Design book says it best: my true purpose for this blog distilled

So I was working on a logo for my cousin last night, and racking my brain for good solutions, and decided to look in a new book on logo design I bought last month for inspiration. And little did I know that not only would this book help my brain churn out one of the best ideas yet for the logo, but the forward hit me on the head with the exact reason I created this blog in the first place, in ways I had not before been able to previously articulate.

The book is "Logo:Lab; featuring 18 case studes that demonstrate identity creation from concept to completion," by Chris Simmons. Below is an excerpt from the book's forward that caused this breakthrough for me; just substitute the words "manga artist" for "designer" and "logo" for "manga" and I think you will catch my meaning:

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. . . A couple of years ago I saw a presentation by Bill Cahan in which he showed a video of one of his employees at work. Apart from the occasional mouse click or tilt of the head, the person was completely motionless, staring at a computer screen. This, he said, was the life of a designer. Of course he was having some fun at his own expense and deliberately underplaying the real story. The real story was going on inside that designer's head.


A few months later I asked David Baker, a business consutant, to take a look at our business. He gave us a lot of useful advice, and on one point he was adamant: "You must have your own design process, and preferably you should trademark it." The reason, he said, was that clients generaly couldn't tell good design from bad, but they could understand process. A trademarked process smelled of B.S. to us (it was something our competitors did) so we ignored his advice. We were missing the point. People want to be told a story. Stories are interesting, engaging. . . convincing. We already had our own design process; it was just a story we weren't telling very well. As our storytelling improved, so did our bottom line. David was right.

This book unearths the real stories: what went on inside each designer's head as he or she struggled with the demanding task of designing a logo? It does what many desingers do badly—it brings the design process to life in an engaging and personal way. I didn't get into this business because I like sitting at a computer all day or because I want to "own a design process." I am a designer because design is challenging and unpredictable. I am a designer because I think there is nothing as interesting as a blank sheet of paper. I'm a designer because I love designing. The stories in this book go a long way toward explaining not only how designers work but why.

. . . The stories are as different as the logos themselves and yet there are striking similarities. Each reflect's the designer's particular sensibility while illustrating the challenges we all face. . . So the good new is that graphic design realy is pretty interesting. To me, that will always be a story worth telling.

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This blog is a vehicle in which to share my purposes, techniques, inspirations, etc, in order to reveal to myself and others my own path of menga creation. I've stated that before, but now I better understand why I started this in the first place. This gets to the essence of one of the most fascinating and obsessive points for me in any type of art or design; I love to learn how people create the work they do. Just how does that artist do it? What were the things they saw or read that prompted them down the path of their eventual solution? How do their brains actually work as they create? How do they get inspired and channel that into a successful design? What technical processes do they go through, and how did they experiment and find those processes? How do they overcome their obstacles? And so on. And of course my fascination with finding this has a purpose: to discover their processes I better discover them as an artist, the real them. And, in so learning, I discover more of the real artist in myself.


I also think that the kinship between artists is important and vital. We shouldn't feel like we are competing or running a race with each other, but help each other along the way and make the medium better as a result. I think that for the people grubbing for money or fame or struggling with jealousy this concept will seem alien, but I hope that most true artists out there would probably agree with me. I don't think an artists' process for inspirability or for physical creation of their art should be hidden and obsessively concealed like a recipe for secret sauce or the perfect pie crust. Rather, I think artists should be confident enough in their abilities to freely share their methods and processes with others. Food is an art, of course, but the simple fact is that once a specific recipe is written down and practiced then anyone can recreate it. But with visual arts such as design or manga, following someone else's recipe for success does not have the same result. Instead the person will find their own path, their own solution when using the "copyrighted" formulas of other artists, not because of the method but in spite of it. Every artists has their own style, and sharing techniques does not create imitators but innovators, if those people are true artists. One of my art teachers taught me this long ago, and I have found it to be true. Of course, open dialogue requires a level of maturity and a lack of guile on the part of the artist doing the sharing; the egoless artist is the only one who can do this with any level of sucess. And sometimes they can be extremely hard to find.

I really want to start a dialogue with other creators and artists; to have them see how I do things, share with me how they do things, and have us learn from and help each other as a result. I strongly believe that you cannot design in a vacuum. By revealing my process perhaps someone will help me see a more streamlined or simpler way to do the exact same thing, or I can point them to a source they can tap into for inspiration and information. I think that's one reason why I love having my sis as a partner; we bounce things off of each other in an honest and constructive manner and create a much better solution as a result. I couldn't imagine doing this all on my own. I don't know how some artists do it. I find that half of my frustrations at work stem from me being the only designer there. When others who are also trained in design (or who I've somewhat trained, i.e. my family) give me feedback and ideas, the process goes so much faster and is ultimately more satisfying. To do manga on my own would be maddening. C.S. Lewis had Tolkien and the Inklings to bounce his ideas off of and vice versa, Virgina Woolfe had the Bloomsbury Group, Monet and Degas had the Impressionists, and so on and so forth. Some people can do it almost entirely on their own, and brilliantly too, but I am not one of them. At least, I don't think I am. =) I'd love to form my own group of people to bounce things off of, though a group or club by definition can require excluding others, and I would not want to imply that. A group open to all would be best, I think, and thanks to the magic of the internet and blogging such groups are more and more obtainable. Oh well, someday I guess. If anyone ever reads this site and wants to create such a group, please let me know and I'd be happy to join one.