An Eye For Detail

Valentine's Day (almost)

In honor of Valentines Day, here is some useful information: Rose Color Guide.

And here are some really pretty flower collections: Valentine's Flowers Decoded.

Design Work: Then and Now

Here is a very interesting story that relates to our field of surface design:Drawing Board to the Desktop: A Designer’s Path. This is the "story" of how real graphic design, the typesetting, by- the -board -kind of design has changed in the last twenty or thirty years. Well, the same holds true for surface design. If you never went through this dramatic change well, you're young!

For the rest of us, perhaps beginning our careers as colorists in a textile design studio, the change is dramatic.

We mixed colors with gouache paint. In tiny little plastic tubs (Pearl Paint was THE place to buy them) that had to be washed when finished with. To do a coloring we drew the design with an HB lead, onto tracing paper. Then, insert blue or black Saral  paper, and trace (yes, trace!) with a 4H lead each and every line onto white Strathmore paper. Then paint... and, of course, if one color wasn't right you could try to paint over it... but probably you had to then trace again and paint again. And this was only one color way; usually we did three or four. They looked like mini works of art. 

I still have the old, beat up red cartridge pencil I used way back then. Nowadays it doesn't get much use... But I still feel it brings me good luck and was absolutely frantic when it appeared to be lost many years ago...

Now, of course, we simply drop in a color, adjust the tolerance, move items around etc. etc. in a few seconds. It's fun, lots of fun and I don't regret the change. I have taken to the computer willingly and love the millions of options it provides. But still....... it's a very different way of doing business!

Here's a link to an interview with Michael Beirut (author of the above article) which I found fascinating:Michael Bierut Talks Typography with ‘The Atlantic’.