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Seeing Color

Michael Bierut Video

Michael Bierut is a graphic designer from New York City who was guest speaking at the Design Indaba conference. He knew he wanted to be a graphic designer at a young age and tells a story about his father and him seeing some typography for the first time on a lift truck. He has done countless work for many different companies and gave examples of what changes they made in logos and design. Gave examples of Saks Fifth avenue and how they kept the script font but broke it down in maybe small squares and gave a different look. Also gave examples of a church using an old style font that they were against but they gave it a different feel but the way they were using the font. He worked on a logo for Mad ( Museum of Art and Design). He talks about how he works his way to the final product. he gave example that he made the first mad logo and it didn't get good reviews. So he went back to basics and started from squares and circles.  Then came out with a better design and was able to build from it the same way. One thing to remember is people say graphic design is harmless, and it doesn't mean all that much but Michael gives a fun story on why graphic design can ruin the world.

The Language of Color Recap

The Language of Color basically told about basic color theory. The color wheel is made up of 3 primary colors red, yellow, blue. With out these colors all other colors would not exist. All other colors are made from primary colors. Primary colors are two colors mixed. Tertiary colors are when primary colors are mixed with secondary colors. Hue, Saturation and Value are three things that change color. Color is how bright of muted, how light or dark a color is. A main key was that value is most important because without value there is no hue or saturation also value establishes visual clarity. We also learned a little about RGB ( red, green, blue) which is light based for onscreen use. CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) used when printing with halftone ( 4 color process). Spot color is for single color printing something like a business card, very dependable color. (one spot mix color process).

Interaction of Color

Color Wheel

Marian Bantjes

Marian has had successful career doing exactly what she believed in doing. She started with typography and laying text in books. She was a writer on speak up and was seen as a writer. She left her company and had enough money to not work for about a year. She started doing custom typography and very creative works that had a lot of feed back but wasn't finding the type of work she wanted. She was split on what she believed in doing and the type of work she was doing for people. She would create a body of work and sent it out as promotion, basically unsolicited junk mail. Most of her work was custom Valentines, and Christmas cards. Many people were seeing these special pieces and how much thought and time went into them they would start saving them. She had a big break after designing a t-shirt that won in a competition that she didn't even want to compete in. It just goes to show that you should always do what you believe.

Typographic Texture

Texture