i’ve decided to take part in this week’s weekly challenge the challenge is to write in some way which is different to what you would normally do, so i’m going with stream of consciousness. it’s so much a stream that i’m resisiting punctuation and capitals but i’m struggling with that, can you tell?
after all if you don’t have punctuation how can you tell which bit is a question and where you should take a breath. it must be much harder to read surely. perhaps it would be good to give this to all the people who seem to think that twitter and facebook etc can do perfectly well without punctuation or any kind of grammar. a case in point. i recently advertised on a local web site that i had a fish tank to give away free. i had lots of replies, it seems the world and his wife are looking for a free fish tank, but guess why i didn’t give it to the person who emailed as follows;

ill grab it
wots ur number
mine is XXXXXXXXX
the number has been changed to protect the not to innocent, i can’t change their name because they didn;t even have the grace to put it in the email. how rude! i must admit though that the meaning or use of the word grab seems to have changed, at least here in australia. perfectly otherwise nice people will talk of just going down to the shop to grab some milk, or just grab that spanner for me would you? in my day grabbing was akin to snatching, and not something that polite people did
this seems to be not just stream of consciousness but also a rant, which is another option on the weekly writing challenge. i didn’t mean it to be so, perhaps it’s because writing like this is turning into really hard work. it seems my stream of consciousness needs some banks or weirs or culverts to give it form and direction, otherwise it just flows out all over the dry ground and soaks in without a trace. i’m going to post a photo instead. this is a scilla which is flowering in my garden just now, i think it’s Scilla peruviana, and i;m sorry but it needs a capital!

Scilla peruviana

In class at TAFE we talked about the principles of design, and I’ve also been doing some research. I came across this site here, which has a good but simple explanation of the principles. The first thing it talks about is composition, but I actually think that encompasses most of the other principles, it’s the way you put those principles together. After that come balance, proportion, repetition, dominance, harmony, contrast, unity and variety. All of these can be applied to colour, shapes and textures, for example you can have contrasting colours, or harmonic colours such as a monochrome composition. A single colour might be dominant, or repeated throughout the design.
I find it a little bizarre that these principles are touted everywhere as ‘good design’, and yet examples of ‘good design’ are often wildly different. Sometimes it’s hard to see where the principles have been applied. I’ve also been doing a lot of research on Art Deco, and designs in that genre vary widely. There are brightly coloured, highly intricate designs, such as these glorious examples by Gunta Stolzl, and there are very subdued and simple patterns like these by Donald Deskey. I think you probably have to spend a good deal more time than I have to isolate the design principles in some of them, and then it’s sometimes difficult to decide why one is ‘good’ design and another not. But then, I’ve often thought that about art in general. The ultimate ‘challenge’ I guess is a square canvas painted with one single colour, perfectly flat, and figuring out how that comes to be a piece of art. Or what is the skill involved. A cynical person would say that the skill lies simply in selling the artwork to somebody.
Still, the real beauty surely lies in the fact that everybody has their own ideas, can like different things and enjoy them.