February 22nd, 2008 | Published in Marketing and Advertising, Links, Art and Design
Has advertising gotten better since 9/11? Paula Scher thinks so. An excerpt:
On the whole (with the exception of movie and theater advertising) ads are better designed than anytime I can remember since the sixties. The concepts are smarter, the layouts are more sophisticated, type choices are more appropriate, and art direction is more nuanced.
December 21st, 2007 | Published in Beauty, Quotes, Culture, Art and Design
Because taste is grounded in the sense of distinction, it follows that not everyone can have good taste. It is a conceptual impossibility (just as not all students can have above-average grades)…. Thus “good taste” shifts towards more inaccessible, less familiar styles.
–Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture (UK Edition, 2004), p. 125
December 15th, 2007 | Published in Beauty, Life, Quotes, Culture, Art and Design
Good taste confers a sense of almost unassailable superiority upon its possessor. This is the primary reason that, in our society, people from different social classes do not freely interact with one another. They cannot stand each other’s taste. More specifically, the people who are higher up in the social hierarchy are utterly contemptuous of everything that the people beneath them enjoy (movies, sports, television shows, music, etc.).
–Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture (UK Edition, 2004), p. 125
December 14th, 2007 | Published in Work, Quotes, Art and Design
There are several ways to perform almost any act – an efficient, workable, artistic way and a careless, indifferent, sloppy way. Care and artistry are worth the trouble. They can be a satisfaction to the practitioner and a joy to all beholders.
–Scott and Helen Nearing, The Good Life, p. 314
December 5th, 2007 | Published in Internet, Quotes, Art and Design
The less sophisticated [print designers] lament on our behalf that we are stuck with ugly fonts. They wonder aloud how we can enjoy working in a medium that offers us less than absolute control over every atom of the visual experience. What they are secretly asking is whether or not we are real designers. (They suspect that we are not.) But these are the juniors, the design students and future critics. Their opinions are chiefly of interest to their professors, and one prays they have good ones.
–Jeffrey Zeldman, “Understanding Web Design“
December 1st, 2007 | Published in Quotes, Technology, Art and Design
Any third-rate engineer or researcher can increase complexity; but it takes a certain flair of real insight to make things simple.
–E. F. Schumacher in Joseph Pearce, Small is Still Beautiful: Economics as if Families Mattered (ISI Books: 2006), p. 226
November 29th, 2007 | Published in Internet, Quotes, Art and Design
Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.
–Jeffrey Zeldman, “Understanding Web Design“
November 28th, 2007 | Published in Morality, Quotes, Religion, Art and Design
One can have the most exquisite taste and yet … be the dreariest of creeps. And of course one can have no taste at all and be wondrously good-hearted. The snob’s error is to put good taste before a good heart – to put good taste before almost everything else. Clearly a fine thing to have, good taste can lend harmony, elegance, and graciousness to one’s life. Yet to pride oneself on one’s good taste is not only the beginning of snobbery; it is also unseemly and, in and of itself, a piece of certifiably bad taste.
–Joseph Epstein, Snobbery: The American Version (2002), p. 81