Designers that Inspire Me

Hello, this is my first blog post!

As part of my first assignment in Digital Design, I was told to pick three designers from the AIGA Design Archives that inspire me. It was hard to choose when there was so much material, but I really liked the book covers, so I choose my designers from there.

The designers I chose were Isaac Tobin, John Fullbrook III, and Rodrigo Corral. My favorite design was the cover of Everything Matters! As you may be able to tell from my website, I like simple shapes with a limited selection of bright colors, so I tried to choose designers that follow the same pattern. However, many of the designers I looked at didn't have one, singular style that they use in all their works. The artstyle varied drastically from book to book, in order to best fit the tone of the story. This made me realize something, part of what determines if a design is good or not is the context. A design could be excellent in a vacuum, but be a complete mismatch with the book it's paired with.

When looking at the 1995 "50 Books | 50 Covers" collection, I noticed this cover. My impression was that this cover is scary. the mismatched letters with their many fonts, sizes, and orientation create a feeling of unease. The hand looks like it's behind glass, and it's trying to escape from some horrible experiment. And the greyscale color scheme ties it all together as the look of a horror film. But when I read the description for this cover, I was shocked. It's a student handbook!

School can be a very intimidating environment, so I feel that a student handbook should look friendly and welcoming, the exact opposite of the feeling this cover conveys.