Flat designing

Hello there my dear reader!

This week was a moment to take a break from all that’s going on around. It was Easter, the time to celebrate, time to take a step back, breathe in and out and let the creative juices in our brains start flowing again. A time away from the studio but still that doesn’t mean we stop being designers. I certainly am not.

Being a designer is not only the work you put inside a designated to create products space, being a designer is a part of your identity, it is who you are as a person in this world. You might disagree but looking at those great ones who design, their free time is also submitted to a creative notion. They take their sketchbooks with them wherever they go, they take pictures of peculiar things, they fold napkins in restaurants or write down their new ideas on them. There is no break from designing, for designing is constant.

And looking at my step aside from the studio for a time from that perspective it was truly a week full of design. I dived deep into looking at some graphic designers as we were soon to be starting a project focused on poster creation. The persona of David Caron struck my interest as I was watching one of his talks on youtube. He is a slightly different type of designer to what I am studying and creating a path for myself to be, but the perspective on life and design as a journey through it. His website as well, it stands out so much from all the other ones and you can see through who he is and how he acts that he breathes the design.

Following the video I set myself on a mission of creating something more for myself as well as for others during the past week. I started with two projects, a zine and a mug sleeve graphic for my dad’s job. And then I rolled. For the ZIne I first started with mapping out the page layout. I ripped out a piece of paper with the sole purpose of bending it into folded shapes and seeing what actually looks interesting to me. It was so fun to work with my two hands and create a piece that I hoped would be treasured. Yes, treasure, because I wanted to set the challenge bar higher and try picking up my pole (pencil) for the pole vaulting of creation. Because why not combine a form of artistic expression with a birthday card? There wasn’t anyone to stop me and I truly was not one to stop on my own accord either. I was a designing car speeding up the motorway of creative motivation. So after folding the pages and finding the desired layout I started sketching some page ideas I had in my head. Putting things on paper is a great way to explore new ideas and actually properly analyse them and I really recommend you try that if you’re not yet used to creating small notes and sketches on random pieces of paper. From that creative exploration I got brought further and started putting my ideas on paper. And in the end I had a fully developed birthday zine  only for the eyes of the jubilant and those he wants to share this piece with.

My next creation revolved around a topic of boarding school, as my dad is a boarding school supervisor and there are some students that are soon going to graduate. He and other supervisors decided to make them each a personalised mug with their name, a date of graduation and a nice message. The problem was they didn’t know how to make the design look coherent and be something the students would like to pick up rather than just have the piece stand at the back of a drawer and only be taken out as a last resort when no other cup in the house is clean. Sad story of some not so appealing mug and cup designs we all can probably agree on being familiar with. You too probably have a piece of tableware design that is purely functional and because of that not really used at all lacking the aesthetic appeal. But coming back to my project number two. My dad actually contacted me with a request to redesign what he and his colleagues managed to put together and after looking at it I decided that it would be a really good practice for me to design, maybe not a full product but a graphic that is going to be used. This project also had a special place in my heart since it was featuring a piece of my primary school as well. So after developing a few sketches and sending them for feedback to my dad, I opened affinity and started putting the design together. In the end I ended up creating a design and sending back 12 personalised files, one for each of the mugs of the graduating teenagers. And the final design is what you can now see on top of this blog page. And so with those two projects and me dipping some of my toes into the area of graphic design the week of easter break has passed.

Now I would just like you to see, look around or deep inside and start discovering new elements of the design field to start splashing in. Dip your toes in or dive into the deep waters of a field you maybe only once heard of. Be courageous whether it will be flat designing or one that involves a lot of structural support. Be brave enough to learn more about the subfields of design and don’t let your creative motivation fire be hosed over.

And for those curious of my struggles, a designer problem of the week: When you have a design vision and aesthetic sensitivity different to your client but you have to honour their initial vision

Bisou,

The one and only Maria K.