Artist Series

These interviews were incredibly interesting. As someone who’s always written more than I’ve painted, I’ve struggled sometimes understanding design, art and the motives behind it all. What we’ve learned so far, plus what I saw in these interviews is really opening my eyes to the intelligence and science behind art and design.

I started with Gladwell’s interview. Being someone who loves to write and read, I really enjoyed this interview. I love that Rea, Sahre and Gladwell were able to take the written word and physically turn it into something beautiful through these books. It was neat, too, how Rea described how he saw the content – as the words being a straight line and the artwork as a curved line. It made me realize words and art can go together and it doesn’t have to be so linear all the time. It was also interesting how he said “The words don’t need to be embellished – they do their job,” while Gladwell felt it was very important to have the illustrations in order to keep the readers engaged.  I also thought it was interesting what Paul Sahre said about this being the perfect time for these books to be released; it’s sad physical books are going away but maybe combining the written word with art could be a solution.

I also watched Paula Scher’s interview. She seems to think outside the box, which I really like. Like Gladwell, she strives to use art to enhance words, like with her Shakespeare posters. In her Public Theater poster, she conforms the words to the dancer’s body. Awesome. I also learned that she created the CitiBank logo and that the red curved line represents the top of an umbrella, didn’t know that. Finally, I thought her comment about design being hindered when done through a computer is interesting. She comments that art and design should still be done by hand. We should feel the material and smell the paint. While I am a big advocate of technology, when you hear things like kid using iPads in art class (yes, this happens now), it makes me think twice about using these devices. Maybe we should be more organic and revert to our original artistic roots once in awhile.