Venezky Philosophy

Martin Venezky is a designer and teacher at the California College of Arts in San Francisco. He specifically teaches typography at the school and is best known for his appreciation of typographic rhythms and patterns. As a designer Venezky maintains a personal and close connection to the materials he uses. This close relationship often results in a series of frequent transitions between hand crafted and digitally manipulated aesthetics. The closeness allows the designer to think properly about the material and to know when analog craftsmanship is needed and when digital craft is needed.

This awareness of the material is very interesting and I feel that this idea of shifting between analog and digital media is absolutely essential in design. It is also a concept I was not fully aware of when I entered the design program. Since being in the program, I have come a long way in understanding the use of materials and understanding when to work analog and when to work digitally. I still have a long way to go though.

The collage that Venezky shows and cites in the book It's Beautiful then Gone is claimed to be a representation of his philosophy. He believes that art and life are eternally connected and that they should constantly grow and learn together. In his collage work, each piece of the whole is connected, but these connections must be found and created. In life, there are many ideas and motives that drive and guide us. As artists, as people even, we must notice these motives and ideas and find the connections between them to see where we have been, where we are, and where we're going. This philosophy is just like me happening upon several books this semester. I found an album artwork book, a book by Leo Lionni, and a book about Nikola Tesla. None of these books have anything in common, except that each has pushed me to learn and to motivate myself to learn on my own. They have all also convinced me to quit thinking so much and just start doing. I still think a lot and have my whole life, so making this transition will not be easy I'm sure. But I've made my first step in that direction by acknowledging what needs to be done, and I couldn't have done it if I wasn't so open to finding the various connections in my life that hold together most of my philosophical weight.