6/19 Kerry William Purcell and Whitehouse

Kerry William Purcell writes for baseline. He gave us a little synopsis bio of Alexey Brodovitch from the biography that he did on him. He spoke about how a photographer's best tool is cropping and showed us some interesting examples of the integration of text and image in a magazine layout. He also talked to us about Joseph Muller-Brockman, pioneer of Swiss design, how "the gird" came about, how he wrote the rules that underlie design, laying out the page. He showed us a really cool video remix that set his posters in motion and put them to music (which I tried to find again on the internet, but can't find it anywhere). Kerry is putting together a design classics book and pointed out in his search for the pieces to be included, that the most interesting bits of design are right under your nose. For example, maps, brail, flowcharts, time tables, etc.

Later that day, some of us went to visit John Smith, film editor at Whitehouse. He mainly edits TV commercials, but has also done a couple movies, one being Leaving Las Vegas. His job is to tell the story properly, he isn't responsible for the look of it. I learned a little bit about film and film editing that I never knew, like what they film everyday are called "dailys" and in Britain they call them "rushes." John said when working he has to get the shape of it first and then he can go back and finesse and embellish it. It was really cool to see how it works, but also know that it would never be the job for me. John is obviously so good at what he does, having to go through so many takes of practically the same thing and know the difference of what works and what doesn't. Having to chose between wide angle or close up and then decipher the differences in languages... I give the guy a lot of credit for what he does.