Influences

"You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let in your life. You are the sum of your influences."

That is a quote on page 11 of Steal like an Artist and I couldn't agree more. Whether we acknowledge it or not, who we are in the present was based off of our past experiences. Because of this, we are constantly changing, even if it is just a little bit, because we are always exposed to different things, people, and experiences that can influence us. Now you can (to an extent) choose who can influence you based on the people you allow into your lives. Sure there's family and such where you don't have a choice, but sometimes you get the most influence from external sources such as what I mentioned before, the things, people, and experiences.

For me personally, I try to go through life with an open mind and try to allow a variety of experiences and people into my life. Being of Chinese decent, sometimes I have to straddle between the Chinese culture and American culture, especially when it comes to my family, but I fully embrace it because it has made me to who I am today. I have this wonderful opportunity in life to experience two cultures so I don't want to waste it nor take it for granted. When it comes to people, I try to be open minded of them. I truly believe that everyone can teach you something that you don't know already and if you immediately shut them out for whatever reason, you lose the chance to gain knowledge.

Overall I am happy with the influences I've had in my life, but I am definitely open to have more and desire to have more, especially since I have changed my studies from biology to graphic design. I did not have that many artistic influences growing up, but now I feel I must if I want to be successful as a designer. One of the biggest changes I've noticed about myself since starting graphic design is that I appreciate art more, especially modern art. Now when I go to art museums, I specifically look for the modern art section because I can apply what I have learned in class and analyze the art instead of just looking at it.

In order to get more graphic design influence, I will start paying more attention to the designers of pieces that catch my interest rather than just focus on the piece itself. Since I enjoyed his TED talk so much, the first designer I will look into is Chip Kidd. Variety of book covers he has designed is just amazing and it will be beneficial to understand more of what his thinking process is when designing one. Here are a few of his book covers that he explained in his TED talk.

 

 

I had to do a little research to find out what designers influenced Kidd, and the two names that came up were Peter Saville and Alvin Lustig. These are some of their works...

Peter Saville

Alvin Lustig

Steal Like an Artist

So this is the text book that I am reading for my graphic design class. I have only read the first chapter, but so far I find the book engaging, simple to read, and informative in terms of how to think creatively relative to what has already been done. I appreciate how casual and straight forward Kleon presents his ideas and philosophies because it makes it sounds like advice you would get from a friend with experience.

The title of the book already makes the book seem a bit controversial, because one of the golden rules to life is to not intentionally steal ideas and works from other people and pass it off as your own. But the question I have is where does the line fall between being inspired by a particular piece of work or artist and just flat out stealing? To me, I feel like if you are not willing to acknowledge where you get ideas from when they are not genuinely original, then that's stealing. This is the only thing I could come up with at the moment, so if anyone has a different opinion, I would love to hear it. 

Coming up with an original idea is very difficult, that's why not everyone is an entrepreneur. Everyone is constantly being influenced by things that already exist and therefore ideas, in art or anything else, are just building off of what has already been done. I think when an original idea does emerge (and it's a good one), it tends to be praised by society and rightfully so. Usually the idea is a very simple one, but for some reason it hasn't been done before and the majority population can relate or utilize it. 

The book says that a great way to generate ideas is to collect things that you love, because you are only going to be as good as the things you surround yourself with. I have heard this from another graphic designer before, and ever since then, I've had an inspiration box which I put anything related to graphic design in that I appreciate. I have everything from business cards from local restaurants, to posters from museums. It's a great way to get inspiration from something that you know has been paid to be printed and distributed rather than just posted online for free. However, there are some great resources online as well, and the variety is far greater than what I can find in the local area. For me personally, I have a bookmark folder on my browser specifically for when I come across interesting design related sites. Currently I have about 25 pages bookmarked, so it's a pretty good process for me.

Another way to get inspiration is to have a "mentor" who's work you can follow. I currently don't have a specific designer that I consciously look up to. My interests tend to be spread among specific pieces of work rather than the artist/designer themselves, so perhaps I should do more research into who I can aspire to be like. Having a mentor can be very useful because then you can see their process and what they did in order to reach where they are now and use their phiolosophies and experiences for your own self discovery.

Overall, I think I am going to enjoy reading this book over the next few weeks. It is a really short one that I can probably finish in a day or two, but perhaps letting the lessons in each chapter marinate in my brain a while can be a good thing. There are also many quotes in the book, which I find are quite inspiring. Here are two from the first chapter that I feel like I can apply to my life:

"The only art I'll ever study is stuff that I can steal from." –David Bowie

"Whether I went to school or not, I would always study." –RZA

The David Bowie quote was enlightening to me because you really should only study things that you genuinely like and therefore would want to apply some principles of it to your own work. If you don't have the desire to steal some idea or principle from something, then obviously it is not stimulating enough.

The RZA quote is not anything new to me, but rather reinforces the idea of always learning something new and expanding your knowledge, even when you don't have to. Studying is really a form of discipline that is a necessity to be successful in life because not only do you need to be disciplined for when you work for someone, but also when you are in charge of other people. Without it, then there is no motivation and without motivation, there is no reliability.  

Intro

Hello everyone and welcome to my Graphic Design III blog!

First a little bit about myself for those who do not know me. I grew up in New Hampshire and went to college at the University of Rochester and graduated with a BA in biology. Afterwards, I worked in a lab as a lab tech at UIUC and discovered that I did not want to do research as a career. During my time at the lab, I did some schematic illustrations for the researchers and discovered that I enjoyed doing them, so I enrolled in the graphic design program at Parkland and couldn't be happier that I did. For once in my life I have a direction that I want to go in instead of wandering about, and it makes life a lot easier knowing what you want to do. 

My creative process is pretty much what we have learned in class, first researching and talking to the client, incubate, sketch, and start executing a few of the better ideas. Finding inspiration can be hard sometimes, depending on the project. Even though the internet is a quick and easy resource, I find that sometimes the results are pretty much the same style or flavor. I've actually started an inspiration box (which is still the box that my monitor came in) where I just put a variety of things that I find with good designs that I like to refer back to. 

Coming up with a novel idea is probably the hardest thing to do, I always think, what hasn't been designed already? The best thing I can think of that helps with generating new ideas is to experience as many things as possible, whether it's traveling or finding a new hobby. When you start experiencing new things, then you start thinking in new ways. 

I believe that being creative is very important to our culture, because it's how we come up with new ideas, new ways of thinking, and new solutions that helps man kind move forward, whether it's in art or sciences. Creativity in graphic design is essential because the purpose of graphic design is to communicate information in an engaging way so that it's memorable for the person looking at it. Without it, then your message just becomes a blur in today's fast paced society. 

This is a holiday card I designed intended for Parkland in Illustration last semester. I when trying to come up with what to do for it, I distinctly remember thinking that if a snake had the mental capacity to build a snowman (cue Frozen song), wouldn't it build one in its own image? It would obviously make a snow-snake and not a snowman...yeah, sometimes I think about these things too much.