East vs. West

http://bsix12.com/east-meets-west/

This is a very interesting link my boyfriend found. Artist Yang Liu was born in China, but then grew up in Germany since the age of 14. Experiencing first hand the cultural difference between eastern ideals and western ideals, she created these minimalist images that accurately depict those differences. As growing up in a Chinese household in America (and now working in a mostly Chinese lab), I can verify that these images are for the most part true. The ones that I can really relate to are the boss, how they record memories, and animals. I really appreciate minimalist designs that depict something worthwhile like a message or just starts a conversation between people. Sometimes it's better to just get the message across without any extra distracting fluff.

~ Catherine

Framer's Market

So there is the Framer's Market on Springfield Ave., and for the longest time, I thought it said "Farmer's Market". The only difference between the two words is that the r and a are switched. Naturally I glanced and interpreted the sign as a whole to what I'm more familiar with. Does that count as Gestalt psychology? Anyways, I always thought to myself, "What a strange sign for a farmer's market..." It's not like the sign itself is bad or ugly. I like it's simplicity, but for a farmer's market? Probably not the best choice since you don't get the message of fresh produce. Then one day as I was driving by, I looked at the sign a little longer then before and I was like, "Oooooooooooh.......". Turns out it's not a farmer's market, but a FRAMER'S market. Now the design of the sign makes so much more sense. I appreciated their play on words, however does having their business name look like "farmer's market" a good idea? I didn't even register they were framers until about a year after living here, so what if I wanted something framed during that? I would have gone to a different business. Perhaps they mainly cater to people who have been living in the area for a while, so they are familiar with them, or maybe I just don't pay attention enough, which is possible. 

~ Catherine

Chinese Calligraphy

Being Chinese, I have been around Chinese calligraphy for quite some time. When I was young, I knew it was an art form, but I was never told what made the calligraphy so beautiful when done correctly and it never occurred to me to ask. Even though I went to Chinese school for about 5 or so years and we did calligraphy multiple times, we were never taught why the strokes are the way they are, just to copy what was put in front of us. 

It wasn't until my sophomore year of college when a young calligrapher from China stayed at my mother's home in New Hampshire that I learned the basics of calligraphy aesthetics. His name is Yu-Le and he was taught by one of the best modern calligraphers in China. For those who are curious, he was in New Hampshire because he was collaborating on a Chinese dictionary project with a professor at Dartmouth. Yu-Le had to hand write all of the characters and when I saw them, I thought they were printed from the computer because they were so small yet clean.When I went home for winter vacation, he was kind enough to give me some basic calligraphy lessons for free. 

He told me, what made good Chinese calligraphy good is that all strokes of the character must flow together and there must be a balance of think and thin strokes. The first two images below were drawn by him as a gift to me and my boyfriend and are characters of our Chinese names. If you look carefully, you can see where the pressure of the brush was lifted up to end a stroke, but a "hook" is left leading the way to the beginning of the next stroke. In some areas, a thin trail of ink is visible from one stroke to another. By doing this, it causes all of the strokes to flow together, creating one harmonious character that has movement. It is quite difficult to get this simple concept right when you are actually doing it. My "hooks" were either too long, or two short, or didn't have that beautiful point pointing to the next stroke. Another aspect of getting the character to flow is it must be drawn with one continuous motion, you cannot stop in the middle of one and you shouldn't need to stop to change direction for the next stroke. 

There also needs to be a balance of thick and thin strokes for variation and balance. One section of the character cannot be heavier than the other because that throws off the balance thus making it not aesthetically pleasing. Using all thick strokes causes the character to look too heavy and using all thin stokes causes it to look too light and loose. Usually there is a pattern of the thin and thick strokes. 

The last thing I remember him telling me is to write the characters at an angle. This is probably for the same reason as why sometimes we write words on a diagonal, to make the composition more dynamic and interesting to look at. I never noticed that good calligraphy characters were written on an angle until he told me. It's subtle, but makes a huge difference. 

The third picture is one I found from Google of not so good calligraphy. Granted I don't know what the original use of this character was, but I'm going to point out why it doesn't work as a good calligraphy piece anyways. There are no tails or leads between the strokes that makes all of them flow together, making the character look very static. This thickness of each stroke is more or less the same thickness, bringing no visual variation to it and making it a bit heavy, and even though it does look like it was written at a small angle, the angle could be bigger. The character is just there to be read and not admired. 

These are just the basic concepts, but I feel not a lot of people know this, including Chinese people. I took a Japanese calligraphy class at college and the teacher didn't mention any of this. I thought everyone in the class would appreciate knowing what to strive for to write beautiful characters instead of just copying a printed one. I felt like they were missing out on some basic techniques and figured I can at least share them with this class since we are studying type and graphic design. Even though the Chinese language is a completely different system than English, the same approach to what makes a writing piece beautiful is still the same. Every part has to flow together and there must be balance and variation. 

- Catherine

PS: One of the hand drawn/written (I can't decide what word is appropriate to use) characters is better than the other one, can you tell which one?

Yahoo!

In case you haven't heard, Yahoo! recently revamped their logo. Despite the all the hate, I personally think the design is better than what it was previously. The letters are more simple and uniform, making it look sleek and modern. The two tones of purple also add dimension to them so they don't look as flat. They got rid of those huge slab serifs, but apparently added scalloped edges to represent those serifs. 

After briefly looking up their past logos, it is clear that they did not make many changes to the font they used (other than in 1996, which I don't even know what that is). While perhaps they wanted to keep their roots, it is quite difficult to do in this day and age where everything is constantly being updated. The trend right now for websites, I feel, is to strive for sleekness and simplicity. Take the Google logo for example. The font is quite simple, but the different colors of each letter provides the variation to make it interesting. They even got rid of the letter shadowing a while back, making it more simple. Now compare that to the old Yahoo! logo, with it's letters on different levels and not being even. It seems kind of "goofy" and reflects a trend for logos that has already passed and no longer reflects the trend that is happening now. While it may seem a bit shallow to need to keep up with trend, the tendency is if you don't keep up with change and learn to adapt to it, you will fall behind. 

While Yahoo! still has it's kinks to work out, perhaps having a fresh new change to it's logo is a small step towards the right direction. In terms of logo appearance, I feel they are now more on par with Google, bing, and probably others. And the people who hate it will eventually get used to it and accept it.