2 Quotes

In his article, “Beyond Small, Medium, and Large” for AIGA, William Longhuaser writes of the value of design students creating letterforms by hand. I found the following quotes to be of interest.

Before we learn our ABCs, letters are abstract shapes with no meaning. As the letters become recognizable, the individual forms and structures become invisible to the eye. Familiarity breeds indifference, and the unique forms that define each letter are replaced with a name for identification, eventually revealing words, phrases, and sentences. This ritual, our earliest contact with graphic design, is the path to literacy, but it fails to develop and cultivate our eyes. The question is how does one transcend immediate recognition and replace it with observation and perception?

And later:

In a world where information about virtually everything is available instantly, it is rewarding to discover things that exist but remain hidden, invisible, unless perceived through observation.

This of course, makes me think of my cell phone photos. They are to some extent, casual and even accidental. The photographs are created easily, almost instantaneously. It is a simple task to post them to this blog. Still, I think my eye searches for something latent or hidden for the purpose of observation.