Notes

  • Inspiration from a random forum post

    “I’m not leaving this plane of existence without bringing my ideas to the world, they are absolutely worth it.”

    – Architeuthis

  • Ramsey on KISS
    https://youtu.be/3kRjemvOST8

    This has to be one of the best lessons on creativity. Chef who has all the knowledge, team and resources but can’t get the customers. Lesson: keep it simple and meet your customers half-way (don’t dictate).

  • I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.

    I grew tired of my usual YouTube diet so decided to watch some walking tours of various London locales by John Rogers. This one on Highgate (where I spent a good number of my formative years).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OHJNEiwFnY

    Featured in Highgate Cemetery was this awesome headstone:

    highgate_Headstone.jpg

    I thought it might be that of my all time favourite designer Alan Fletcher so I tried some cursory Googling and, while I couldn’t verify if it was, I came across his obituary in the New York Times, written by Steven Heller. The last passage really struck me: 

    He died wearing a T-shirt with handwritten words taken from one of his posters: “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.’’

    https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/arts/design/26fletcher.html

    Postscript: Further googling revealed it to be that of pop artist PATRICK CAULFIELD. Another rabbit hole to go down! 

  • My Illustrator line-art tracing process

    This is my process for tracing line art in Illustrator

    1. Make your sketch in pencil/pen/paper (I can’t sketch on a computer. It’s a personal deficiency, I suppose).
    2. Scan/photograph your sketch and clean up in Photoshop. Try to remove as many ambiguous smudges and unclear pencil lines as possible. Use levels to kill the paper tone and get things as close to pure black and white as you can without the lines falling apart.
    3. Import into Illustrator, make your reference a template layer, create a new layer and begin tracing. You’ll be using either the pen tool or modifying primitive shapes. I tended to use the pen until I found the Inkscribe tool from Astute graphics.
      • A note on tracing: make sure your lines are overlapping one another. We will clean these up afterwards
    4. Clean up major overlaps with the scissors tool (shortcut: c). Be sure to leave some overlap where shapes intersect. In this example I want the left circle to be on top.

    5. Duplicate you line art layer and lock and hide the original (it’s a backup). Select all the art on your new layer and use the ‘outline’ command from the pathfinder.

      You can now go ahead and clean up all of those overlaps by selecting and deleting them. Put on a podcast and brew some coffee coz this is pretty tedious/zen. Use outline view (command+Y) here as it makes things much clearer.
      • Remember: think of the “stacking order” of the objects in your art. What should be “on top” of one-another.
    6. With the lines leaned up it’s time to add colour. Duplicate your line art layer, lock and hide it and rename the new layer ‘colour’. Select all the art and use the ‘Divide’ pathfinder command.

      This will make all those individual lines into compound shapes. I like to use a set of generic global colours and use the eyedropper to apply to the shapes. Using global colours will make recolouring your artwork easier down the line.

    I got this workflow from this video. Props to this guy!

  • Niños vs Moda

    https://youtu.be/LlShHeU2qU4

    Always at this time of the year big fashion brands launch their fall/winter campaigns with their carefully produced editorials and their star photographers. This year I asked a group of children aged 8 to describe what they see in some of these commercial campaigns. The result gave us goosebumps: women are drunk and sick, men are heroes and businessmen.

    Kids decoded the images and exposed wide open the implicit violence and inequality when it comes to the way women and men are treated on those editorials. Children often offered themselves to help women: “they’re hungry”, “she’s feeling lonely” or “she could die” while projected their dreams and ambitions on to the men roles: “they’re happy”, “I want to go to university too”, I’m the boss”.

    This revealing document poses many questions about hidden messages that are launched from the fashion business: why do we link this kind of images with glamour and luxury? why doesn’t anybody denounce this situation?, how do these images influence our visual education?, why do brand support such messages? and what can we do to change this?

    https://yolandadominguez.com/en/portfolio/ninos-vs-moda/
  • Indesign knockout text

    I forget this shit every time so I’m putting it here so I never have to search for it again 🙂

  • Loraine James, Running Like That Ft Eden Samara

    Really enjoy this track. The underpinning chords are a sick motif. So simple but drive it forward and marry well to the erratic staccato beats.

  • On perseverance and perception

    An interesting interview with Harrison Ford c. 1985. Takeaways; keep the ambition simple–don’t think that far in advance. He gave up doing episodic television to become a carpenter as they were jobs that went nowhere–hold out for the real ambition. Doing films led to a change of how he was perceived.

    On stardom: “I enjoy the ability to pick and choose what I work on — I enjoy the process very much. The rest of it is not significant”

    https://twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/1414909975214788611?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1414909975214788611%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Froryleedesign.com%2F2021%2F07%2F13%2Fon-perseverance-and-perception%2F

  • Make good art

    Today I (re)listened to MAKE GOOD ART by Neil Gaiman. Takeaways were: I don’t read enough fiction, I needn’t be afraid to put stuff out there, sod the rules, use adversity as a means to spur creation.

    Also, that cover typeface is Blender, which I am quite familiar with 😉

  • Put out the small things

    You’ll never know what you might inspire with those things you though of as insignificant

  • My stupid brain
    Cower before me, internet

    So I think this’ll be my notebook for random discoveries and notions. Brain fart express. Woo hoo0. Yeah, I know it’s just a distraction from what I should be doing but hopefully I can remember some useful shit that I seem to come across once in a while ¯\_(ツ)_/¯