Media Meltdown, &c.

Designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3 & post-processed in Photoshop CS3; font: Sansation

Print is dead...long live print!

Here's what I like about paper over the Web: Not mucking around with mystical coding that distracts from design. I was going to add typographical versatility, but it looks like TypeKit will narrow that gap soon. But my previous point stands--I'd rather go to a printer who will get what I want ninety-nine percent of the time than go through a programmer who, fancying himself a design guru, decides to take artistic license where he shouldn't.

I also believe that the principles of good design obtain across different media--the only thing that the Internet really changes design-wise is interactivity, and even then it's really just a step up from pop-up books, in my estimation. Elsewhere, there are plenty of impediments vis-a-vis image reproduction that makes web design much more cumbersome and irritating than its technically simpler predecessor.

In any event, people who insist that the Internet has somehow revolutionized the core values of design are trying to swindle you, and are not to be trusted. A line is still a line, and human beings still respond as they have to certain layouts, figures, colors, and what have you. The salient change concerns the celerity with which things are published, which poses an economic, not aesthetic, challenge.

On a related note, I have had people approach me asking me to teach them Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, &c. in the hope that a command thereof it will somehow improve their design acumen. This is a pernicious belief that must be eradicated. The programs of record do not in any way, shape, or form directly affect one's artistic competency. Having the right tools will allow you to do things (and better tools tend to allow you to do them more expediently), but they will not make you do them well.

Designed in Adobe Illustrator CS3 and processed in Photoshop CS3; font: Garamond BE

Garamond is boring. Or is it? Dun dunn DUNNNN...

On a related note: I need to start using serif fonts more.