Posts tagged reference
Posts tagged reference
15 notes &
‘I doubt this is of any interest to.. anyone, but it’s something that I do.
I’ve been using Picasa Desktop for years - for photos at first, as intended, but then for a few image-heavy folders since I used to keep some considerable fandom archives. Then I read that Jonny Duddle used this software for organising his reference material, and so this became one of the most regularly-used applications on my PC.
There’ve been a few iterations of this catalogue, but this current one has lasted me years, with new folders and images added almost daily. Basically, Picasa has complete control over the ‘public’ folders on my PC. The ‘pictures’ folder has sub-folders, each of which corresponds to a collection inside Picasa. These are then arranged a little differently, depending on which viewer I’m using. As far as Picasa is concerned, these are sorted by title, artist or type; in Windows Explorer, they’re sorted by medium first.
It’s just part of the way I am that I somehow keep track of how the system works in my head, however recently I’ve had to add more articles which relate to time periods, and I decided that I needed some sort of reference sheet. If I come across a gorgeous map made in 1759, for example, I cannot remember which period this is from memory. Some of my collections are numbered if they relate to a certain period, but it’s easier to look at a timescale and determine that 1759 falls under the times of classical art, the Age of Enlightenment, the Golden Age of Piracy and, in a separate category, the Gothic Revival. Suddenly now I have an example of a map drawn in that age, within easy reach should I ever work on a project in that style.
Mine is a sad existence, but then I am a game designer - and this sort of thing comes in very useful when I’m asked to produce mood boards. Much of my filing is down to personal opinion, though. For example, it matters not whether an art nouveau-styled piece was actually drawn during the Edwardian era in which that style came to rise; nor indeed do I discriminate between steampunk and victorian fashions, since the overlap is vast. As time goes on I may decide that Cold War propaganda deserves its own space alongside atompunk in the 1950s, but until now, this is how I organise my files.
What’s missing is an assortment of media, and aesthetic and cultural themes without any real time frame, including:
.. but I’ll bore you with that another time.’ ;)
