Thinking with Type

Thinking with Type is a state-of-the-art pedagogical tool for anyone who wish to improve his design skills. The lessons of Thinking with Type are applicable to typographic design wherever it is practiced.

The book is organized into three main sections — Letter, Text and Grid —, each of which starts with a well-researched, thought-provoking essay. The article on Letter furnishes a brief overview of major trends in typeface design, from the fifteenth century to the present. The second essay articulates the evolution of text from linear page to non-linear screen. The third piece presents the different ways in which grids have been used to organize typographic matter.
Each essay is followed by an amply-illustrated how-to section and exercises. And like any good educator, Lupton doesn't just tell you typographic dos and don'ts, she shows you, with examples that are smart and humorous. The different typographic choices available to today's computer-enabled designer are displayed, along with reasons for picking one over the other.

Even those who already know something about typography will benefit from this title. It’s a great “propaganda” piece that you can loan to unbelieving friends and relatives, in an effort to convert them.

new honadesign

Hona Design

re-design-01

Ken Robinson - Creativity in Education

Victor Papanek

Victor Papanek was a strong advocate of socially responsible designs of products and tools. He believed that "The only important thing about design is how it relates to people." His books and products were an inspiration and provocation to all of us and he was very eloquent promoter of ecological design.

Design For The Real World by Victor Papanek: Human Ecology and Social Change With an Introduction by R. Buckminster Fuller; Completely Illustrated". Papanek adorably refers to his friend and introduction-writer as Bucky throughout the book, and relates stories of visionary design teams doing what the two men refer to as Anticipatory Comprehensive Design.

we can say he is looking at real-world problems and trying to solve them in an ecologically-sound and efficient, forward-thinking way, with the help of the stakeholders, the people who are actually affected by the design problem and its potential solutions. This is opposed to the more common practice of profit-driven design, which uses planned obsolescence and the vagaries of "fashion" to sell the same old crap year after year, dressed up in fancy new skins or even just different marketing. For every cool new low-cost, low-impact tool that's accessible and useful to folks who really need it, there are a million new expensive, ugly and possibly dangerous items put on the market simply to make a profit, Papanek says, and his message holds true today. The design world, for all of its improvements, does continue to churn out useless junk and endless repetitions of bad ideas.

Here's part of the flow-chart illustration with which Papanek ended the book - you'll have to read the book to see the rest of it, including his suggestions for how to get around the problems outlined here. But he doesn't give us all the answers - the flow-chart only goes so far as suggesting possible solutions to the world's problems; he puts it on us to fill in the rest of the chart as we move onto creating those solutions.

Stefan Sagmeister

Below there is a talk of Sagmeister :

Design can make you happy

Analyzing a list of things that have made him happy,graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister realized that almost half of the items were in some way related to design. In this intensely personal talk, he shares the details of some of those moments, and gives props to three artists whose work has had a positive impact on his world. Concluding with some examples of his own work, Sagmeister offers a real insight into his aesthetic and philosophy of work and life.



Some key points from Stefan Sagmeister's book which are useful for my RSA project are:
( How to be a graphic designer with out losing your soul)

20p: The single most important thing you can do when discussing a job with a new or potential client is to demonstrate understanding,openness and receptivity.
worst crime a graphic designer can commit: they are revealing themselves to be self-centerd and to have a narrow out look.
you have to be able to describe your own work some times you need to talk about your work and we have to learn to talk effectively.

22p: The way designers present ideas is as important as the ideas themselves.
All great work comes about when view points are balanced: in other words, when both client and designer feel that they are being listened to find the point of balance in a relationship- and then you will get results.