Drawing for Graphic Design: Understanding Conceptual Principles and Practical Techniques to Create Unique, Effective Design Solutions - Softcover

Samara, Timothy

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9781592537815: Drawing for Graphic Design: Understanding Conceptual Principles and Practical Techniques to Create Unique, Effective Design Solutions

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1592537812 ISBN 13: 9781592537815

Publisher: Rockport Publishers, 2012

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Here is a complete, comprehensive drawing reference for design students and professionals alike who want to implement drawing as a professional tool. In Drawing for Graphic Design, Timothy Samara empowers readers to add drawing to their design vocabulary, featuring case studies of commercial projects from start to finish along with a showcase of real-world projects that integrate drawing as an intrinsic part of their visual communication. Filled with original author drawings and sketches, it’s a must-have reference that will benefit designers of all levels.

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About the Author:

Timothy Samara is a graphic designer based in New York City, where he divides his time between teaching, writing, lecturing, and freelance consulting through STIM Visual Communication. His 18-year career in branding and information design has explored projects in print, packaging, environments, user interface design, and animation. He has been a senior art director at Ruder Finn, New York's largest public relations firm, and senior art director at Pettistudio, a small multidisciplinary design firm. Before relocating to Manhattan, he was principal of Physiologic in Syracuse, located in upstate New York. In 1990, he graduated a Trustee Scholar from the Graphic Design program at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Mr. Samara is a faculty member at New York's School of Visual Arts, New York University, Purchase College/SUNY, and The New School, and has published six books on design and typography, all through Rockport Publishers: Making and Breaking the Grid; Typography Workbook; Publication Design Workbook; Type Style Finder; Design Elements; and, most recently, Design Evolution, released in January 2008. Mr. Samara and his partner live in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Interval and Dynamism/ Symmetry and Asymmetry

Fighting the tendency of two-dimensional form to feel static—in an awkward state of inertia—is always challenging. A static visual condition usually results when positive and negative elements appear optically equal; when positive forms have similar mass or presence, when spatial intervals are of similar shape and size, and when these spaces also appear about the same size as the positive forms. Positive and negative need not be physically the same shape to appear equal in presence, so it is necessary to evaluate the aggregate mass of each, independent of their specific shapes.

The simplest strategies for ensuring dynamic composition, then, focus on enforcing differences in the variables of proportion and interval—larger versus smaller; verticality versus horizontality; cluster and overlap versus tight proximity or generous spacing between elements; and linearity versus mass /A /.

Even when participating in an asymmetrical structure, multiple forms situated around similar spatial intervals create static interaction. Altering the intervals between form elements /E /, or between elements and format edges /F, G /, creates a dynamic composition. The movement of the eye is enhanced as these intervals exhibit greater contrast with each other, becoming compressed or expanding with a directional thrust. Symmetrical arrangements inherently confront the designer with a potentially static condition because the spatial intervals and shapes surrounding the material that is organized around the symmetrical axis are the same. To counteract this problem (in a bilaterally summetrical, vertical format, for instance), a designer may look to: exaggerate lateral width, spacing, and vertical emphasis changes /B/ as well as differences in vertical intervals; unexpectedly interrupt a repetition of intervals /C /; or violate the symmetry by shifting an element out of its mirrored relationship with corresponding elements across the axis /D/.

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