art & fear

To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product: the finished artwork. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experience of shaping that artwork. The viewers' concerns are not your concerns (although it's dangerously easy to adopt their attitudes.) Their job is whatever it is: to be moved by the art, to be entertained by it, to make a killing off it, whatever. Your job is to learn to work on your work. (from "Art & Fear" by David Bayles & Ted Orland)

Type&Image: Book Cover Design

Here are my cover design explorations for Eckhart Tolle's book, "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose" with there different methods of type and image in graphic design.

Separation: Here I decided to use the bottom left part of the image for title and author name since that part of the image was a little bit out of focus and was giving nice area to work. I used bubbles as windows to separate my type from my image. I used Bauhaus Std. font for the title and Arial Narrow for the author name.

Fusion: I used Vanishing Point filter in Photoshop to write the title to create a unity with the image's vanishing points and the title. My fonts are Arial for the title and Arial Narrow for the author name.

Fragmentation: Different approaches in this method are to use irregularities, displacement, interruption and exaggeration in your type and image. And I wouldn't choose none of them when I think about the content of this particular book. But still explored it.

... And

he said: "Stop trying to make yourself perfect every moment, instead just make the moment perfect!" :/

Dave McKean

Dave McKean (Illustrator for Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman" Series)
http://www.mckean-art.co.uk/

You can go crazy once you start to search for photoshop artists/illustrators/designers. I have gone actually! I think photoshop has given a chance to anyone who wants to become a digital artist and create a digital art without having a serious art background. Lots of them might have enough skills to please my eyes but only few of them has the ability to touch my heart and stay with me for a long time. Dave McKean is one of them. His conceptual works, colours that he uses, how he layers his images and his versatile personality reflected in his art, truly attracts and inspires me!

Alessandro Taini

Alessandro Taini (Concept Artist for Video Game "Heavenly Sword")
http://www.talexiart.com/


I have never been a fan of video games and always found myself having hard times to sit, play and enjoy them. But Heavenly Sword has become exclusion to this. It's main character, Nariko, has become my source of inspiration for my future graphic novel project. As if she was what I have been thirsty inside, a figure of strength and wisdom, while reminding me that we are not the stories our family, friends, people around keep telling us about who we are, rather we are what we have chosen to be. She still couldn't make me a video gamer but has definitely made me a modest fan of Alessandro Taini. Just be patient with his website. It takes some time till you get there and see his art works.