starting point for computer crafts
Rating:
4 / 5
Ashford knows the art of computer craftmaking and provides the reader with very good starting points for crafts that intertwine computer and manual art. Regarding hardware/software she clearly favors Mac/Adobe, so her recommendations reflect this. In spite of this slant, she gives some helpful overviews of the technological side of various formats, graphic standards, etc.
Want to intermingle computer graphics with your arts and crafts? Here's a good starting point.
Restoring modesty to the artist's tool enriches everyone
Rating:
5 / 5
The potential of the computer in craft has been seriously damaged by the excitement computers have generated. A parallel can be found when the Russian novelist Tolstoy was given a dictaphone to help speed up his writing. After a few weeks he threw it out the window. His neighbor asked if it didn't work. Tolstoy's reply was "It worked fine, but I got so excited using it I couldn't write." For almost two decades a generation of designers have succumbed to the excitement and hype of the computer without significantly adding any real content or substance to their work under the digitized banner. It is time for that to change, and Janet Ashford is a winning harbinger of that change.It doesn't help matters that most design software seems to be written by the left-brain dominant spouses of craft practitioners...well intentioned souls with no sense of the real kinesthetics of working color, form, texture. Janet Ashford has navigated through the difficult middle course between technology and entrancement. She draws! She creates custom palettes in her application software! She doesn't hit you over the head or talk down to the reader. Perhaps her experience of designing for and with her daughter has given her the wonderful tone of teaching someone she likes, who is lacking in knowledge but not in ability. That is a prized gift in any teacher, and Ashford has it mastered. She has maintained her enthusiasm, her innocent pleasure in sharing the joys of color and pattern, line, light and form. She is conscientious in gathering really useful resources together into a book that can pay off in serious fun the first weekend you get to use it, without resorting to false expectations. Buy the book. Use the example. You, and your craft, will be enriched without hype or over-simplification. Serious artists and craftspeople do not expect the tool to do the real work of creation for them. This book is written for the serious artists and craftspeople at any stage of their careers...from about 9 years old on up.
An Inspiring Book
Rating:
5 / 5
I can't say enough great things about this book. It's full of interesting projects to try, and the design of the book itself is great, light and airy, despite being packed with useful information.You'll need some software to try the projects in it, an image editor of some kind and a printer. But that's all you need for most of the projects described. Janet Ashford has really creative ideas for transforming every day objects like metal tins and boxes, using computer designs. I can just about guarantee, if you're artistic at all and you buy this book, you'll not only enjoy it, but you'll wind up designing some really amazing things as a result!
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