The world is a strange place these days for "artists" and "designers". You have to use both sides or your brain constantly. When you use A:M you can be an "artist" but sometimes you have to be a computer geek. In the "old days" I used markers and paper to create comprehensives and rough layouts. Now I use Photoshop or HTML, or CSS to create comps. In the "old days" the only technical issues you had to deal with was water in you airbrush compressor line or your prismacolor markers dried out.

I have found a new css web design style I really like; "Elastic" (different from "flexible"). Very cool. Use "em" units for everything including images. When a viewer increases the text size the whole layout scales not just the text. The layout is untouched and you can zoom in on images. Beautiful... but... once again I have to use that dang right brain. I have to use a calculator to convert pixels to ems.

(This one uses both Flexible and Elastic css tabless layout concepts. Scale the text or the window. The page resizes to fit.)
http://www.vernsworld.com/vw/index_sample2.asp

It has gone too far this week for me. At the moment I have one "big" client supplying most of my work. That client works for ANOTHER client, who works for yet ANOTHER client. So the relationship diagram goes like this:

Corporate client --> PR firm (no designers) --> Design/production marketing agency (my client, non designer) --> Vern - graphic designer web guy

So there is no one in that whole chain that has one tiny little bit of graphic design knowledge or experience until it gets to me. The top client hires the PR firm who hires my client who contracts me to do the "creative" stuff. This is... not the best situation since I have no direct contact with anyone but my own client... who doesn't have direct contact to the top level client. A lot of information is lost in the shuffle and not one single person in the whole chain has a clue about what "looks good". I'm not kidding. Even some "non-artists" have a tiny bit of aesthetic sense... they know not to wear plaids with checks... some people know that "white space" is not always "wasted space to jam more copy and pictures in". Not these guys. Nothing. Blank slate. No design sense at all. The money is good though.

Currently my client and myself are waiting on a decision being made by the "Top" level client in that chain. They had a bunch of different agencies all doing different jobs for different segments. To streamline and simplify this they are going to pick just ONE agency to do this. So, if they pick "someone else" the PR firm lays off a bunch of people, they fire my client, and I lose all that work as well. All of the agencies had to go in and do a "dog and pony" show. I remember those. I just wish I had some more involvement in this one... all those "non-designers" doing the pitch... <shudder>.

In the meantime we have to be prepared if we DO get that client (I am 90% sure it will be good news). Once the decision is made the excrement will hit the rotating blades. I've started building a web application to do file management, job tracking the whole deal. I tried to find some off the shelf solutions but decided I needed to build it myself. I am using "Ruby on Rails". Which leads to my right brain activity most of the last few days. I love this "rails" concept. It is FREAKING BRILLIANT but it is also a bit "code-y" for my tastes. It does however beat writing php/SQL database crap over and over. It even beats using Dreamweaver in my opinion because the code is... so light it just floats away like a feather. Changes are simple and fast. All the database stuff is handled invisibly in the background. This IS the way to produce web sites... but...

I'm an ARTIST! What the freaking heck? I'm sitting here last night in the Mac terminal fiddling with Apache, PHP and MySQL installations... tweaking settings and configs when all I really want to do is design fancy css or work on some more "hair" in A:M. I know that once it's all working it is going to make life easier for me but still... I'm an ARTIST! What the freaking heck? I have this huge gigantic oil painting to get done by August. Portrait of my grandparents when they were young. When I am in "code mode" the left side of my brain gets sad and feels neglected. Then when I need it it won't always get going. It sulks and I have to talk gently to it and encourage it get in the creative mood.

The two sides of my brain usually work well together but they can be like spoiled children sometimes.

-vern

I can relate to
these days.

Here is something I observed just recently. When I'm in the 'code mode', I tend to not want to go out and make execises. It is very easy to get sucked in the code and just code away without thinking about the outside world. This 'code mode' is a comfy mode where I can just be alone with myself and not have to interact with the outside world. Like you said, when in 'code mode' it is very difficult to get the creative juice flowing.

But if I just go out, take a long walk, go at places where there are people, interact with people a bit and look at places and things outside, then I come back with the head full of new ideas and the creative juice wants to flow again. Taking a long walk seems to be the most efficient way to get the creative juice going again. Maybe a combination of oxigenation and be in a constantly changing environment. I don't know but it works.

To keep in the coding mode, I need to constantly keep my mind with the problem solving. I sleep doing problem solving, I wake up doing problem solving, I breakfast doing problem solving an I must go directly to the computer to solve the darn problems. I need to stay very focused on the problem to be solved and going out would just introduce distraction.

The creative artistic mood needs to be constantly distracted, it seems. The opposite as the coding mood. When I keep focused for too long while in the artistic mood, I tend to just repeat recipies. To be really creative, I need to unfocus and think outside my current box. It's like if I just keep on focusing on an artistic creation, my mind tends to go into problem solving mode. The artwork becomes a point attractor. Going out and taking a walk trows some turbulences into that point attractor and the creativity starts revolvong around some fresh ideas.

So go take a walkk for a while. It helps

BTW. Very cool your elastic web page. I need to try that on my own web site sometime.

I actually just started college again as a web design major after dropping out about seven years ago. I used to be fine arts and lit double major, but got disillusioned with the art scene at my university.

I remember one time we were in a group critique and the teacher's favorite was showing off his latest painting, which was a red circle on a green background - kind of a color field abstract expressionism Josef Albers/Barnett Newman thing - and everyone in the circle had to say what they thought of the piece. So everyone in the class heaps praise on this guy and when it got to me, I stuck my foot directly in my mouth and said what I thought, which was something along the lines of "It's a circle."

Maybe I just had some bad experiences but it seemed like to me that the fine artists had kind of missed the whole point of creating art for others and was doing what Vonnegut called pseudo-intellectual masturbation. Yes, the technique can be interesting, and the effect of color psychology on the subconscious is fascinating, but in the end, it's just a freaking circle.

So my best friend is still doing this kind of stuff and we have those knockdown drag out fights every time we get together about this movement and I still contend that this stuff has the emotional resonance of a particularly interesting pile of dog poo. You might wonder what he did to create that particular color and texture, but you wouldn’t call it art.

I have always felt that the purpose of artists is to communicate an idea to the audience and in an ironic way; I feel that animators, despite the common belief that the “art” that they produce is kiddy-fare, have much more rights to claim the title of artist instead of the funky wallpaper that passes for fine artists today.

So every time I start laying out a page, I chuckle to myself about the way that web designers have to use fine art and graphic design techniques combined with all the training in coding to create pages that most people think is easy as the “create a dragon” button. Gosh golly, the stuff that artists have to do to pay the bills. Da Vinci probably grumbled about it too when he was doing his civil engineering projects.

In other words, I feel ya, Vern.

AMEN!
That's exactly why I quit Columbia college back in '02 - "fine artists" (and "fine art" instructors) all too often fall into that mindless creative trap.
(I don't want to be a starving artist. I want to be a successful "sell-out" who is free to be "artistic" on the side.)

AMEN AMEN!

"Excuse me waitress? I'll have the sell-out with art on the side please... and a diet Pepsi. Make it snappy! I have a client meeting."



-vern

I would just like to say one more thing...

I LOVE RUBY ON RAILS! WOOOOHOOOOO!

I can put up with this kind of tech stuff. Oh my LORD! So fast, so easy. So painless. Web 2.0 here I come!

-vern

Hmm... I'm getting a 500 internal server error.

I believe that by going on a walk, one is dropping the left brain log jam problem and putting it on the back burner. It's a break from unproductively grinding away logically, linearly, rationally on a problem.

For me, walking is relaxing, and the change in environment wakens & stimulates the visual right side. I don't even realize that the problem is coming along for the walk, simmering and bubbling behind me, and usually by the end of the walk - I've had an Ah ha! moment. The right brained intuitive, leap of insight is such kick.

But it's usually hard to convince the left brain that a solution will just pop without thinking, and compulsive noodling.

(Meanwhile, the right - left brain theory is believed to be mythological by left brain scientists. Right brain people just know they are wrong.)

You know what? I think I got the sides of the brain confused. It's the LEFT side that is mathematical and the RIGHT side is artistic... so embarassed. I found that old book "Drawing on the right side of the brain"

-vern

Nah, you're just diclexstic

I just assumed you were standing on your head

"I'm an artist not a... brain surgeon!"



-vern

Bait & Switch !!!! Bait & Switch!!!

A. Vern, you've got your hemispheres switched: http://www.funderstanding.com/right_left_brain.cfm

which explains why you righties are so uptight. (us lefties are the only ones in our right minds...)

B. this movie sums up my Art school experience perfectly:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364955/

(note: look at the second photo; in the background you'll see paintings of triangles. there is a long scene about how that teacher has been painting triangles for years. And selling them for large sums of $$)