141 | June 03, 2008 | comments: 2

Act Well Thy Part

For several months I’ve been working on the following design, and just found some time at home to finish it off (thanks to a stomach flu…). I initially started it as part of a poster contest at work, back in February, but as usual, the clock in my head is moving along much faster than the clock in the real world.

My version is slightly different than the original. I’ve tried to create perfect shapes and added a few different symbols for 2, 5, and 10.

In the Museum of Church History in Salt Lake City there’s a stone on display with a curious assortment of shapes and an inscription which reads “WHAT E’ER THOU ART, ACT WELL THY PART.”

David O’ McKay, while serving a mission in Scotland, saw this stone above the entrance to a building and took the message to heart. The message is simple and profound. We are all unique, with unique abilities and skills, and we each need to act out our part to the best of our abilities along with others to accomplish a greater good.

The inscription on the stone is unique and interesting for its geometric properties which enhance the message at hand. The grid creates a “magic square”. If you take the number of sides on each shape, and add them up horizontally, vertically or diagonally, it will always equal 18. This magic square is also unique because it contains a sequence of numbers 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 which together form 1 united whole. The sum of all the parts in proper arrangement is Unity!

The arrangement is also interesting to create, because it requires the construction of 8 unique polygons, as well as the Yin, Yang (my interpretation of 2). Creating each of the 10 geometric constructions all in one composition is a challenge—keeping everything in line and clean can be difficult.

I love the message behind this, and love that the message is enhanced through the geometry and symbolism of the magic square. I’m planning to get large poster-sized prints of this one made up soon.

Update: I’ve created a “fundable.org” collection for this print. As soon as 12 buyers have committed, I’ll run the first edition, more details here.

139 | May 13, 2008 | comments: 1

Drawing Circles

You wouldn’t believe how hard this was for me to figure out.

Now that I did figure it out, I’m trying to figure out why I even felt compelled to do so. Was a discussion about circles earlier today taken too far? Perhaps…

Code based circle drawing, colors inspired by 1971 Graphic Design. (click to refresh)

I’ve been trying to solve a circle drawing problem in flash. You’d think it would be a fairly simple thing to do, but getting the code right, flexible enough and having a circle that can be drawing at a specific rate, was not so easy, at least for me.

This functionality will appear in my thesis project in a very, un-ipressive way, and most people viewing it won’t even think twice about it. It’s just another example of lots of hours going into little things that most people won’t even notice.

138 | May 11, 2008

“A restricted view of the past creates an equally restricted view of the present.”

—Tibor Kalman

134 | April 30, 2008

Graphic Design 1971

I’ve been deep in a historical survey of graphic design. Each week I’ve been gathering several examples of graphic design from different time periods (so far I’ve collected several hundred examples). This week, I was able to dig up some old Graphis design annuals from the library. I grabbed a couple volumes from 1971 (the year I was born).

It seems to have been the year of the “rainbow.”

133 | April 30, 2008 | comments: 4

I just added a new article to northtemple.com, exploring the question: “What is the one skill that can make the most positive impacts in your profession?”

Give it a read and let me know what you think.

128 | April 18, 2008 | comments: 0

One is Art, the Other is Not

I’m not planning to answer this question in a single entry, but I have always wanted to pursue this question in written form. There are many examples of art, and many examples of similar things which cannot be classified as Art. This seems like a good format to explore the question by providing examples.

Let me begin with the first example…

126 | April 15, 2008 | comments: 0

Craftsmanship and Management-ship

Note – this article is half-baked. I don’t even know if I really agree with what I am saying here, but it happens to be on my mind, so I’m putting it out here. I’m not even going to check it for grammar. Please take that into consideration before you blast me about it.

A couple of years ago I tried to write about the importance of Learning the Craft of your profession. I’ve always thought that it is important to maintain and build traditional skills, and to literally be a “master” in the art of whatever it is that you do.

123 | April 10, 2008 | comments: 3

Opportunity

I used to always think that opportunity had almost everything to do with being in the right place at the right time, and very little to do with what I did personally. I’ve also realized that I haven’t been paying attention to opportunity like I need to.

I recently posted (without description) a drawing of a model of the design process which contains three possible outcomes for any design project: Problems, Solutions, and Opportunities. I’ll try to explain some of those elements a little bit more here, but I mostly want to focus on Opportunity, the most unique of the three.

112 | February 07, 2008 | comments: 0

The Geometry In Progress

Here’s a shot of some in-progress work for a geometric tile pattern to be used in one of the next illustrations. It isn’t all about computers is it?

111 | February 02, 2008 | comments: 1

There’s a nice collection of Ornamental Typography featured on the BibliOdyssey website this week.