I’m back from London - and I’m glad that I’m back (of COURSE, London is amazing. But Weimar is amazing, too. Or I just like sitting here and working too much).
Anyway…I’m back on the start: T he third and last and third and last and really LAST magazine in my Master’s Thesis needs to get designed in the next four weeks. On the top, you can see the first draft I did ten days ago. And I wasn’t satisfied, not at all. That’s why I took four magazines with me to university today - IL, Neon, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin and the Bloomberg Businessweek Year in Review 2011 - and I scanned them and I digitally cut out the best parts of it and I put them together. From Neon I take the long image captions. From Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin I take the mixture of Helvetica and serif font. From IL (that’s not in the image) I take lines, a LOT of them. And from Bloomberg Businessweek I take the graphics, of course. And then I started designing my own spreads. And yeah, I like them!
Ok, here’s where I have to tell you a little secret: I copy; shamelessly. Another secret: I think the best work I’ve ever done before this master’s thesis is the documentation of my internship at Bloomberg Businessweek (and the AI32 graphics during this internship). Why do I think it turned out so amazing? Because I designed this documentation right after my super inspiring time at Bloomberg. I sucked up their design and their attitude, let it float through my brain and then spit it on paper. With other words: I copied.
Well, now it’s several months - actually, exactly twelve - since my time at Bloomberg. Time passed, and so did my Bloomberg attitude. So what do I do? I noticed that one thing helps. I just ask one question: “What would Richard Turley or Jennifer Daniel do?” It helps so much. It works with every design superstar.
An example. Several hours ago, I designed the spread above, with the big quote on it. First I had the image behind the quote. And it looked static. And I remember Jennifer telling me: “We want image and type to play with each other!” But because I was too lazy for this sample spread here, I just put the image in a box. But it looks better now.
Because that’s the point: I don’t want to do a design that looks like something Richard Turley or Jennifer Daniel designed. They can do this so much better. And of course I don’t like not every single piece of design both of them designed. But I just take their design approach, mix it up with my taste and my content and ask the question “What would they do?” UNTIL I like it. Or until I’m not stuck anymore. Of course, the design looks close then. (Especially when you take the same typeface…)
But do I feel bad? Do I feel like I don’t make enough of an effort to design? No. Because I had to notice, “there is nothing new under the sun”-like, that so, SO many individual design ideas are already out there. I used to try hard to come up with an design idea in long days and weeks and months - only to notice afterwards that my so genius design idea was already implemented in at least one other design piece. I saw the same pattern with my friends. And then I thought: “Screw it. Just get to more designs, early - and then have a wild range from which you can copy, according to your content. If you have a really new idea on the way, even better. But don’t force it.”
And boy, it helps.