I’m pedaling fast to get up to speed with Adobe’s page design program, InDesign. At Barnes & Noble today I got this book, How to Wow with InDesign, by Wayne Rankin and Mike McHugh. I’ll enjoy going through it, tutorial by tutorial, but meanwhile just looking through the book is an inspiration.
Web design as fine graphic art
I see a lot of interesting web design and a lot of great art online. Hardly ever do I see both on one site. Checkland Kindleysides is one of the few sites I’ve seen that combine great web design with great art. Not only that, it’s one of the very, very few Flash sites that use Flash in an integrated way. It’s a magical experience.
One criticism: You can’t adjust font size on a Flash site.
Blast from the past
Found while looking for a photo I took of a golden silk spider (nephila clavipes) … this photo of my old waxer. Anybody else remember these? You dropped a stick of wax into the well of the waxer (the well is stoppered by that red rectangle you see), plugged it in, waited for the waxer to heat up — this last bit of patience being necessary to the well-being of your waxer. Then, applying wax in much the same way we apply packing tape to a carton, roll on the wax to the back of whatever you wanted to apply to your … paste-up, or mechanical.
I took this photo in 2004, just before dumping it in the garbage.
I haven’t missed it at all.
Art 21 / Geometry of Design
I’ve been spending some time at PBS’s Art 21 website recently. It’s packed with information about contemporary art and artists, and excerpts from the 20-minute interviews shown on their PBS television series.
I’ve ordered the book associated with the first season.
Another interesting book I just got in the mail:
Geometry of Design: Studies in Proportion and Composition, by Kimberly Elam. It’s got a lot of compact information about the golden section and illustration as circles (which I’ve seen a lot) and squares (which I’ve seen less often), as well and some great overlays illustrating the underlying geometric design of various commercial artwork.