As you go through life, you’ll find that art is everywhere. Whether you’re cooking dinner, walking to class, shopping, or at work you can start to see the art in everything if you just look. I’ve been challenged to do that, and five different moments from the last week stood out to me as perfect examples of five different design concepts.
Typography:
For as long as I can remember I’ve been told, never to “judge a book by its cover”; however, publishers and producers put so much work into artfully designing and redesigning these covers, sometimes it’s hard not to. This past week, I was traipsing around a bookstore in Oklahoma City and stumbled across a copy of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. This is a book I’ve definitely heard of, but I have not read. At first glance this book caught my eye. Not because of the title, but because of the typography. It artfully draws your eye with its vintage textual qualities and varied use of stroke across the lines. The cover seemed simple with very few words and colors, but became more and more complex when I examined how interconnected each letter was to the entirety of the design. Without a doubt, this book’s cover could be judged as fantastic even without glancing at a page of the book.
Symbols:
On this same trip to Oklahoma City, I came across this mural. The mural caught my eye with its colors and big text, but what really interested me was its use of symbols throughout the painting. Every letter contains a different symbol of OKC from different Native American imagery to the painting of the Gazette building to the Gold Dome building and Route 66 sign. Every corner of this painting contained imagery that made the entire piece more about OKC than any simple textual experience.
Use of Space:
After I cooked one of my favorite dinners, chicken and waffles, I had placed all the plates on the table for my massive meal. I realized that just setting the table created a unique layout of its own. The plates each filled my placemat in a unique way establishing a systematic beauty. The fork and syrup attempt to add completion to the circular plates by providing a finite start and ending point. Of the rectangular picture.
Unity
At work this week, we through a little event with a couple hundred potential sooners. As a tour guide, I get called on to do things other than just give tours. Although I had only minimal training I got called on to run the slideshow for a little event in McCasland Fieldhouse. After all the chairs were set up on the floor, there was no denying this was art. The chairs, all uniformly laid out in rows and columns spaced out evenly was an OCD person’s dream.
Color:
Even being colorblind, I appreciate colors. OU’s campus is covered in greenery and even in the thick of summer, it’s a beauty to behold. This photo is of a simple shrub that students walk by multiple times, but the way the sun reflects off of the leaves and leaves a shadow cast across the front gives the shrub a much different job than just lining a sidewalk. The different shades of green produced by the sun’s reflection and the natural shading of the hedge creates a simple monochromatic design.
