What’s Fashionable about Graphics?
As a designer I am privy to the constantly changing trends around me. Whether it is graphic design, or a new form of technology, being atop the ever-changing trends is vital to my success. While technology and graphic design are some of my greatest loves, I find that my passion for design has always led me into the entrancing world of fashion – and vice versa! Designers around the world have an uncanny way of defining the trends and incorporating them in a way that is communicative of the times to create a strong relationship with the public. This relationship feeds who we are and what we present to the world on a daily basis. Style is a way for us to communicate what we are feeling to the world and present ourselves how we wish to be seen.
Within my life I have had the fortune of working in New York and Rome for a large portion of my career. Because of these Vogue-infused communities, I can truly say style is one of the best ways I stay up to date with almost all aspects of my life. My own clothing incorporates the fast-paced, changing environments of the world around me and communicates it in a way that is cohesive to my own understanding of the world at the time. This sense of trends and fashion goes hand in hand with graphic and web design. Just as colors and silhouettes go in and out of seasons for clothing, so it goes for graphic design.
The relationship between the designer and the public is one of utter trust and hope. Even with my clients I find my best work can be found and unleashed after I have an understanding of my clients’ own personal style. An insurance company will not hold the same design or style as that of a photographer. The feeling of finding all the pieces that culminate to create a cohesive layout to represent my client’s style is one of the most rewarding aspects of my career.
During the process of piecing designs together, I am often inspired by the work I see amongst fashion design editors. Just as I have to cut down huge amounts of fonts, photographs and colors to bring about my clients’ best style without faddism, fashion design editors are also faced with a huge amount of content input. They are responsible for trimming down what the key styles are from all the current designers’ collections and presenting the best representation of the latest line that is feasible and appealing to their readers. An example from this very week is the image above, which I tore from the pages of Io Donna, the weekly style magazine of il Corriere della Sera. The stunning palette of these three coats, with varying textures and complementary hair color of their respective models was a mini-masterpiece to my eye, inspiring me to use that palette as soon as I could. (Not to mention running out and buying myself a floor-skimming velvet jacket!)
Staying up to date in the latest designs is fortunately necessary in my line of work. By combining my two loves of graphics and fashion I am able to stay up to date for the needs that will bring my clients the most astute graphics possible. There are moments where I feel as if design follows me everywhere I turn. Whether it is a new site for a client, the graphic I am creating or even what I am wearing that morning, design is the inescapable backbone of my everyday life. If I were being honest, though, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
