A Tile graffiti from Invader

I’ve blogged several different types of graffiti. But not Mosaic Graffiti… Actually I discovered this in the streets of Paris. I saw a few of them and wondered if this was something official, maybe some type of modern art (there has been some pretty weird legal modern art stuff around).  But speaking with a friend I found out that this is actually graffiti. 

It’s some of the nicest graffiti I have seen, not too loud, not too big but nice and funny.

It’s done by Invader, there’s more information on his graffiti here. He has done hundreds of these all over the world. 

More coming…

[;-]

A few weeks ago the Church of Scientology launched a new line of books and recorded lectures on CD. There are 19 new books and 11 modules of CDs.

They are released under an overall banner called the Golden Age of Knowledge and Basics which you can learn more about on the web site.

Now I am writing this post from the viewpoint of design and lettering. The book covers, the color, the design and the interior design of these books is spectacular, I cropped a couple of parts from the covers and included them here.

The rules of color harmony have been adhered to exactly, the lettering is real smart - keep in mind that these books and lectures were released in 15 languages. So instead of doing custom lettering for every title in 15 languages what they did was select fonts and combine them into neat lettering.

The book quality is great, all digitally printed hardback books, even have thumb-indexes.

Then comes the CD modules. They’re sort of aerodynamic plastic modules that hold smaller modules within them and transcripts and glossary of same size.

The image above is a front shot of one of the books and one of the CD modules. It’s not really a descriptive shot – mainly artistic but gives some idea.

And check out the web site. It’s got a better shot of each of these books and modules plus a description of each. And enjoy the Flash graphics.

The images here are (in sequence) from, Advanced Procedures & Axioms book and the Thought, Emotion and Effort lectures. Then it is the cover art from the brochure (which you can see on-line) and the image on the bottom is from the Dianetics 55! book and the Unification Congress Lectures.

Enjoy.

[:-]

note: These books are read in a specific sequence, the presentation here is not per that sequence.

I spotted this van the other night while going home and tried to take some night shots of it but they sucked. So was lucky to see that it was back again when I came in in the morning.

I managed to capturesome shots of this Yellow Graffiti covered van. There are hundreds if not thousands of vans with all sorts of graffiti on them. Some good some bad. I particularly like this one for the graffiti not for the van.

If you have some experience with graffiti you will appreciate the quality of these two pieces. The back piece is’t too impressive but the two sides are pretty good.

Well this doesn’t beat the Graffiti Covered building nor the Dolk Stencil Graffiti but the quality of the piece amazed me and somehow it’s better than the Vegetable graffiti’s I saw on other vans.

The yellow house in the back are the series of houses called Nyboder located on Store Kongensgade in Copenhagen. Quite funny actually as they are a historic piece of Copenhagen flanked by a yellow graffiti van – high contrast stuff.

Here’s the listing for the new album, per my favourite Arctic Monkeys Site.

Entitled “Favourite Worst Nightmare” the tracklisting goes;

01. Brianstorm
02. Teddy Picker
03. D is for Dangerous
04. Balaclava
05. Fluorescent Adolescent
06. Only Ones Who Know
07. Do Me a Favour
08. This House Is a Circus
09. If You Were There, Beware
10. The Bad Thing
11. Old Yellow Bricks
12. 505

It will be released on Monday 23rd April with the first single “Brianstorm” hitting the shelves (or should it be download websites?) on Monday 16th April.

I took this shot of a bike in the snow the other day. Following my earlier post (Dude where’s my bike – a lesson in 3D font usage) I thought I would bring this sequel.

Just like the bikes can’t be found in the snow, so will your message if you don’t use your color harmony well. I found the following would be a good basic to start from.

What is color?

Technically we could explain color like some do in encyclopedias. Something like “physical phenomenon of light or vision associated with the various wavelengths in the visible portion of the electromagneticspectrum. As a sensation experienced by human beings and some animals, perception of colour is a complex neurophysiological process.” Per the Encarta Encyclopedia.

While this may serve a technical defition it doesn’t give us a better understanding of what color is and how to use it.

Color could be simply said to be a visible characteristic used to distinguish similarities and differences in an object, painting, picture etc.

Arguably more than half of the beauty in an object, painting, picture comes from the color. Think about a bouquet in black and white. It would be nice but it would just not quite be as nice as it could be.

But color can also turn a nice painting or object into something so repellent you just want to get rid of it fast. Imagine a room with beige walls with fine gold ornaments and a Bordeaux carpet and in the middle of that place the most expensive renaissance chair, a true piece of art, painted in bright green. Had your vision been in black and white you would still consider that a gorgeous room.

Almost everyone can somewhat figure out what fits and what doesn’t. But how can you be sure. And what do you do when you are told your Powerpoint presentation needs to feature the company logo which is bright green and simply doesn’t fit with any of the charts you made. Or after you found out at a recent seminar that the color that would best represent your company is red yet all your point of sale materials you have are green.

How can you know what other colors you can use or rather you must use to make the presentation attractive (and thus sell)?

Here is where the laws of color harmony come in. To understand color harmony you first need to understand the word harmony. Harmony is defined as a pleasing effect produced by an arrangement of things. It comes from the Greek word harmonia ‘agreement, concord’ which came from the word harmozein ‘to fit together’.

This is the secret of color using color; harmony. There are laws to color harmony, there are limits and boundaries and exceptions to these which are explained with the color wheel.

Let your bosses have at you, tell you that your presentation needs contain their favorite colors, let the marketing analysts present you their color surveys, no matter what color you are asked to include. With the color wheel you are never lost.

Just like any other field, there are laws to this game and knowing them and having the tools to use them replaces your rickety string ladder with granite steps of certainty.

There is no way around it. The color wheel is a basic to creation like a paint brush is to a painter. You can paint with your fingers but you won’t get a Monalisa.

The color wheel existed long before computers, but recently a company did a pretty neat little software called color-wheel-pro. You’ll find a link to it in my tools section on the right. Try it out – it works well the new version (2.0) fixed some points missng in prior edition. It’s soon perfect.

Got this shot from the snow this week.

It’s quite fun on the picture of a bike in the snow, but imagine that as a 3D effect on text and you’ll see it’s not good for your lettering. Just like you won’t find your bike here, you’ll have a hard time reading the text.

Why – because it becomes hard to read. 3D effects on lettering decrease the contrast, so if you put too much on your piece the text and the art blend together.

On the post I did a few days ago on the Stencil Graffiti in Copenhagen by Dolk you see what high contrast means. Event on a colorful or random background, the lettering and art is clear.

There are still too many people that think modern means using modern tools (i.e. lots of 3D lettering because the new Photoshop software can make 3D lettering). Don’t fall into that trap.

Here is an example how it should not be done:

What’s wrong?
- Bad font choice
- 3D effect overdone this looses all contrast
- Too much shadow and too strong
- Serif fonts don’t do well with any 3D effects
- No color choice

Here is an example of the same and how it can be done:

what’s right?
- Sans-serif font
- 3D effect subdued
- Shadow just enough to give effect
- Font choice better
- Colors used to focus attention

The Dolk signature is a good font choice and good contast.

Hope this helps, comment if you have questions.

During the 90s – in the heyday of 3D effects you saw just about any lettering had 3D effects (embossing, bevels etc). It was great then because it was new and showed that you had the latest software.

But it never did too much for communicating message. Why was that?

When you put strong bevels on text or other 3D effects you loose contrast. And the impact of your poster or design depends on the contract and how the text is readable.

By keeping a high contrast text/art ratio your message comes across much better and you COMMUNICATE to the viewer.

In practical terms:

1. Use drop shadows but keep them moderate (a few points drop shadow is nice, but 10 point shadow for a 20 point text is disturbing), don’t go over 10% or 15% of the text size.

2. Keep the bevels to a minimum. You can bevel text, but keep it extremely minimal. Try putting a stroke and beveling that a little instead, you’ll keep a better contrast.

3. When you choose your color for the font, watch the color harmony (I’ll post more on this later). Stick to colors that offer nice harmony but good contrast.