Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
NY Met puts collection online
The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art has put 400,000 super high resolution images of their collection online, free to use. Great for use in presentations.
Presenter backgrounds
The Obama press conference yesterday in front of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch is an example of how a nice presenter background can make a big visual impact. The dark painting background looks great in close up photos, although less interesting from a distance.
Conference organisers should think beyond the curtain, blank wall, or list of sponsor logos.
Conference organisers should think beyond the curtain, blank wall, or list of sponsor logos.
Become a great graphics designer
I am reading the book How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer (affiliate link) by Debbie Millman (picked up at Rizzoli in New York, a great place to find design books). The book comprises of a series of interviews with famous graphics designers. Here are some common themes in all the discussions.
- The process to getting to a good design is messy: you try, try, try, and then all of a sudden it happens (or not). Different from churning out analysis and data charts one after the other.
- The standard career path for a graphics designer (start at the bottom in a big studio) inhibits success later on. Multiple designers spoke about finding a career setup that frees you from a big corporate structure in your formative years (a financial challenge).
- You need to find time to do work away from the day-to-day pressure of a client. Again, this is a financial issue. Designers quoted lucky family situations and/or a large steady client as the enabler for creative freedom.
- Pro-bono work often brings out the best in a designer, since “the client who is not paying has no right to interfere with the work”
- Many designers are introverts, like to work by themselves, and stay in the front line of design work, i.e., they do not move into the management ranks.
- Almost every designer talks about art versus design. I think deep in their hearts they regret not having made it as an artist.
An interesting book with many abstract concepts, it will resonate with somehow who designs day in, day out.
Cramped museums = bullet points
We have all been in them: museums full of densely packed displays of artefacts with tiny description signs that provide factual information rather than the story behind the objects. Crowds of people pass by without anyone paying attention.
Good museum design involves empty walls with just a few pieces to focus on. The explanation and background text are prominent, it could even be bigger than the object itself. People take a moment to absorb the piece, get interested in the story, read it, ponder the artwork a bit more, maybe take a picture.
Think about these 2 different approaches in the context of presentation design.
Good museum design involves empty walls with just a few pieces to focus on. The explanation and background text are prominent, it could even be bigger than the object itself. People take a moment to absorb the piece, get interested in the story, read it, ponder the artwork a bit more, maybe take a picture.
Think about these 2 different approaches in the context of presentation design.
Table with fat lines
For boxy charts, I find it very convenient to use tables as the basic organising structure. Use big fat lines to separate the cells. In this way, it is easy to add, delete cells, combine, and split them. The Mondriaan look.
Paper, an iPad drawing app
I would love to use hand drawn graphics in my presentation, but I never got to drawing and sketching on a computer. Any tools without a direct screen feedback loop (the mouse, drawing pads, and even the Wacom Inkling) simply do not work for me, and I think a screen like this are very expensive and generate additional clutter in my workspace.
The iPad could solve this, because it has a touch-sensitive screen. As a result, hundreds of drawing apps have popped up in the app store. Drawing apps are different from note take apps. The latter require wrist protection, a good way to organize notes. Drawing apps require brushes, color, pens. Like with writing apps, most drawing apps come loaded with features that just confuse me.
Hence, I was happy to discover Paper by 53, a minimalist drawing app (one of the readers pointed it out to me in a my recent review of iPad note taking apps). Paper just cut down the drawing tools to the bare essentials, and the result is actually good I think. The app is free, but this version comes with one drawing tool: the ink pencil, if you want to get a pencil, a marker, a pen and a paint brush (water colors) it will set you back $8 in in-app purchases.
The pencil is the tool I actually use most. There is a big drawing problem with the iPad screen: it is not pressure sensitive, and varying stroke width is the key feature what makes writing with an ink pen so great. Paper solved this with adjusting the stroke with depending on your speed as you move the pen over the screen. More confident, fast strokes, will appear bolder. (The pen tool works the other way around, moving it slowly creates heavy ink, moving it fast produces a thin line). I love the simple cartoon style sketches that this app produces, and I am looking out for a first client situation where I can try out a cartoon-style presentation (like the one below) for real.
The iPad could solve this, because it has a touch-sensitive screen. As a result, hundreds of drawing apps have popped up in the app store. Drawing apps are different from note take apps. The latter require wrist protection, a good way to organize notes. Drawing apps require brushes, color, pens. Like with writing apps, most drawing apps come loaded with features that just confuse me.
Hence, I was happy to discover Paper by 53, a minimalist drawing app (one of the readers pointed it out to me in a my recent review of iPad note taking apps). Paper just cut down the drawing tools to the bare essentials, and the result is actually good I think. The app is free, but this version comes with one drawing tool: the ink pencil, if you want to get a pencil, a marker, a pen and a paint brush (water colors) it will set you back $8 in in-app purchases.
The pencil is the tool I actually use most. There is a big drawing problem with the iPad screen: it is not pressure sensitive, and varying stroke width is the key feature what makes writing with an ink pen so great. Paper solved this with adjusting the stroke with depending on your speed as you move the pen over the screen. More confident, fast strokes, will appear bolder. (The pen tool works the other way around, moving it slowly creates heavy ink, moving it fast produces a thin line). I love the simple cartoon style sketches that this app produces, and I am looking out for a first client situation where I can try out a cartoon-style presentation (like the one below) for real.
Diagonal lines
A cinematic presentation opening
Have a look at the way Francesco Paciocco credited this short video about Milan. It is a video, but the shots are very close to still images. We do not see the cliché images of the Duomo and other tourist attractions. Instead, a flow of scenes from daily live.
I like cinematic openings in PowerPoint presentations. A series of images to take the audience to a different place. While it might be a bit too complicated for the average designer to create such a video, you can create a very similar effect in PowerPoint by sequencing a series of Flickr images with a Creative Commons license. If you want, you can go one step further and add a slow-zoom effect to your images.
Via Fubiz.
I like cinematic openings in PowerPoint presentations. A series of images to take the audience to a different place. While it might be a bit too complicated for the average designer to create such a video, you can create a very similar effect in PowerPoint by sequencing a series of Flickr images with a Creative Commons license. If you want, you can go one step further and add a slow-zoom effect to your images.
Via Fubiz.
Screaming colors
Other examples of interfering colors are on the border of pink and blue, or green and blue. I blogged earlier about how great classical painters manage to create rich colors through a combination of color mixing, patterns, texture.
Learning from impressionists
Every presentation slide should have a clear organization, and direct the eye. Paintings are a good example. Have a look at this painting by Monet: The garden at Sainte Adresse. It is clearly divided in 3 horizontal bands, has a strong diagonal cutting across, and the flags and steam clouds from the boats provide energy that leads the eye from left to right.
Lessons from Vidal Sassoon
For me, there were two things that I found especially interesting.
- It took him 9 years to find his signature style that would change the way women looked (and thought of themselves) in the 60s. Design is hard work, even for the best and most talented among us.
- He says that it is easy to see when something is wrong, but very hard to come up with something that is right.
This is exactly the case in slide design as well (at least for me). Learning to design is going through lots of your own failures, eliminating stuff that is not right, leaving you with the things that do. One way to accelerate the process is to plough through design books and absorb anything design around you. It increases the odds that you will bump into something that works.
Every sentence should matter
I recently made the switch back to literary fiction after it took me around 25 years to overcome the bad memories of high school teachers forcing me to read this genre against my will.
Reading these books showed me just how empty corporate language is. Over the years I have developed a pretty high speed-read rate. Non-fiction books, annual reports, PowerPoint bullets can all be digested in very limited time without missing a beat of the content.
So, when I tried to apply this to literary fiction I was forced to back up. Every sentence actually matters. The world would be a much better place if corporate language stuck to this principle.
Reading these books showed me just how empty corporate language is. Over the years I have developed a pretty high speed-read rate. Non-fiction books, annual reports, PowerPoint bullets can all be digested in very limited time without missing a beat of the content.
So, when I tried to apply this to literary fiction I was forced to back up. Every sentence actually matters. The world would be a much better place if corporate language stuck to this principle.
Monet, poppies, and color rhythm
Nature and artists are still better at producing certain colors than computers. Look at the famous painting Poppies at Argenteuil by Monet. If you were the pick the blue green color and copy the RGB values into your PowerPoint presentation, the result would be dull. The rhythm of the brush strokes adds something.
In spring, there are many flower fields like these in Israel. The green blue color is created by the contrast between the top and the bottom of the leaves: grey green and yellow green. The wind moving the leaves creates the color effect. In an earlier post I discussed a painting by Jan van Eyck with a similar effect of alternating and interacting colors.
This painting is also a great example of how to create movement in a static image. The horizon and the diagonal line between the two ladies set the composition. Look how the red flowers are blurry dots of paint without much detail, and how they get incredibly big close to the front. Flowers in the wind never sit still, but rather we watch them go round, leaving a much bigger impression than the space they actually occupy.
This painting has multiple levels of experience, an almost impossible feature to recreate in a PowerPoint slide, but a reminder about what visuals ultimately are: pieces of emotional input. First you see a landscape, then you see things moving in the wind, hear the wind whistling, feel that spring sensation when you venture out of your cold house into the sun and sense your skin warming up from the outside. The bright red, blue green contrast, plus the movements of the children running down the hill might just remind you that life is all about those simple pleasures and moments of beauty.
In spring, there are many flower fields like these in Israel. The green blue color is created by the contrast between the top and the bottom of the leaves: grey green and yellow green. The wind moving the leaves creates the color effect. In an earlier post I discussed a painting by Jan van Eyck with a similar effect of alternating and interacting colors.
This painting is also a great example of how to create movement in a static image. The horizon and the diagonal line between the two ladies set the composition. Look how the red flowers are blurry dots of paint without much detail, and how they get incredibly big close to the front. Flowers in the wind never sit still, but rather we watch them go round, leaving a much bigger impression than the space they actually occupy.
This painting has multiple levels of experience, an almost impossible feature to recreate in a PowerPoint slide, but a reminder about what visuals ultimately are: pieces of emotional input. First you see a landscape, then you see things moving in the wind, hear the wind whistling, feel that spring sensation when you venture out of your cold house into the sun and sense your skin warming up from the outside. The bright red, blue green contrast, plus the movements of the children running down the hill might just remind you that life is all about those simple pleasures and moments of beauty.
Art Authority for Mac
I reviewed Art Authority, this great art catalogue for iPad earlier, and I just bought the same application for the Mac.
The bad news, the user interface is a lot worse than the iPad. You browse art in finder windows, sometimes via HTML pages.
The good news, working with the images is a lot easier. Since a good keyword search mechanism is still missing, a very large monitor makes it easier to browse icons of paintings. You can have multiple thumbnail windows open, and leave them open for a long time.
Ten dollars well spent. Twenty dollars well spent if you buy the iPad app as well.
The bad news, the user interface is a lot worse than the iPad. You browse art in finder windows, sometimes via HTML pages.
The good news, working with the images is a lot easier. Since a good keyword search mechanism is still missing, a very large monitor makes it easier to browse icons of paintings. You can have multiple thumbnail windows open, and leave them open for a long time.
Ten dollars well spent. Twenty dollars well spent if you buy the iPad app as well.
Going beyond the presentation screen borders
A long introduction to the post today. You can skip the plot sideline and go straight to the end if you want.
It seems that many visual artists that somehow documented the thoughts behind their work reach higher levels of fame. One example is Vincent van Gogh, who through the letters to his brother Theo gave us a lot of background on his art. Vincent van Gogh spent some time in this white house in the same street I grew up in the Dutch town of Hoogeveen, and it is striking to see how his descriptions of the place, the features and character of the people still applies today (except for that people there have moved on from living in huts). His subsequent transition from the cold/dark Netherlands to the bright Mediterranean is another interesting parallel I share with the painter.
Recently, I have been reading a biography about Robert Irwin, an American artist starting off with expressionist paintings to move on to minimalist, large art installations. The book Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees
(affiliate link) provides lots of his personal perspectives behind his own work, but more importantly about art in general. I have changed the way I like at art after reading it.
Irwin wonders why art ends with the frame of the painting. He wonders why art ends with the room the painting/installation is exhibited. Art and beauty is all around us, we just need to be able to perceive it.
It seems that many visual artists that somehow documented the thoughts behind their work reach higher levels of fame. One example is Vincent van Gogh, who through the letters to his brother Theo gave us a lot of background on his art. Vincent van Gogh spent some time in this white house in the same street I grew up in the Dutch town of Hoogeveen, and it is striking to see how his descriptions of the place, the features and character of the people still applies today (except for that people there have moved on from living in huts). His subsequent transition from the cold/dark Netherlands to the bright Mediterranean is another interesting parallel I share with the painter.
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| Vincent Van Gogh, farm house in Hoogeveen |
Recently, I have been reading a biography about Robert Irwin, an American artist starting off with expressionist paintings to move on to minimalist, large art installations. The book Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees
(affiliate link) provides lots of his personal perspectives behind his own work, but more importantly about art in general. I have changed the way I like at art after reading it.Irwin wonders why art ends with the frame of the painting. He wonders why art ends with the room the painting/installation is exhibited. Art and beauty is all around us, we just need to be able to perceive it.
"But paintings are like what you can barely make out through a keyhole compared with the richness of perception that's just waiting there in the world to be experienced all the time. [...] It's strange. With food, for instance, people seem to understand what's involved: you savor the taste rather than just feed the body. But people have a hard time understanding that it should be the same way with visual experience."Popping the bubble and bringing us back to the world of presentations. What got me to write this long post introduction is the insight that you need to design an overall presentation experience that does not end with the borders of your screen. The background, the stage decor, the way you/the speaker appears, the light in the room, everything. Your presentation is a mini art installation maybe with a more banal subject than these great artists, but still it is an installation. Imagine what a video of your performance would look/sound like and design acoordingly. The TED presentations are a good example of this.
Review: Art Authority for iPad
I often use paintings as an inspiration for slide design. Sometimes you can actually use the actual painting itself, but more often, I use a painting to borrow a color scheme (earlier post).
There is a big problem with art books: it is hard to browse vast quantities of images quickly, slice and dice art works by artist, time, genre. A good painting requires time to appreciate, once you found it. However, the finding is the difficult bit.
The iPad is a wonderful device to navigate huge image data bases (earlier post). I am a bit late to discover Art Authority for iPad, an application that make this a reality for art. Over 1,000 (Western) artists, with each painting properly documented plus links to Wikipedia for more information.
Most art books show the same "greatest hits" paintings, not spending paper on less well-known works by artists, paper publications cut off the long tail. Not with Art Authority that shows works beyond the beaten path.
$10 well-spent.
There is a big problem with art books: it is hard to browse vast quantities of images quickly, slice and dice art works by artist, time, genre. A good painting requires time to appreciate, once you found it. However, the finding is the difficult bit.
The iPad is a wonderful device to navigate huge image data bases (earlier post). I am a bit late to discover Art Authority for iPad, an application that make this a reality for art. Over 1,000 (Western) artists, with each painting properly documented plus links to Wikipedia for more information.
Most art books show the same "greatest hits" paintings, not spending paper on less well-known works by artists, paper publications cut off the long tail. Not with Art Authority that shows works beyond the beaten path.
$10 well-spent.
Portraits that do not really look you in the eye
Stock images libraries are full of pictures of models that look towards the lens, but are not really look at you. The man in these ads does better than the woman (maybe the squinting, or his age), but it is hard to beat a painter's ability to get those penetrating eyes.
The ads were taken from Ads of the World. The painting is "Girl resting on her arms" by Eugene Vidal (1847-1907), Oil on canvas, 47 x 59 cm.
The ads were taken from Ads of the World. The painting is "Girl resting on her arms" by Eugene Vidal (1847-1907), Oil on canvas, 47 x 59 cm.
The secret to great presentation design is...
The bar has been put higher and higher over the past years:
- Everyone is now able to put text and charts in PowerPoint and project them on a screen
- (Almost) everyone has discovered where to get beautiful page-filling images
- Many people have figured out how to clean up a messy data chart
- More and more people are learning to apply professional typography (PowerPoint gets a bit closer to Illustrator with every release) and coherent color schemes
What is left that is hard to do is the "art part". It can never be automated. Sequencing the right story, knowing what to cut, what to keep in, picking the right analogies, selecting the right images, picking the exact right data visualization option...
The real photographer and the stock photographer
Clicking through some of the black and white images on this incredible page on Smashing Magazine shows you once more the difference between an average stock image and a photograph taken by an artist.
This image is by Andrzej Laskowski
This image is by Andrzej Laskowski
Every slide starts with a sketch
Painters first make a sketch before starting the final painting. Presentation designers should do the same. I have a big pile of old print outs that is my unlimited source of scrap paper. An important slide can take 5-10 page-filling rough sketches before turning to the PowerPoint editing screen.
I always carry one of these beautiful notebooks
(affiliate link) with me to capture an idea that pops up in my head. Yes, a notebook and not an application such as Evernote on my iPhone because the idea is most of the time a sketch or a scribble. Hard to do in digital format.
The end of my most productive/creative days are always marked with a full paper trash can next to my desk.
The painting is Gauguin's night cafe, info about him and Van Gogh painting at this location here and here.
I always carry one of these beautiful notebooks
(affiliate link) with me to capture an idea that pops up in my head. Yes, a notebook and not an application such as Evernote on my iPhone because the idea is most of the time a sketch or a scribble. Hard to do in digital format.The end of my most productive/creative days are always marked with a full paper trash can next to my desk.
The painting is Gauguin's night cafe, info about him and Van Gogh painting at this location here and here.
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