A graphic designer and docent's venture into mixed media assemblage arts. The Akron Area Arts Alliance , an organization that promotes the arts and culture in Akron and the surrounding areas received entries for its biennial Out of the Box Auction this weekend. This year the Auction will be preceded by an exhibition running October 29 through November 7 at Summit Art Space , the joint community gallery project of Summit County and the Akron Area Arts Alliance. There is a chance to bid on the boxes during the gallery exhibition. Bidding concludes on the night of the Arts Alive Awards. All boxes that were donated by artists are a chance to contribute to the local arts communities since the money raised by auctioning the boxes goes to AAAA and Summit Art Space. All of this, and a chance to be included in the membership of the organization, sounded like a great opportunity to not just observe the arts in the area, but to be active in the creation of local art. So, I took my la...

Influence of versatile painter and graphic designer is still seen today. Graphic Design has come a long way from the early days of posters for the Moulin Rouge. For me these early posters are the basis for a majority of our design and advertising layouts. Many credit Piet Mondrian a fine artist for his introduction of the geometric grid to the art world. I find the posters of Pierre Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec to be one of the masters of the graphic layout. In a lithographic entitled "France-Champagne" you see an excellent use of graphic elements and type in a layout that leads your eyes from left to right and top to bottom across the design. Even the use of fonts, you notice only 3 different styles, creates an order of importance in the text and allows your eyes to properly separate the message. The colors, although monotone in this example, contain depth and contrast. The light and airy nature of the woman's skin and the bubbles filling up the corner is striking a...