Thursday, October 20, 2016

Heeber


Heeber who is another San Diego City College graduate explained and demonstrated the variations of calligraphy pens. Heeber is a graphic designer, calligraphy artist, and a custom calligraphy pen maker. Over the years Heeber realized that he didn’t want to be a graphic designer his whole life and he wanted to be able to do other things as well, which is when he discovered calligraphy. Heeber demonstrated a lot of different pens, such as the Pilot Parallel pen, brush pen, cola pen, and a ruling pen with the cola pen being his favorite. The cola pen has a special feature that anyone can grab an aluminum can and create their own tip/nip for their pen. Further on Heeber demonstrated the strengths and weaknesses of each different pen. A couple of times Heeber did wedding invitations and realized that it made good money, but was to tedious for him to continue. Heeber mentioned that he started calligraphy as a hobby, but turned out to be work he didn’t want to do, so then he started to make custom calligraphy pens. Heeber sells his pens and communicates with his clients through Instagram. Unlike other custom calligraphy pen makers Heeber’s main focus and his top seller is his ergonomic calligraphy pen. The ergonomic calligraphy pen is designed around the hand of the specific writer. Heeber has his clients send him pictures and measurements of their hand so that he can make the pen have the best fit in the writer’s hands. Heeber now plans on continuing making custom pens and hopefully expand his custom calligraphy pen making business. Overall, Heeber said many insightful things and demonstrated well the art of using calligraphy pens.

Border Play


Amor and Keisuke


During Amor and Keisuke’s presentation a lot of information was presented and a lot of inspiration was spread as well. Both Amor and Keisuke attended, graduated and received a graphic design foundation from San Diego City College. Amor and Keisuke both went on to attend Art Center in Pasadena. Amor did her internship at Visual Asylum in San Diego, and Keisuke did his internship at Bennett Peji Design in San Diego as well. Amor and Keisuke started working together on a class project that was very community oriented. After establishing a relationship, they took their talents to the next level, and even moved out to Germany where they lived for three years designing and meeting new people. Amor and Keisuke went on to design for big corporations such as Volkswagen, Johnson and Johnson, Beam magazine, Chat Game, and DHL. A lot of the work that they did was mostly done with a small budget and ended up having to put in some money from their pocket. Amor and Keisuke stressed how over the years nothing about them has changed and they still use the same process they used when they were in the same class at City College, and have always been community based. Amor and Keisuke also talked about how important it is to do research on the projects they have to work on, saying it’s as important as the designing, if not the most important part of the designing process. After interning in Germany at Metadesign for about three years Amor and Keisuke moved back to Art Center and had some of the best designs they have ever made placed in the gallery. After the internship Amor and Keisuke did in Germany, Art Center then opened a satellite campus in Berlin and allowed other students to have he same experience. Amor and Keisuke have designed a lot in the past and also presented a lot of information in the presentation that is very beneficial to all artists and graphic designers in present day.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Positive/Negative


Grouping Modes


Jim Krause


Jim Krause is a very versatile person he has been a designer, photographer, illustrator, and a writer. In this documentary Krause talks immensely about color and all there is to know about color and the color wheel. Krause starts off by telling the viewer that it is very important that designers know what the color wheel is and how it functions. Further on Krause explains that any color has three main features, which is hue, saturation, and value. Although colors are made up of these three characteristics value is the most important because it creates clarity and without value the color wouldn’t exist. Krause explains the different color families that exist, which is CMYK, RGB, and Spot Colors. Krause also talks about how important it is for designers to calibrate their monitors to be able to communicate with others about certain colors. As the video continues Krause begins to talk about the formula he uses to create his work for his clients. Krause wants to connect with the audience and use different colors from the competitor. Krause also wants to make sure the colors represent the client’s product well and be practical about his work. Towards the end of the documentary Krause starts to talk about page layout and how sometimes its good to color borrow from an image in the layout. By color borrowing the designer is able to catch the viewer’s attention and be able to communicate better with the colors of the actual picture. After watching this documentary about Jim Krause it is important to know how much there is to know about color and the best methods possible to using color.