The following articles are published on Thinking for a Living.
A Brief History of Emil Ruder
To know where we’re going, we’ve got to understand where we’ve been. Lucky for you and me, we find ourselves in the midst of a historical design revival. Both students and veteran creatives alike appear to be making concerted efforts to blow the dust off our collective roots and discover how our craft came to be. Look around and you’ll notice an explosion of historically influenced design, typography and illustration. My own infatuation is with the International Typographic Style that emerged from Switzerland in the 1950’s.
Surprise + Clarity
One of the more magical components of the design process is the individual expression each designer brings to a solution. Consider it the creator’s DNA woven into the final design. Although it’s one abstract part of a whole, a designer’s expression is the result of a complex recipe that might include (but is certainly not limited to); practical training and mentorship, life experience, natural talent, book knowledge, passion, cultural awareness, trends, whim, and even serendipity. This complex assortment of elements provides a designer with his or her creative perspective. And yet with all of these factors involved, most designers tend to gravitate towards one of two core forms of graphic design. One is based in structure while the other is derived from emotion.
Illustration by Frank Chimero