I didn’t think too much of it then, but a few months later now, I am now thinking about it a little more. 

So here is my unofficial shirt, sticker idea for b5media…

maybe, I’ll set up my own shop on cafepress and see if I get any hits..lol

Any thoughts?  (besides, that is one fuzzy bee)

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Below was an idea I had for a (funky) Christmas card derived from me playing with layers in paint shop pro.

My apologies to anyone who I may have freaked out with the thought of Christmas being only 4 months away.

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So here’s what’s included in this episode.

Exc interview with Ms Rosario Dawson and a personal walkthrough of her comic series.

Exclusive catch-up with Ed Brubaker – Veteran of the industry talking candidly about killing off Captain America and his career to date.

Corey El Rey Lewis then chatted with MySpace about Sharkknife and PENG, two distinct comics that obviously reflect his distinctive vision and worldview.

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Dale Chihuly’s site has some really amazing glass sculptures, but recently, I have been quite intrigued by his Seaforms.

Take a look at some of these amazing works.

See more at www.chihuly.com

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But I failed to mention color schemes in the process. 

I have found the following to be a pretty good standard for colors.  If the colors appear together in nature, then they will work visually for your project.  Granted, this is a pretty loose judgement, but it seems to work for me.

The color scheme above is entitled Fire Flower, based off of the colors of the following image I took while on vacation earlier this year.

I haven’t worked out how to pull these types of color values out using free software yet such as gimp, but I have found a website that will do it for you. 

By the way, this is the flower I used for that really, really annoying post.

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Today they featured the Marshmallow Sofa which I thought was pretty cool.

I am fairly intuitive when it comes to creating things and I enjoy the process of creating something that can be used.

But I am not sure if I have really “come into my own” so to speak yet.

A few days ago I posted on “25 Art Forms to try and Artists who already use them” and I don’t even think I’ve scratched the surface in the creation mediums and forms.

Lately, I’ve been feeling the urge to go more practical and create/ design something that I can use and interact more with.

So, I am going to ponder that a little more today. I do need an ergonomic chair… maybe I could create that?

Search term: Ergonomics

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Not only is DT a great designer (and actually works professionally in the field), he’s a been a great guy to work with as a friend. So, I invited him to guest post here on Artist Hideout for this discussion to give you more of the design approach to art. I hope you enjoy it, and to read more of DT, check out Design Sojourn.

Is Good Design Art?

Taking a position as a designer and moving from the discipline of Design to Art, I like to ask can good Design be considered as Art? This is one of those perpetual debates and discussions topics that really have no right or wrong answer. The way I see it, it always seems to be in essence boils down to how you define what design or art is? If I take a stab at this relationship between Art and Design, I always find that the issue is not only about the definition of Design or art, but about the amount of “constraints” a discipline has to deal with.

Just to clarify, I believe creativity cannot exist in vacuum, there must be boundaries. For example even creating Art has its own constraints that must be dealt with such as the properties of clay and even paint on canvas. But my point is Art has a lot less constraints to work with than say Industrial Design or Mechanical Design. In many ways, I always consider Art to be pure expression, in other words a tangible form born from emotion and/or inspiration. This if taken from a Designer’s stand point could be very difficult to reproduce in industrial design.

Often Industrial designers have to make compromises simply because the mechanical and manufacturing processes do not allow a certain form or detail. Product shapes are often be dictated by what manufacturing machines or processes can or cannot do. Therefore logically for a product to be considered Art, or an expression, it has to conquer the different mechanical constraints, raise above AND maintain the original inspirational intent. In many cases the more complex a product is in terms of specifications, manufacturing or usage requirements, the more difficult it is to turn it into Art. I do take my hat off to the few designers that has been successful and possibly the reason why many products in MoMa’s Architecture and Design collection are often very low technology products, although Apple has shown that they can buck the trend. Kudos to them. Now lets get back into what was brought up originally in the beginning of this Article. And that is when Designers try to create a product that could become Art, how we define design rears its ugly head again.

To explore this further, we need to look at the title of this post from another angle; can good Art be good Design? Let’s take a look at Philip Starck’s infamous Jucy Salif. The more artistic inclined love this and most Designers I know hate it, I myself sit on the fence on this one. Why? Many designer dislike this orange or lemon juicer as it does not do its job at all. The only think it does is make an artistic statement. So the Jucy Salif, if considered as a product that has to solve a problem (ie juicing oranges), it outright fails. Is it then bad design? Perhaps. However, if you consider it as a form of expression and its only purpose of it existing is to make a statement, then it does the job well.

To further expand on this point lets look at how the dictionary considers the words Design and Art. Firstly Design is often used as verb. We design, you design or I design. You see “Design” is an action and something you do. Art for example is a noun, a description of perhaps even a classification of genera. You don’t really say we art or I art, instead you say we paint or I sculpt. So you see Design has intent and often has a functional purpose and that is to solve a problem. Many good designs are great solutions to problems as well as able to maintain in their form outlook the other “deeper meanings”. It’s not to say that art has neither purpose nor meaning. No, it’s just that good Art is defined under a different set of parameters. In many ways Art and Design are 2 sides of the same coin. So therefore at the end of the day, can good Design equate to Art? Yes and no. As good design can also NOT be art. Fortunately this divide caused by constraints and definition will get smaller. The advances in computing and manufacturing technology will bridge this gap. We can soon create beautiful forms, based purely on emotion, without much of the current manufacturing constraints we now have. We can soon be only constraint by the basic laws of physics and rejoice that the manufacturing requirements we have are basically now gone. As a great example, do take a look at some of the cutting edge “design” work by the Studio Commonwealth in collaboration with Joshua Davis at their exhibition. They build their very unique products by pushing the edge of rapid-prototyping machines. Currently though only featuring low-technology products, the potential of this process is very huge.

Some of their other great work.

Image Source As you can see the time will soon come, when the limits or making thing will be only our imagination. I hope you enjoyed this article and I would love any feedback you might as well as your thoughts or examples you might have on the relationship between Art and Design.

Don’t forget to check out DT at Design Sojourn for more design insights.

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Art and Design

There is a debate that has raged on about this subject for quite awhile. I am currently following one over here.

We must redefine the way we understand both design and art in our current world. The reason is that we are inundated with man-made art and design on levels unparalleled with previous cultures.

Here is my particular belief here, and feel free to comment because I know some people might be upset over this particular view.

Artists are designers.

Designers are artists.

Let me qualify that a little bit before I get flamed….

Design natively deals with use and purpose to the thing being created with a regard to aesthetics. (ie. Would you consider a fine goblet to be good design or beautiful art?)

Art is primarily aesthetically inclined with a nod toward the direction of use and purpose. (ie. How about a commissioned painting that is painted for a particular room in a house on a specifically colored wall to achieve a greater feeling of warmth in the room?)

I maintain that no good designer will ever be able to be successful in design on the aesthetic level without some level of art and likewise no artist will ever be great until they can also incorporate great design and purpose into their work.

An Artist can practice good design, but that does not make them a designer.

Likewise a designer can practice great artistic ability, but that doesn’t make them an artist.

It has to do with motive and purpose.

Why is a thing created and does it achieve the purpose assigned?

If I create a painting for the purpose of being an aestheticly pleasing door stopper, is it design? Certainly, but good design? Probably not. Is it artistic? yes, but it fails there too because it’s behind the door where no one looks.

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So listed below are a few of the revisions and the process I went through in designing this logo. Initially, I looked at Hockey Team logos.

Problem was they all look different. Someone in the NHL really needs to standardize logos!

The first step in this was to read the existing content on the blog. Luckily there was a little. This gave me an idea of what audience and feel that Hockey Beat was going after.

Then I got the text out there. I use SwishMax for all of my logo work. I know it’s built more for developing flash (which is great if your final logo is going to be animated). I know there are better tools out there, but I like the way that I can interact and move things around with SwishMax as compared to actual graphic programs, especially with text.

Turns out, my first idea was pretty close to the mark for what Mark liked.

Except for one thing.

Looking good. I’m not crazy about the puck – it looks like a big black circle…:)

Dang it! He was right. Stupid Pucks always end up in Hockey logos and mine looked darker and more obnoxious than most here. The fact that it was larger than the stick should have been my clue that this wasn’t going to work. But, I didn’t see that then. I just saw a big black dot that needed some help to make it look more like a puck. I also thought to work on the stick just a little more.

Okay, there we go. No Dot. It looks like a puck. It’s still freaking huge. I like everything else.

Better. Can you try one with a hockey skate?

Now, I’m not a hockey player. What the heck is the difference between skates?! A quick image search showed the difference. A figure skating skate has a much narrower blade that is longer, stops abruptly about an inch after the heel and has tow tips for stopping. A hockey skate is basically a thick blade on a shoe that is rounded on both ends, made for skating both directions and turning quickly. Also it’s a little more ruggedly built.

The final version came into being.

Proportions worked much better here. You can tell it’s a Hockey Skate as opposed to a figure skating skate. I made the stick a little wider. overall there is better flow to the design and better spacing. You can check it out on the site of the same name. www.hockeybeat.com

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I tend to over-draw things and comics are generally more minimalistic in form.

I intend for this to eventually become a daily or weekly feature of the site or a new blog if I can manage to bring it to a daily level of continuity. I have been thinking about doing this for awhile, and have decided on trying to do something unique with a daily comic strip… all that remains is for my artistic ability to meet the challenge before me.

Two avenues await.

Should I draw within the ability I have in comic strip generation and expend some of the great written stuff I have on hand with lame drawings, or just focus in on the drawing and wait for the drawings to catch up with the writing?

Another great comic resource is Matt Glover’s www.chewingpencils.com- Check it out!

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