Title Block Block

Assignment for Working Drawings, 4/2/09

Make your title block. Be creative, etc.

The problem is that the designer often adopts, or merges towards, the aesthetic of the client. How defined can a designer's brand be? As compared to a store, magazine, restaurant. Looking at firms across the web:



I mean, it's all basically the same thing. No pictures, all letters; generally sans-serif. Some are more successful than others. Andrew Maynard reads "design-build," but I know they aren't. Allied Works' has always looked like an airline company. Variations in lineweight are nice because they'll read b&w. See: Henning Larsen

But essentially, it isn't about being creative. It's about looking dominant and confident. REX, King, Koolhaas, NYC. Or intelligent and approachable like Leslie Gill's. Subtle subtle is the lesson here.

Go

I started thinking about the idea of this blog while working on the term paper for my Kevin Nute seminar. (The use of 2D images on surfaces to establish historical context in a building...) So many more topics came up in that research; I wish I could remember at least the kernel of each idea.

I overheard two other students talking near the photocopiers today. One was telling the other about some big professional designer speaking in his studio. He/She claimed that the most important skill we can learn is speech. The great advantage of being able to articulate the concept to the staff, the client, the public. (I thought about the great TED talk with Joshua Prince-Ramus, OMA, REX. Noelle says you fall in love with the library just hearing him explain it.) With this big emphasis on making and drawing, I don't want to forget how to write and speak.

So this will really just be a conglomeration of the ideas in each quarter, mostly for myself, experiments with graphics, space, identity and experience. I'm almost at the middle of my architecture degree now, and I'm finding that things are starting to coalesce.