Due to free time in my daytime...
by Paul Berkbigler, (14 comments)
So the first thing to admit in this post is that writing and reading here has really fired me up about the furious amount of things cooking in blog-form right now, and that after authoring and absorbing content in the midst of our little enclave I was directed over to Design Observer and started to develop the addiction to it as well.
What I’ve been really jazzed about, though, is seeing several of our voices pop up in the midst of that larger discussion - seeing “local heroes” in the sense of our little blog-town step into that arena and considerably hold their own.
That said, I’d like to throw a gauntlet in the direction of Mr. Kadavy at the moment and grab a quote from the midst of your two outstanding posts within the architectural critique discussion Beirut launched -
“So, why don’t Graphic Designers speak so eloquently (or incoherently) about their work? The lack of rigor in design theory discussion in Graphic Design’s academic programs is probably due to the fact that Graphic Designers as a population are not as intelligent as Architects, and why would we be? It’s probably not salary, because, due to the liability that comes with being an Architect, Graphic Designers make comparable wages to Architects (and even more than Architects, early in their careers). It could be that Architecture is a more demanding profession than Graphic Design. It’s much easier for the average person to design a brochure than it is for them to design and build a house, and while neither product is likely to be considered “good” by members of the respective professions, the consequences of failure are far greater in the latter case.”
I’m curious what your views on being able to institute more tangible / palpable failure within graphic design would be - as an educator I really wrestle with this concern regularly. I feel in many instances like I’m trying to demonstrate to students the ways that their designs are “failing” only to have them look at me like “what’s the big deal about that font?” or “why are you frothing at the mouth over using script as body copy?” - it’s clear that we all wrestle with a certain sense of the inconsequential nature of what we do, yet also argue for the power of it because we feel its impact and influence on us and around us.
And frankly, I was just a little P.O.ed to have my practice, passion for this, and the relative intellectual rigor that I’ve attempted to pursue this with lumped into a second-tier status to architecture - I argue that what may appear to be a lack of intelligence or theoretical rigor in most design is moreover evidence that a significant amount of design theory holds about as much water as a significant amount of architectural theory does when pitted against / with practice.
Reading theoretical writing of many colors is scintillating, challenging, and captivating - it’s a treat for the head and an invitation to swell the folds of the mind wider to take it all in and consider it thoroughly. It can produce exciting, remarkable, and unexpected work in its wake, or it can (seemingly more often) act as apologetics for actual works which seem not to function very effectively outside of the bounds of their conceptual / theoretical principles. It does, however, enable the publication of a great many documents and books, and often pontificates with enough bluster to make for vigorous reading.
Our profession is rooted in linguistic and imagistic carpentry - scribes who drew words and pictures into sacred texts, and the businessmen who duplicated their marks in mechanical forms built for speedy reproduction - artisans and hobbyists who composed images and text in reproduceable manners. Architecture was the byproduct of a desire not to depend on the shape of the cave or the building materials in order to shape where we lived.
We’re simply more directly married to notions of art - laborious practice devoted to notions other than inherent bodily survival - and architecture has found further and further expression of those same notions while still inherently needing to cling to structural integrity to promote survival.
I find theory interesting and valuable primarily in regards to what can be made of it, and more often of late, an intellectual exercise that is extensively designed to promote financial and hierarchical well-being through principles of mystification and contrived in-group linguistics.
Comments (14)
Adrian said:
Not that it represents graphic design as we want to see it, but I thought is was interesting to read the Google Ads that were automatically generated for this page. What a battle we are facing when this is what the average person is confronted with as what graphic design is:
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Slightly off topic, sorry…
Posted on October 27, 2004
kadavy said:
I do not have free time in the daytime, and, at this point, not much in the nighttime either. But writing what I wrote with my free Saturday, I knew I would have some answering to do during the week, and since your response is of considerable substance, time is no object.
I am puzzled by the view of theory being “designed to promote financial and hierarchical well-being through principles of mystification and contrived in-group lunguistics.” For me theory is a desperate attempt to create truth, in an arena where (using the human mind) truth cannot be found. This is why “a significant amount of design theory holds about as much water as a significant amount of architectural theory does when pitted against / with practice,” though in practice, we have more perceptibly quantifiable mea$ures of “truth.” Maybe the heavy theory of Architecture stems from Architecture being more of a product of utility than Graphic Design. There are so many factors that can be tied down by programmatic and budget requirements, this may give the Architect the perception of being closer to truth, and the resulting theory is an attempt to reach that truth that seems within reach.
But this doesn?t prevent something very far from tangible life, such as art, or anything married to notions of art, from being wrapped in theory, in fact, this may leave more room to stretch out our theoretical tentacles. Many movements have done just that, all while being paid homage to by, and being bound with, Architecture.
Though I assume it goes without saying, I will clarify anyway, that there are no doubt Graphic Designers who can rival and surpass Architects in theoretical pursuits, but the fact remains that the educational requirements to become an Architect are more stringent than those to become a Graphic Designer. In the State of Nebraska for example, you must have a Masters? of Architecture to become and Architect. Even then, though, you are not an Architect, and must pass a series of exams to be legally referred to as “Architect” (this usually happens maybe 4-7 years after getting one’s Masters). Though I?m not dense enough to believe that higher degree=more intelligent, I do believe that the low academic requirements in Graphic Design have resulted in a brain atrophy of the profession’s aggregate.
I am jealous and humbled by your passionate pursuit of being an educator in this field. If it weren’t for my cowardice in the face of the politics of the educational system, and in the state of Graphic Design education, I would probably be pursuing the same. Maybe a design student’s project is successful when he or she believes, with fervent conviction, that they have gotten as close to truth as they possibly can.
Posted on October 27, 2004
Paul said:
David, a majority of my relative disillusionment with theory stems from encountering it in raw form and in application both in academic settings and in vocational ones - I find it to be largely another tool in the toolbox when it’s applied, instituted, and engaged in the “dirty work” (the practice) of any field, or to be a deeply inadequate religion (in a secular sense, a pursuit of truth) when it’s pursued to the exclusion of practical / practiceable concerns and constraints.
Particularly within the realms of academia and publishing, theory is what moves the ink and establishes lecture series for the most part - it can also be an effective measure for either confirming or denying employment to educators. It’s a credential, a costume, and a performance more often than not.
I part ways with it when, again, I start to look at what the theory itself has generated - whether by its originator or by its practitioners. And when that product starts to look like an afterthought or like a failure, it casts a deep shadow onto its origination / inspiration - its parent theory can still be intriguing (it can still spark thought, make the brainwaves turn, spin the gears in a different direction), but its not successful “religion” unless it remains active and dynamic in ritual. Too much theory produces stagnancy, mediocrity, and hostile encampments in my experience…
My jibe about mystification and in-language refers to the tendency of theoretical consideration to act as a litmus test to delineate “those in the know” from “those outside of it” - it’s line-drawing and obfuscation for the sake of protecting sacred enclaves more often than encouraging widespread consideration of the merits of a particular pursuit. It makes good money and books top-notch gigs more often because it sounds so important and progressive, regardless of whether it inherently possesses either of those qualities.
It is always, by its nature, theoretical however, which is to say that it is an intuition / perception / observation which has led to a conclusion / supposition which is then put to the test - practice and application. Theory without grounding is simply speculation.
I’m especially going to let the air out of your tires on the suggestion that graphic design doesn’t grow out of utility - it is as inextricably linked to utility as it chooses to be, in the same fashions that architecture can be practiced in pursuit of utility and/or practiced in pursuit of theory/speculation. We have the jobs we have because people wanted books, then wanted books more inexpensively, then wanted to know when theater performances were and who was in them, then etc., etc., etc.
I might also hazard that you have the good fortune of working for a group of theoretically active architects and with a set of individuals who enjoy the activity of thought and consideration, no matter the topic, and have found a home to pursue it within the field of architecture. The system of checks and balances that ensures someone who wants to practice architecture has at least at one point expressed the knowledge of how not to have a building collapse on its occupants by no means assures that their speculative rigor will be more grounded or more vigorous than any other practitioner on the block.
The principle reason we don’t have a lot of those same tests and gates to pass through is because our work does not (with rare, rare environmental exception) occupy an arena where it has the ability to kill, maim, or merely harm someone in a physical manner (we could start an entirely different string considering the psychological benefits and detriments that the products of designing can promote or inflict). If an architect doesn’t get it “right”, people might cease to exist because of those mistakes - that means the Government has chosen to involve itself in that particular training process for the sake of fulfilling its protective purposes.
Design education is only abyssmal if those teaching it are offering it in an abyssmal manner - I’ve had a proportionately larger amount of excellent teachers offering excellent materials and teaching to me than I’ve had crummy teachers practicing crappy methods.
I’d challenge you to provide tangible examples of quality graphic design work that’s been accomplished by getting as close to the truth as possible, and be happy to provide you with tangible examples of graphic design work that has resulted from individuals with a keen sense of basic design principles, an aplomb for rising above the simple fundamentals of repetition and practice, a verve for self-interest and self-expression through the medium of their chosen practice, and a one-to-one understanding, acknowledgement, and responsible adherence to all the stipulated goals & objectives of the client and/or project.
My passion for any and all of this derives its energy and fuel both from an inner fire / stubborness and from the successes and failures of its implementation - it is theory insofar as it is a speculation which I continue to explore and repetitively reconsider, but it is simultaneously practice via the continuity and repetition of that action.
You raise an interesting platform in the sense of architecture being grounded more firmly in budgetary constraints and programmatic elements - it makes me question how intimately familiar you are with the budgetary constraints and programmatic elements of most graphic design practice, however.
To use an outstanding example of what constraints and limitations really afford a project drawn from the world of architecture, check out Rem Koolhaas’s newly designed / implemented library for Seattle: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/local/library/
I heard a discussion of this buidling on NPR about thre or more months ago, and a member of Koolhaas’s firm specifically commented that when looking at the budgetary limitations and constraints placed on this project, most other firms had avoided it because they felt like their hands were tied too tightly. Koolhaas’s group looked at the same budget and asked “So basically you’re saying we can have anything we want as long as it only costs this much, right?” - they argued a convincing case and brainstormed the largely aluminum and glass shell of the library’s exterior directly in reference and relation to its affordibility and aesthetic merits. I’ve used this as an example of the ways that limitations are actually a creative necessity to innovative accomplishment. I’ve read comments from many other architects arguing that their best work has resulted from the tightest limitations they have had to face.
We’re in the same boat, David, we just happen to float on paper for the most part rather than mortar, stone, and steel.
This post is running extremely long, but there’s a lot to chew on in your response, David, and as well in Adrian’s contribution to this - Adrian, you bring up what is the dangerously ubiquitous nature of the way “design” is used as terminology:
Looking for Web Design ? Web Design & Development Call Today: 1-877-834-8622
Peugeot Design Contest Take part in Peugeot Design Contest and design your dream car
Graphic Designers Increase your salary potential with a Graphic Design degree.
Graphic Designers They Can Do It All. Product design to Catalogs, Get Looking Good!
Are all of these simply talking about design as an organizational activity executed through intelligent and scrutinous pursuit of assisting / encouraging / illuminating the content of a particular project, or are they trying to promote the sense of applying some sort of visual appeal to the project in question?
We’re caught in the middle ground of the potential definitions that “design” encompasses as a term, and we’d better lay out its parameters clearly in order to grapple with it…
Posted on October 27, 2004
Hollis said:
I don’t mean to toss a red sock in with your whites, but as long as design is being discussed and defended, let’s try to define it. What are the parameters of design? When does design become art and vice versa. Or is it means to an artistic end. Many times designers call themselves artists (or “creatives”) but rarely does an artist refer to themselves as a designer. In fact, the term “design” amongst the traditional artists seems to be a dirty word. A sort of commercialization of something that started out as “pure.” There’s been discussion of graphic design vs. architecture. But what about graphic design v. art. Is this a valid topic, or is traditional art too archaic to compete or be compared with design (whatever that term may encompass). One option in setting the parameters of design, is consulting the dictionary for a definition. Let’s see what the scholars got together and said design was:
de-sign (de-zin ) n. 1.
a. A drawing or sketch. b. A graphic representation, especially a detailed plan for construction or manufacture. 2. The art or practice of designing or making designs. 3. Something designed, especially a decorative or an artistic work. 4. A basic scheme or pattern that affects and controls function or development 5. A plan; a project. 6.
a. A reasoned purpose; an intent: It was her design to set up practice on her own as soon as she was qualified. b. Deliberate intention: He became a photographer more by accident than by design. 7. A secretive plot or scheme.
Okay, sounds pretty straight-forward. Now what do they have to say about art:
art1 (art) n. 1. Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature. 2.
a. The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium. b. The study of these activities. c. The product of these activities; human works of beauty considered as a group. 3. High quality of conception or execution, as found in works of beauty; aesthetic value. 4. A field or category of art, such as music, ballet, or literature. 5.
a. A system of principles and methods employed in the performance of a set of activities: the art of building. b. A trade or craft that applies such a system of principles and methods: the art of the lexicographer. 6.
a. Skill that is attained by study, practice, or observation b. Skill arising from the exercise of intuitive faculties
Hmmm, trade, practice, craft. High quality? That sounds a bit biased. Just like there is heaps of low-quality graphic design, such is the case with art. Are they saying design is more analytical and art more aesthetic. Let’s take a look at the meanings of both an artist and a designer to see if we can pin down the ambiguous meaning of design.
art-ist (ar-tist) n. 1. One, such as a painter, sculptor, or writer, who is able by virtue of imagination and talent or skill to create works of aesthetic value, especially in the fine arts. 2. A person whose work shows exceptional creative ability or skill: You are an artist in the kitchen.
Designer \De*sign”er\, n. 1. One who designs, marks out, or plans; a contriver. 2. One who produces or creates original works of art or decoration. 3. A plotter; a schemer
Well, the connotations are certainly different. Is it that design isn’t art, rather it can lead to art? That design is more controlled, composed and at times logical than it’s visceral visual counterpart. Perhaps the pre-existing connotations of the word design get in the way and make it a difficult term to define with the standards that we have in mind. It’s as if art is the Old Testament (Art exists because it said “I am”) and Design is the New Testament (a less angry God mor ein control of his emotions). Is design art on a leash or art on Ritalin?
Webster says the definition of a designer is a plotter, a schemer, a contriver. They fabricate things cleverly. The wizard behind the curtains that cleverly moves the pieces on the chessboard to obtain a desired result. Sneaky, sly, tricky. Webster’s is certainly giving designers far more credit for cerebral craftiness than is due, but there is a level of connivery that goes into design. That isn’t to say that artists are innocent as pure driven unicorns of this practice, it just isn’t a necessary requirement of their jobs, but an available component if they choose to add it to their work.
So is Webster implying that there’s a degree of manipulation associated with design? Sure artists can produce a piece with a desired response in mind, but it isn’t inherently imposed on their occupation. That and an artistic piece is the end of a conceptualized mean, but with design it’s the contrary. The actual “design” in the noun sense of the word is the means and the concept or desired reaction of the intended audience is the end.
Where does this leave design. What are the parameters and what makes a designer. Is it that aesthetics are a by-product of a larger analytical scheme?
Someday it would be nice to see the design equivalent of Dadaism. Are graphic designers even capable of collaborating on a stream-of-conscious project, like an exquisite corpse, or does that ask too much of them to give up a degree of control, organization and method, not to mention that connivery Webster mentions. Will we see modern graphic design like Marinetti? Sure you can see pieces designed in a Constructivist or Futurist style, but what about the ethos behind those movement? Can one design a piece with the true heart of the movement in mind? Or is there no room for such luxuries while under a client’s thumb? Can design exist like this without concept and plans? Or does that deflate the core [and ego] of design itself? If not, then the parameters of design are implicitly inherent.
On a side note, it makes me pity the illustrators of the world, treated like the bastard child of art and design. A Frankenstein’s creation let loose on the visual community, wandering aimlessly in search of purpose and acceptance. Stultified by the art community and deemed as superfluous by designers, illustration is perhaps a viable link between the two factions that is worth analysis and may hold the answers we seek.
Posted on October 28, 2004
Adrian said:
Your thoughts fit with the discussion we had a few posts back that also started debating art vs. design. It seems like we are talking about the same thing in a few different places right now. I think art exists within the process of creating design, but in practical terms I just think the 2 need to be classified as completely different genres. I hesitate to let Webster define our occupation, but it does help disect the words.
Posted on October 28, 2004
kadavy said:
- I didn’t consider your being in academia when interpreting your view on theory. I could see how it could take on those attributes something fierce in that arena.
- My suggestion of Graphic Design coming less out of utility was an apparently ineloquent reference to: “We?re simply more directly married to notions of art - laborious practice devoted to notions other than inherent bodily survival - and architecture has found further and further expression of those same notions while still inherently needing to cling to structural integrity to promote survival.”
- For a better understanding of my theories, as applied to very simple pieces, refer to the following posts on my blog:
- Determining Proper Book Margins
- Proximity Typography Exercise
- Death to Ornament
- De Stijl Five of Clubs
You will notice that I have an obsession with geometrically rationalizing the placement of elements. I also avoid use of elements that don?t communicate meaning. The space between two elements speaks more eloquently than an additional element. Tufte: ?One plus one equals three.? Avoiding superfluous ornamentation extracts noise in the equation of attempting to acheive perfection. Even with geometric analysis however, it is still arbitrary. The margin between this analysis and perfection is one?s personality, intuition, ?magic?. Perhaps that is where the world we, or at least I, cannot control, resides.Posted on October 29, 2004
Paul said:
David - thanks for your clarifications and for your various tips-of-the-hat at several things in my comments…I just didn’t want you to entirely get away with dropping some of these specific word-bombs on “Observer” without some direct notice from us as a community - at the very least to know that your words are seen and read by your compatriots here and there.
My interest, as well, is in some cautionary hip-checks to your conjectures because I’ve felt a lot of kinship to the way that you present your pursuit of design and your thinking / consideration of it, as well as seeing similar ideological pursuits and tendencies that I had appropriately and supportively hammered out of myself in my graduate education.
Many commercial design practitioners are just happy to make a living at what they do and create work that they’re willing to show around, and theoretical conjecture generally strikes many as a lot of heated effort for tepid returns so they tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater in that way.
I adamantly feel that theorizing is an essential and lively pursuit to engage in alongside of our practice and through our practice - if we don’t guess and dream even in our day-to-day efforts, we’ll just slip into the machine and churn ourselves into oblivion. It’s just that theory becomes so much more than conjecture and words in application, and so many “theorists” just use the very idea of conjecture as something far less meritorious and never practice what they preach with any sort of validity or seeming effort. Any idea sounds fantastic in your head and / or looks great on paper - the ones that turn our existence on its ear are the ones that come into the traffic of reality and successfully bend it to their vision of it.
It sounds, also, like you are utilizing your personal efforts to clarify and rarify theory - if it “holds water” (acts functionally) in your pursuit of it, you’ve strapped yourself to just the right jetpack(s). Your practice will illuminate the elements of that theory that even its original patrons and purveyors may not have foreseen, and then it’s of even more value than when you found it to begin with.
But as a bridge into some of what Hollis nicely raised above all of this, how do we also work our way beyond the territory that’s been historically covered for us? -
“Someday it would be nice to see the design equivalent of Dadaism. Are graphic designers even capable of collaborating on a stream-of-conscious project, like an exquisite corpse, or does that ask too much of them to give up a degree of control, organization and method, not to mention that connivery Webster mentions. Will we see modern graphic design like Marinetti? Sure you can see pieces designed in a Constructivist or Futurist style, but what about the ethos behind those movement? Can one design a piece with the true heart of the movement in mind?” -
Hollis, many of your comments really call to mind a lot of ammunition that Tibor Kalman loaded in his “Good History / Bad History” discussion of the dangers of revival and the merits of original generation - you can find this essay in “Perverse Optimist” along with a wealth of other excellent information, but in summation for sake of this discussion, Kalman really argues that we’re settling in too many instances for the recreation of the aesthetic aspects of the products of many Modernist movements to the flagrant exclusion of understanding the spirit and pursuit of those movements in the first place (this seems to be the purity of desire you’re reaching for in wondering if we can ever generate a Dada, Futurism, or Constructivism of our own…)
We nail the look and pull off the knowing wink of duping historic style in pursuit of contemporary commerce, but have only proven how inferior and derivative our imaginations and minds are in comparison to those that originated the material we’re studiously recognizing.
This brings us up to what seems the ultimate crisis involved (and this, David, may be where many of your feelings of the inadequacy of the intellectual rigors of graphic design stem from): Are we actually at a point in history where our thinking is so gagged and bound by a sense of the extent of everything that’s come before us that we simply have to tredge through several generations of humanity growing progressively more and more mundane before anyone has the chutzpah to do something glaringly original again?
Design has been eating its aesthetic tail for no less than 50 years now and I’d be shocked if we hadn’t worked our way well up the neck of it at this point…Revivals, homages, tips-of-the-hat, knowing winks, ironic reconsiderations, hush-toned reverences / references - all considered to be the trade marks and tools of Post-modern creative industry, and all wearing themselves down to a nub with increasing furor…
I sense as well, though, a movement within design education to get back to the underground water source and start to encourage designers pursuit of the ideas behind it all before they start to look at the facades of what houses those ideas…But we’re also in absolute visual overload when it comes to the sheer amount of designed anythings that swirl around our brains as we try to come up with the next elements for the work we’re pursuing…
I’ll just let that whole discussion string simmer with those reading this and see what comes of it - I really want to pick up two other balls and juggle them for a bit:
Artists only become edgy when they are called designers or when their work has designed qualities attributed to it when some critic for one reason or another decides to use the commercial connotations of design as a pejorative against a particular artist’s body of work.
Josef Albers, Frank Stella, Ed Ruscha, Ferdinand Leger, James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselman, Georgia O’Keefe, Richard Tuttle, Piet Mondrian, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, and an extensively long list of other artists all display prominent design-based and design-implemented understandings of their work, and though they may have fought a momentary linguistic struggle over the application of “design” onto their “fine art”, the career of none has suffered so detrimentally from that label as to wink out of public interest and public understanding. We’re swimming in the same pool and simply hanging out in different areas of the seating surrounding it when it comes to design and art - any art school worth their salt and worth their training will have design intrinsicly included in the foundations of their programs, and won’t even question the merit or lack thereof of that inclusion…It’s only a number of truly upstart designers who want to sternly seperate their company from the fine artists and hermeticly seal themselves away from all that to study only design / pure design in a stifling little vacuum.
They cite precedents in the Bauhaus approach and in the Swiss / Basel School approach to design - I just find it very telling that both schools started with the presupposition of an inherent marriage of industry and art in order to utilize design to its greatest means and efforts. It seems more likely that the ancestors and relatives of those original programs have simply forgotten what their “church history” truly is and think that their denominational practice of design is the one and true way because it is “closest to the truth” and not because it remains tradition emptied of recollection and inquiry…
“On a side note, it makes me pity the illustrators of the world, treated like the bastard child of art and design. A Frankenstein’s creation let loose on the visual community, wandering aimlessly in search of purpose and acceptance. Stultified by the art community and deemed as superfluous by designers, illustration is perhaps a viable link between the two factions that is worth analysis and may hold the answers we seek.” - Hollis, read more of the writings of Marshall Arisman, N.C. Wyeth, David Levine, Norman Rockwell, and a glorious number of other artists who work illustratively if you’re really worried about the sense of illustration being a derivative art-form in any way shape or form…
Art can be illustrative and illustrations can be artistic - the only time those distinctions make any difference is when an editor, curator, or art dealer starts to sense their market share threatened by similar or better competitors in the field. Any illustrator worth their salt will always be able to outperform most art painters when it comes to the virtuousity and craft of the practice, they just may not be able to get galleries and museums to acknowledge their existence until after their death.
Illustration shares one key goal with design: communication and description, but diverges from most design in another pertinent sense: the pursuit of narrative and storytelling as opposed to / in addition to simple conceptual conveyance. We have some excellent tools at our disposal as designers when it comes time to illustrate something, but we may have our heads too far inside of our own formal concerns to actually get a decent story or a decent piece of art out of an illustrative activity. We just need to be more illustrators than people who use Illustrator when it comes to this pursuit…
Posted on October 31, 2004
Paul said:
Because I get rolling in these and don’t do my editorial duty in checking my own work, I intended the discussion of illustration to become the No. 2 in the list started with my No. 1 - this medium is so friggin’ dangerous to the stability of quality writing!
Posted on October 31, 2004
kadavy said:
Though I’d like to take the time to digest and address your entire comment, I will, for now, concur with your …”this medium is so friggen dangerous to the stability of quality writing!” Blogs and e-mail are so paradoxical that way. It’s so easy to get careless and publish or hit “send” without giving proper consideration to your writing, yet at the same time, what you have written has the potential to reach more people than any other medium a person is likely to write in. This is relevant to this month’s AIGA Nebraska club(red) book, The Cluetrain Manifesto, which remarks on how the conversant tone of writing on the web is allowing people to get honest information from someone other than the PR Department. Maybe we aren’t writing at all. Maybe we’re just talking.
Posted on November 1, 2004
Paul said:
As we both burn this midnight oil: this is when and where my former training as a writer and reader really start to rear their heads - too many writing students fall completely off the bandwagon of successfully conveying notions and thoughts by resorting to “conversational tone” in their writings.
Writing as you speak (for most) is a sure-fire method to produce tangled, mangled, tepid, and ineloquent prose - it again puts style before content and ramble before refinement.
E-mailing has done more to dismantle human communication than nearly any other written form before it, and has degraded our ability to fluidly think our way through an idea thoroughly enough to shape it, hone it, and convey it in written form.
This is the principle objective of all the essays each of has written in our academic careers - a capsule form of writing with one major objective: What is your notion and what form does that notion take? Place that notion into a form and then those of us outside of your brain will be able to evaluate it…
Blogging may better service this goal now, but we should all dust off our skills as essayists and devour a mountain of the writings of authors that are better than we could ever hope to be in our lifetime before we start trotting out the synaptic sparks firing in our brains.
Write like you talk and you’ll generate little more than a transcript and much less than a realized idea - another soapbox in my personal minefield, but one that I greatly intend to make part of any design program that I teach in…If we can’t write the language effectively and eloquently, how in the name of all that is good can we possibly design something to convey it?
Posted on November 1, 2004
DC1974 said:
In 1999, I returned to school after taking a break from the social sciences during which I held in various production jobs in publishing, as well as branding at a small data company. I decided that once and for all, I was going to go to design school. Choosing one of the best programs in Northern California (if that doesn’t give it away…), I was excited to return to the rigor of intellectualism that I had studying the liberal arts and remove myself from the daily grind of concepting and laying out a daily newspaper each day. What did I find? I massive program of 600 students, instructors that were considered “art directors” and had final say over all the work in each section and schedule of classes and work that would make any corporation blush. This wasn’t the intellectual approach to theory, design, practices and typography I had hoped for — so what did I end up doing? Leaving GD for film/video/performance, where I could explore, soak up some theory and find a voice. Not without first explaining to those that led the GD department that I thought the program was anti-intellectual, they scoffed and signed up another patch of 200 kids to put through the wringers. I’ve always been a little crushed by the decision, though, that I’m not a REAL graphic designer, but that emphasis on outcome and not process has been something I have thought about over and over again. I once studied architecture, too, and I can tell you, that the first four years of the top architecture schools is all about process. Helping students think like architects. Studying past forms. Understanding what is beauty. Martin Venesky once stated that he thought GD programs should really be in the business school, as there was no desire to teach process. I couldn’t agree more.
Posted on September 7, 2005
p. berkbigler said:
DC1974 - Thanks for resurrecting this discussion and joining in…I’d almost forgotten about this earlier foray into mixing it up on BE A, but find it a great time to revisit it as I’m beginning my career as a full-time instructor and starting the path to being one of the controlling factors of the design program developing at the university I work for.
In looking back over the past entries in this string, I guess I’m also now looking for even further clarification of what we’re striving for / pursuing when we look for “intellectual” rigor in design practice and education. I’ve felt in the past that I knew what that meant (detailed reading and consideration of often heady / complex / deeply considered issues within the greater practice; a healthy dialogue of some sort surrounding that consideration; the ability to develop a sizable forum for manifesting this dialogue and ways for the dialogue to cross over into the realization of work as well), but I keep wondering as well what so many of us seem to be searching for in regards to design.
It’s clearly not that design lacks some brilliantly considered voices who are examining it (Andrew Blauvelt, Rick Poyner, Martin Venesky, Rick Valicenti, Irma Boom, Ellen Lupton, Elaine Fili, plus a significant number of semioticians as well - Phillip Meggs in his own right, Tom Ockerse, Marshall McLuhan, et al.), and we’ve fast developed some exceptional forums to carry on this dialogue (D.O., BE A, Speak Up at the bigger level of focus at the moment, but really additionally the countless other blogs being run by individual designers and design intrigued), but maybe much of that is coming in too late for several generations of designers.
We’re really just up against the tension of multiple institutions realizing that design is good business (a good argument at the very least for designers to spend some quality time either working with business & communications students, though some really directed curriculum incorporating both is highly needed) and as such, wanting to move through as many students as possible. So many schools with any sort of art program have caught the whiff that students are very interested in G.D. because they’ve also heard somewhere that designers can make good money and/or a consistent living (the realities of both of those things could also endlessly be discussed).
I guess I’d highlight an article by Steven Heller on the AIGA site of late that might point to some further rigor in design training: http://designforum.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=%5Fgetfullarticle&aid=1245018 - I’d more than assume that some design theory and consideration would very much need to become part of seperating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to training designers.
On an even more practical level as an educator, however, I’d also quickly raise a common concern that we have to wrestle with: how many more credit hours and/or classroom hours are we really going to expect to cram into our students’ schedules? This may simply be a concern that’s at the fore of discussions within the department I’m part of at the moment…
There are only ever so many classrooms available and so much of a students’ attention span available besides that - as we attempt to get even “the basics” of design down in a format and fashion that yields broadly experienced designer the ability to choose design focuses in their later years within a program (ours is easily requiring a five year commitment from our students) which will translate into some sense of employability. In the midst of that, theory may not find nearly enough voice against the pursuit of training students to work well within the construct of an Art Director and an in-house design department.
I guess my own experience also reminds me that those who are especially interested in absorbing theory and participating in it seek it out fervently and find some place to involve themselves in it. Despite the fact that my program didn’t discuss it much, I was a feverish Emigre reader and looked into multiple rabbit trails that lead both towards and away from it (Thanks again Rudy Vanderlans and Zuzana Licko - your publication I firmly believe filled out this desire for a great, great number of designers…I’m only sorry to see such a delicious publication stop making new versions of itself! Just means I’m holding on to my back issues with even more fervency now…). Now I’m back within that program as an instructor and looking for some of the portals and venues to bring this consideration before my students’ eyes - I just have to figure out how to balance some quality practice time inside and outside of the classroom with some directed readings…
I’d also suggest that many, many design programs need to reach a level of maturity that includes some thorough historical study - I also found I’d missed out on the great span of past designers up until I graduated and started to ferret them out through friends and mentors…Your discussion of the examination of past forms and a training in beauty-recognition is taken very much to heart.
Glad to see that GD has lured you back in one form or another, though, as you’ve been a steady contributor to this site and D.O. - glad to meet you through your writings…
Posted on September 8, 2005
Adrian said:
Paul,
Maybe I am reading too much into DC1974’s “massive program of 600 students” comment, but I would be interested to hear what you think about the swarm of students enrolled in design programs. I know you are developing a thriving design program and I’m wondering what if anything you want to do to prepare students for entering a flooded job market? These are the stats (Taken from graphicdesignprofessor via CMYK) that make me ask the question:
There are 1,700 two and four-year graphic design programs to choose from.
43,000 design students graduate each year.
In a highly competitive marketplace, one-third of all designers are self-employed.
I know I had a hard time getting my first break in the business, and wonder if these design programs really care. Are they just a business that doesn’t care how many graduates it pumps into a crowded marketplace? Theory and integrity (and even a great portfolio) are great, but does it help you get a job? In my experience, no. Of the 43,000 graduates, I would be curious to know what percentage go on to have careers in design. From my graduating class at Concordia University (just trying to buck the trend of being so vague), I would expect the numbers to be very low.
Posted on September 12, 2005
Adrian said:
I guess maybe I am taking this discussion off track, but I wanted to follow up my last comment with a link to another post I just stumbled accross: http://designtimes.blogspot.com/2005/09/graphic-designers-out-wazhoo.html. Kerry from Design Times talks about the “glut of designers” and references an article in Business Week.
Posted on September 23, 2005