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Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Learning art and graphic design

For a long time, I've worked on technical solutions/consulting for many projects in my life. This job is great and interesting. However, one day  I found that: I became too "logic" strictly. In my mindset, there are only 2 guys for 2 different views: tech and business.


To be more flexible and creative, I think I need characters of an "artist". Actually, I don't know what would be happened in a kind of combination "Technology, Business and Art". However, I think it's very interesting and may make some evolutions in my future way.


So, what is exactly the kind of "artist" that I want to be? Actually, I stick my "art" need into software domain, not too general as  other artist guys, eg:  "photographer or painter".   I try to define criteria of this guy as below:


1. He needs to know evaluating how beauty a (web) design/artwork is.
2. He needs to know how to create beautiful-AND-creative designs/artworks.
3. He needs to have deep knowledge about User Experience (UX) and how to make a design in best UX.
4.  He needs to know how to research common habit/characters of the "crowd" to give the the best creative artwork (certainly in software domain :)).

I think these criteria are best match for the web designer job.

I don't know where to start from the beginning. I did asking my friends working as web designer and surfing on Internet to find my answers.  Everyone has his own way to learn Kungfu, right?

Below is the list of thing that I think I need to learn:

1. Color theory/ color harmony
2. Theory of graphic elements (shapes/lines/...)
3. Typography
4. Some basic concepts of photography.
4. UX common theory/best practices.
5. Learning graphic tools.
6. Enjoy/evaluating and stimulate some artwork that already done by others in the community.
7. Create my own "artwork".

 I start the "course" 3 days ago. Everything seems good till now. Below is the first "artwork" I did myself: the "KBird" logo. :))



It's still rubbish, but it could be a little bit progress. I think I will write down what/how I learn after finishing this course in other articles.

 Hope it helps for anyone has the same need like me. :)