AGIDEAS

TRENDS AND DESIGNERS

There were many, many design trends seen at AGIDEAS. In the following blog section I will discuss two of them.

Illustration 

When computers came out the revolutionized the world. Their effect reached everywhere, no less the areas of graphic design. Saving hours of time, they influenced design to the point of 'digital' being the new look.

More recently, illustration has started to come back as a backlash from all the 'digital-ization' running rampant.

Michael Mabry is a classic example of this. He tries to hand-craft everything, so as to challenge the mind and touch the heart. Ironically, he was approached by Adobe at one stage to do some digital work for them. However, he still kept to his hand-styled approach.

Eamo Donolley is a Melbourne illustrator. Growing up in the 80's, the culture of that period heavily influences his work. Hand-drawing his initial drawings, he places them into art programs such as photoshop and then colours them.

Australian Stuart Campbell blurs the boundary between digital and hand-drawn. While still illustrative, it is entirely based in the digital program Flash. His interactive web-comics are typical of this boundary blurring with the hand-drawn meeting digital and creating illustration.

Typographic

My second trend is typography. While typefaces have been around for centuries, their use in artwork is much more recent. An example of a typeface designer is Wayne Thompson, who works in Australia. Here is some of his work:

However the trend I'm discussing is typographic layout, not typography itself. Dean Poole uses typeface-based design very well. For the below image, Dean used the trademark, copyright and registered trademark symbols as part of the actual design. This work is for New Zealand law firm Hudson Gavin Martin and is indicative of what they are.

Andreas Uebele is a German design director. He works mainly with signage and corporate communications. He really pushes the boundary of signage such as the below work where he put typography on the ceiling, where it had never been placed before.

CONCEPT EVALUATION
Dan Formosa

Dan Formosa is a founding member of Smart Design. A US company, it specializes in product design and ergonomics.

His company did some work for Ford, which involved designing the user interface for a car. One of the key selling points was the 'green metre' which is designed to keep the driver environmentally conscious of his fuel usage. The biggest problem was that the driver needed to focus on the road and speedometer, not an extra gadget. So instead of a needle gauge, Dan made a computer screen that resembled a glass with raising or lowering liquid. This was placed so as to be seen with the driver's peripheral vision, avoiding distraction.

 

Quite often gadgets are designed to be loud and shiny. I believe this design is highly successful because it integrates with the driver and doesn't distract him or her.

SOURCES
http://www.agideas.net/home
agideas design conference 2010
http://www.smartdesignworldwide.com/
http://www.uebele.com/