Freshman year at RISD, also known as boot camp (or more formally Foundation), was probably the most constructive year leading to my career as a designer. Even after a decade of real life experience I still think back to the amazing amount I learned in such a short time. There are lessons from art school that could be applied to just about any creative endeavor. So if you haven’t been to art school, or even if you have… pay attention. Here in no particular order are 9 of the most important lessons from boot camp.
Variation of marks
In drawing class, before you are allowed to draw a model you have to practice making marks with charcoal on the page. It is an exercise to train the hand in the medium and develop a vocabulary of marks – light, dark, medium (and everything in between), sharp, soft, chaotic, controlled, solids, gradients, curvy, straight, fluid, blocky, etc.
Before you can master your medium you need to fully understand your marks – the smallest units of creativity.
Squint
Squint and look at the forms. Where does your eye go?
Take three steps back
Similar to the squint trick, take a few steps back and look at the page as a whole. Yes, focus on the details but always step back and look at the whole. Do it often. You will get into a rhythm – mark, mark, mark, step back, mark, mark, mark, step back…
Create contrast to guide the eye
I’m convinced that a solid understanding of contrast is the key to good design. Contrast is the first step in pattern recognition and is how we make sense of the world. We are wired to look for patterns, to see similarities and differences. The art of contrast is about creating something that stands out or doesn’t – high contrast vs. low contrast. In visual design, this is how we create hierarchy. If you want something to stand out, make sure it has high contrast.
Contrast is not making something darker or larger or more saturated. Contrast is making something darker or larger or more saturated compared to everything around it. Contrast is all about relativity. If everything on a page is large and dark, then adding something that is small and light will create high contrast and your eye will go right to it.
There is another important lesson to contrast. If you try to make everything stand out, nothing will stand out.
There are many ways to create contrast. The most obvious is contrast within a gray scale – black on white. But you can also have contrast in saturation, hue, scale/size, shape/form, proximity, alignment, etc. How can you create contrast in your medium?
The Unexpected
Sometimes during the creative process accidents happen. Sometimes these accidents can lead to something inspiring so don’t dismiss them right away.
Walk away
Most creative processes need some alone time. We call this the incubation period. Walk away. Somewhere deep in your unconscious the creative problem will be worked out. You’ll walk back to your canvas after a day of not thinking about it and that tough problem you were stuck on will have an obvious solution. Confident artist and designers have complete faith in this process. It’s one of those magical things about being a creative person – inspiration comes practically on its own if you just give it a little time.
It gets ugly before it gets pretty
Don’t panic. Your most creative work always goes through a period when it is just awful. This is normal. In fact if things are going very smoothly its time to worry. You may be missing something.
It doesn’t belong to you – be fearless
In the end you will have to let go of your work and release it to the wild. It doesn’t belong to you. So, practice letting go even while you work. Pretend someone else has created it. Now critique. Learning to be objective about your work is extremely liberating and will only improve the quality of your work.
Take it like a man (or woman)
Every class in freshman year has one or several students that can’t take the pressure of a good critique. It’s not unheard of to see some tears. In boot camp you learn quick. After many (constructive) attacks against your work you begin to learn to remove your ego from the situation. It’s not personal. Learn to embrace criticism and feed off it.
Great list! All of these resonated with me. One other lesson I learned was iteration, you’re never going to get it on the first try, but if you have a good thing going, repeat it, change it, work with it until you have a body of work leading to something you’re happy with. My art teacher in grade school would always insist that we “like what we make”, which can be applied to life in general. Haha.
Great post Colin. I would have to say one of my finest days in editing was when I came in the next day, looked at this video I was working on, and tossed the whole thing and started over. It was crap, but the second version was great.
@Greg
Iteration was an important one for me as well. But we didn’t get serious about iteration until sophomore year when we were expected to interate on just about everything.
I’m not sure that I agree with the “like what we make” thing. That seems too personal and ego centric. Yes, life would be much more fun. I think we just need to respect our work for what it is. Does it do its job well? Of course this may be where fine art may be different from design. I wouldn’t want to make fine art that I didn’t like but we often have to make design work that we don’t like because we are often not the targeted audience.