Francis - Reading #3

Chapter three of Graphic Design Thinking: Beyond Brainstorming continues to prove that it is not a required read or textbook for class, but rather a demonstration of the creative process. With the chapter being on how to create form, Ellen Lupton includes multiple ways to do so. While I most likely will not use most of them in my design process, I eventually want to try each one at least once in order to keep my designs “fresh.”

Reading the Newspaper Layout Case Study for “sprinting” made me realize that I used to do a form of it in high school when I was on yearbook staff. Before working on one design for our yearbook spread, we were told to create three different layouts for a spread in one hour, meaning there was twenty minutes per layout. It was quite interesting, but it ultimately helped out a lot in the end because you could see which route each layout was going to take and you could make a decision based off of that.

Using alternative grids is definitely a skill that I would like to get into because I tend to focus on simplicity, cleanliness, and symmetry within my designs. It would be interesting to take an object, make a grid off of the lines that it makes, and base a design off of that grid. In addition, it would be stimulating to design a project using a tessellated grid.

The section on kit of parts was appealing to me because it is something that I want to try out because I have never done it. I especially loved reading about the case study example on Detroit Animation and having a palette of colors, textures, shapes, and illustration components. Creating a project like that makes everything look uniform, which I like very much.