ITAP Design Canons - week one

This blog is the first of a new collection of blogs that I will write over the next 8 weeks on our ITAP part 2 - design canon lectures. In this lecture we looked at many different areas of practice within graphic design and the importance of the 4 main principles on which our 4 briefs for this module 'Developing Practice in Graphic Design' are based on.
These 4 principles are:

Target Audience and Context

Creative Strategies

Visual Language 

Design and Composition

I am going to look at the 2 areas of practice that most inspired me in this lecture and that I feel are weaker areas for me and therefore spending time researching them would be beneficial. These were Expressive Graphics and Illustrative Typography.

An illustrative typographer that has caught my eye is Craig Ward. I think his work is incredible and he is an inspiration. Below are a couple of examples of his work.

This piece stood out to me because of how it appears to play tricks on the eye. When you first look at it you see the illustration and then on your second look or longer stance you begin to make out the words hidden within it.

This piece caught my eye because of the detail within it. The typography itself is just plain white text, in a simple font such as arial but then there is an incredible amount of detail in the glass smashing. It almost looks as if the image is moving, you can imagine the shards of glass flying outwards. Seeing his work has inspired me to want to use more illustrative typography in my work.


Another illustrative typographer whom I used for research in the previous module that has inspired me is Luke Lucas. His work is similar to Craig Wards only he uses a lot more 3D modelling to  create the typography. Below is an example of how he uses a 3D model to create a typographic logo design. I found his website very inspiring : http://www.lukelucas.com/

Expressive Graphics is design used to express, debate and opine.It's a way of expressing emotions, values and ethics using graphic language. The example of this we looked at in the lecture is the I♥NY sign. It started off as a rough sketch by Milton Glazer in a taxi on the way to his pitch and is now one of the most copied idea's in the world. This was used as a poster campaign across New York after 911 to make the people of New York stay there and fight for the city. The dark left hand corner is meant to symbolize the twin towers burning. It wasn't until now that I knew there was such a deep meaning behind the design. 

To finish I am going to leave you with this quote that the lecture began with. I found it very interesting and relevant:

'The creative process is not performed by the skilled hand alone, but must be a unified process in which the head, heart, and hand play a simultaneous role'.