A Very Vignelli Valentine’s.
The urge to create and design has always been a fairly innate ability of mine for pretty much ever. Color has been splashed across my skin as much as skin as frequently as salt water and sand, a recent love for typography has been growing constantly as of late as I think about the potential of starting a small business in the future, and I geeked out continuously when completing some of my Design Week assignments once I learned how cool it was to mix thin and thick fonts, Serif and Sans Serif.
- Color
- Texture
- Layout
- Sequence
- Grids
- Typography
- Scale
- White Space
- Identity -VS- Diversity
I used to think that the above specifics (or the Tangibles, as Vignelli likes to call them) were all there was to design, that I needed to take a Graphics class ASAP, like this summer, if I wanted to really hone my skills. But then, by the awesomeness of DS106, I happened across the magic that is Master Massimo. And I learned that design is so much more than “step one, step two”, like I’ve forever been confined to do. In fact, design isn’t even just an art form. It’s a dialect, a flowering language that enhances our lives and the lives of others in the most beautiful way. And if I wanted to better my ability to use this language effectively, and hopefully effect others one day, I needed to learn from THE great. Because like Vignelli says:
“Creativity needs the support of knowledge to be able to perform at it’s best.”
So when I read The Vignelli Cannon, I focused on the Intangibles. I took a heck of a lot of notes seeing as I feel the Canon will be something I will turn to beyond the scope of DS106 (literally have the Canon saved to my desktop for eternity, nbd). I’ll spare you the details, but if I had to summarize the one main thing that I learned is that design is All About That BALANCE.
The balance between a forceful design and something that is natural, between structure and space; between meaning and purpose, timelessness and modernism, and most importantly, between discipline and passion. Balance is something I am working on achieving in my simple every day life, and maybe by first applying this element firstly to my digital studies and creative flow, it will become an au naturale part of my very Design.
“It is with this set of values that we approach Design everyday, regardless of what it may be: two or three dimensional, large or small,
rich or poor. Design is One!”