Reflection about design

While doing my first readings of this week was about this picture here:

I am a big fan of photography and when I first saw this article, I thought it was going to be the same content as the blue/black dress that went on the internet. I was pleasantly surprised that it was not about the color of a dress, but rather was something more. This article was about how Artificial intelligence took multiple pictures and stitched them together to make one photo for the viewer. I thought this was interesting because I did not know that iPhone took pictures to get the best picture and to decide on which one looks better. You can read the full story about this confusing pitcure here: ‘One in a Million’ iPhone Photo Shows Three Versions of the Same Woman | PetaPixel

The next reading, A Kid’s Guide to Graphic Design by Iconic Designer Chip Kidd – The Marginalian was about Chip Kidd. In reading they states that everything is considered design unless it is nature. Everywhere you look someone had to have designed it one more or another. Kidd address out neglecting culture within the graphic design primer for kids. The word “graphic design” was coined in 1922 by William Addison Dwiggins.

Then I started watching the videos that was assigned to me. These videos were actually very interesting because they talked about covers to books, posters, and movie titles. Between the Lines: Chip Kidd – Alexander Street, a ProQuest Company (oclc.org) talks about the books and how a book cover works in the design community.

To anyone that makes books covers they need to make sure the audience is readable to anyone no matter their language or age. The cover represents what the story is about just by one look. A cover needs at least two parts for it to be readable which would be: words and pictures. The cover is the “first impression” even though the words of the book come first so it is a lot of trial and error before the cover is perfect. It may be a challenge and you might get stuck but try your best to work on one project one at a time.

There are 26 different abstracts symbols that create the alphabet.

Between the Lines: Chip Kidd – Alexander Street, a ProQuest Company (oclc.org)

26 different abstract symbols that when put together can create anything. So the design would be would be having different types of abstract symbols. While storytelling is putting those symbols into telling someone anything. It is very interesting for Kidd to be able to make that connection.

Everyone loves the TED talks so here is the one where Kidd talks about books: Chip Kidd: Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is. | TED Talk Throughout his talk he mentions a lot of great points. It is important to give a book a fun title and then using a picture that relates to the story within. A book cover that was created was called “Dry” and how he created a book cover was simply throwing water and making the word dry, wet so it looked like the ink was running. There are different ways to make a book cover appeal to the audience like making a cover that wraps around to tell a story by pulling it out of the shelf or making all the spine create a full picture with them next to each other. A unique way to pull in a reader would be using texture to a book cover. Everything about making a good book cover is having good design skills. Another connection for design would be movie posters.

When The Art of Movie Posters: View Online 40,000+ Movie Posters & Learn How They’re Made | Open Culture talks about movie posters. Movie poster will always change with the generations. Black and white movie posters will most time have some sort of color to make the viewer stand out to that particular part of the poster. It makes me happy that I know colors have an effect on what kind of theme the movie will have.

• Red and white is comedy.
• White space is good because it lets the viewer focus on the main part the designer would like them to see.
• Blue with someone running is action/thriller.
• Yellow background- smaller film because it has a smaller budget and yellow is a cheap way of getting attention.
• Black, white, and orange would be action.
• Blue and orange would be a surefire approach.

I did not know that there was so much thought into creating a title to a movie, show, or even a book and How Stranger Things got its retro title sequence (youtube.com) dives into how this show created such a eye pleasing and eye catching title into each opening of the episode.