One Man's love Affair with the Letterpress
Ross MacDonald's article speaks about the beauty of letterpress (and - in some ways - the benefits of computers).
The press is hard to operate; it's phsycially demanding. You can "try" things, there's no simple apple z to get back to the first idea you may now like better. But what could be seen as limitations force the designer to find new solutions. Original concepts can be abandoned because they are impossible on the press.
" I have rarely ended up with a piece that I didn’t like more than my original concept"
The man has done illustrations for Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Rolling Stone.
Maybe I love the letterpress, too?
Read the whole article here: http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/design-as-slow-motion-train-wreck
You can see Ross MacDonald's work here: http://www.ross-macdonald.com/index.html
(it's also a really cool, non-flash portfolio site. very inspiring.)
RESPONSE:WEB
I was really impressed how much work people had already done on these, and all the unique design conclusions that our classmates have come to. All of the designs had some really great ideas, and really spoke to each person's unique design aesthetic. It was really really cool to see all of the work encapsulated into a single site.
It's a completely different way to think, especially with flash. We're (and by this, I mean me) so used to capturing everything in a single page. It was fun, not to mention challenging to think more extended ways to represent ideas. It took me awhile to stop sketching single screenshots and start sketching several at once, representing motion within them.
CRITIQUE: MY SITE
Everyone else's work reminded me how much I need to get moving. Right now I'm a little intimidated by online design (because I'm not familiar with it). Thank you all so much for the suggestions.
It's very frustrating to know what I want to do and still be unable to do it. Are Dreamweaver "easy" guidebooks written in Greek or is it just me? seriously.
I like the splash page a great deal right now. Everything just needs tweaking, slowing down, a small infusion of color, etc.
the portfoio page DEFINITELY needs work. I don't think it reads easily at all. The buttons to click are too small and don't read at buttons.
All in all, this quote from the AIGA piece explains how I feel about it right now:
"I don’t mean to say that letterpress isn’t about art or craft or beauty—but those things can often come at the cost of many hours of almost soul-crushing disappointment and maddening frustration. Every successful letterpress piece I manage to pull off—every card or broadside or poster or letterhead or jam label—is almost always the end result of a few compromises, dead ends and workarounds. It’s rare that my “vision” of a beautiful piece hasn’t been ground under the heels of the many little failures along the way."
*sidenote: I took a screenshot of my site in order to load it on here. On macs, it's command(apple) shift 4. A crosshair will appear on the screen. Drag it around ANY object on your desktop you wish to "photograph" and that object will appear as 'picture 1' on your desktop.
AND forgive me Kristin and Amy, I didn't have your mizzou email addresses to get to your sites.
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