So I went down to the paper store for some inspiration and came back with one of these and one of those and a couple of sheets of this and two more of that and some envelopes and ribbon and the barest ghost of an idea. Then I futzed around in Photoshop with the image Jen had decided she liked, and did a couple of different layouts in InDesign, and looked up a couple of different typefaces on MyFonts and tomorrow I'm going to put them together into mockups for Jen to look at on Saturday, after which we'll get some printing estimates.
I don't have that same kind of fire in the head that the graphic artists I've worked with seem to have, where they can sit down at their computers with a concept and whip up something slick and sophisticated in Photoshop. What comes out of my head is something altogether different and is more like a gasping smolder that you have to feed little pieces of dry grass to before it'll catch. And even then it seems like a feeble thing. I don't have the facility with shape and color that I've seen in others. My projects seem to get built like collages.
All the graphic artists I know keep postcards and samples and paper books and old copies of HOW and Print and other design manuals lying around. So maybe that facility I think I see in others is an illusion too. Maybe it's just as hard for them to come up with something fresh and new as it is for me, and they just have a wider background and deeper knowledge of the materials to draw from than I do.
Sometimes I think it's an advantage to come at art and design from the back door, sometimes I think it's a handicap. I know some of the formal "rules" but I'm not familiar enough with them to break them yet, unlike I am in my writing. I'm a better typographer and production technician than a designer, but there's a lot I don't know about production, either. What I find myself lacking is a knowledge of the textures and techniques of artist materials, and the way they translate into the computer world. I'd like that part of my knowledge to be richer. I want to try making paste papers, for one thing, and mess around with water colors again. So every time I go to the art or paper store, I buy some art material I'm not familiar with, and play with it.
But I'm wondering how other people's design ideas appear. Do they step full grown from the forehead like Athena from Zeus? Cuz mine just seem to be a faint glimmer that gradually becomes clear as I push things around on the screen or on my worktable. They're a little like experimental cooking that way: a dash of this, a pinch of that, a garnish, heat, shake, rattle and hum. I have to have the actual materials in hand before the ideas come, which is funny, because I don't think I'm that tactile a person.
Oh man, who'm I kidding? I have no idea what I'm doing! But it's fun!
Ideas almost never spring full-blown, that's for sure. Anyway, there are some books of design ideas out there, but if you've got an idea to start, you don't need formulas. See what looks good, and then ask yourself if that format expresses what you mean to convey as best as it could.
If you want to bounce ideas off of me, feel free to email me.
Posted by: Kristin | March 03, 2007 at 11:32 PM