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I have been stamping for 4 years and am just getting into scrapbooking. My problem is that I am Design Challenged! :oops: I am looking for a good, layman's book on design and color principles. Over lunch I had a conversation with a dear friend who explained the triangle principle for embellishments. DUH! I had never heard of that. It got me thinking that there are probably a ton of principles that I should know that would help me to develop my stamping/scrapbooking to the next level.
So, please share with me books or magazines on design that have impacted your development. Thank you!
Hey Sweetie - did you ask me about a book today & I didn't answer? Anyway, I just found the one I really like. It's by Simple Scrapbooks and it's called A Simple Guide to Designing Scrapbooks - it's very good.
BTW - dostamping (Dawn) reminded me about the triangle principle when we were discussing a page yesterday. The triangle principle is about placing elements on your sb page so they form a triangle. It might be something as small as a button or eyelets on the upper left, a photo w/some ribbon on the side on the middle right and a tag in the lower left corner. It's all about balance. HTH
oh we heard about that triangle thing at 'scrapbook design university'. he he he. which, although i have taken two of their 'masters' classes, i hear they are now having to change the names. complaints filed from like PENN and some other university, complaining about them and saying they have no right to use the terms "university" or "masters" and such. how petty. i was really counting on a PhD in scrapbooking! ;) like anyone actually thinks this is a real college or something. my friends all love my 'degree', hanging on the wall.
I did go to design school, and have been a graphic designer for 13 years, but you don't have to be a graphic designer to develop visually appealing pages. Just remember that more often than not less is more. Choose a focal point picture that you want to put more emphasis on, and use other pictures and embellishments to compiment it. Designers often work with the "z" theory - your eye should start in the upper left corner of the page, travel across to the right corner, then down to the lower left corner and across to the lower right corner - thus the whole "z" thing. Our eye is very comfortable moving in this manner, so make sure you use this theory when placing your elements on a page and then you can control how someone takes in your page. A book that I really liked when I first started teaching scrapbooking because it was a basic way for me to explain design principles is "The Non-Designer's Design Book" by Robin Williams. I used it to fashion some of my handouts for my beginner scrapbooker classes. Hope this helps.
You are too funny! I work in a college and titles and degrees are very important to some people....those people tend to find their self-worth in titles and degrees. Its a shame really!
oh i do understand that, i was in school or working for a university for the better part of my life it seems, and i have many degrees myself. i remember a huge protest at my PA college when we were fighting the system in the state because they were going to change all the PA state schools to "universities". our school was larger, offered many more graduate degrees and had more PhDs teaching, which was part of the whole qualification for "university status". we were in an uproar over smaller 'colleges' not having to meet the requirements we did. also there was talk that our diplomas would then read 'state university system of PA', which now that i think of it, it never did. lots of protests for not much, i guess. but we liked to protest, and we boycotted classes for the day!
I have a degree in art! It's come in incredibly handy at times :lol: !
I learned a lot more about design AFTER I started scrapbooking; actually, a lot of the things I had learned in college, but did not totally understood started making much more sense!
I think Creating Keepsakes book "Marvellous Scrapbook Makeovers" was one of the best ones out there, but I don't think they have it in print anymore. I also like anything by Becky Higgins - she's da bomb!
Thanks, Jan! It looks like the hunt is on to find the out-of-print book! That's always fun. Its so rewarding when you finally track a copy down. I have to say, I'm not surprised you have an art degree. Your work certainly proves it! It makes me wonder how many people on this site have a formal education in art/design!
Well, I don't have an art degree, and since pursuing one doesn't make sense at this point in my life, I will settle on being self-taught! Or should I say SCS taught!
Thanks to everyone for your input! I will try to either purchase or investigate the public library for these books. I'm very committed to improving my creating skills!
Design and Art Majors
