Designing Optimism
by Paul Berkbigler, (3 comments)
(Image drawn from the Austrian Cultural Information System AEIOU)
I somehow can’t help but suspect that Dagobert Peche was really an intoxicating person to be around, a suspicion aroused even more by a few glimpses of his seductive early-20th century design work in multiple mediums. I’m left with a direct sense of glee and, as Peter Schjeldahl described it in a December 2, 2002 review of a Peche exhibition in The New Yorker, a tangible impression of visual laughter playing across the surfaces of his designs.
The graceful chuckling deer sitting on top of its contrastingly primitive and chunky base in the image above leaves a viewer with two immediate impressions:
1. That moving too quickly in a room with this piece would immediately cause the deer to flit speedily off the base.
2. That the juxtaposition of such delicate grace in the deer and such forceful patterning and primitivism in the base presents occasion for a sly laugh.
In looking at Peche’s work, I’ll pose this question: when was the last time you created anything that generated delight in yourself or a viewer?
Schjeldahl points out his own delight at the somewhat exuberant “uselessness” of Peche’s work at several points in his exhibition review, and I found that to be a rather curious gauntlet thrown in the direction of contemporary graphic designers especially. As design style trends continue to oscillate somewhere between the over-rich decadence of ornament piled on ornament and a seemingly wistful glances back at early 20th century Modernism, Peche’s work is pleasantly jarring.
While holding much in common with the baroque Victorianalia which seemingly continues to be the rage with “the kiddies,” Peche’s work manages to keep an even wryer sense of humor about the whole affair and frankly seems to reach for producing optimism in a tangible form.
In the face of layer upon layer of over-referential, over-appropriated, over-ironic begging, borrowing and stealing for the sheer purpose of making a graphic wink at what’s come before us, I appreciate the directness of Peche’s apparent desire to make the things that visually surround our existence generate a smile and a pleased laugh.
Although I know it’s been asked before in the mediums of painting and sculpture, I’ll pose this question again towards the realm of graphic design:
Are we attempting, whatsoever, to use the means of our designs to accomplish the single task of optimistic visual delight?
Even as someone who is completely captivated with design as a means towards effective communication and will routinely interrogate my students about their message, their intent, and their purpose behind any graphic choices, I hope to say I’d be open enough to hear one of them say “To delight people,” and not immediately cynically snicker at the response before telling them to find a richer message.
Peche’s work immediately laughs in my face and proves me to be the stick in the mud within the room.
What a compliment coming from such a delightful source…
Comments (3)
ben swift said:
I’m going to guess that no comments means that I am not the only person to read BADG who has no idea who Peche is. I did a little googling but didn’t see enough to get a real feeling for his work.
To answer the question posed:
when was the last time you created anything that generated delight in yourself or a viewer?
I try to do that all the time. I try to inject humor into most of my work. And I find that most things I create are joyfully useless.
Posted on August 25, 2006
PixelHustler said:
I don’t know who that is either. And, I’m sure I looked at the same Google results that you did. Regardless, to answer the second question, I’m rather new to the professional design field. I graduated from college in May of 06. I have a full time position as a designer, but I was really frustrated with my job at the beginning. I was doing alot of what seemed to be busy work. Separating colors out for screen printing, changing copyright information, etc. It wasn’t until recently that I realized the major difference between designing as a job and designing because you like it. I started a new project where I had to design t-shirts for our generic sports line (i.e. not team-branded, just shirts about a specific sport). I made about 15 different designs in 2 days, and realized that the flare, the passion for designing was there again. I like soccer, and I wasn’t held back by many restrictions, so the results were much better than the busy-work stuff I was doing beforehand.
Posted on August 28, 2006
p.berkbigler said:
It’s taken me a bit to get back to this post, but I’ll admit to not knowing a lot about Peche prior to reading the article I highlighted. I only happened onto that article because I was browsing the Complete New Yorker to find content to toss at my students in a layout and design course I’m teaching.
The smidgen of Googling that produced elements of my article simply helped to fill out the fairly full sense of Peche that the New Yorker article offered to begin with. He’s certainly a designer that may be a bit lost in the shuffle of history, but he also clearly has a lot to offer contemporary design sensibilities.
Glad to hear both of you comment on your contributions to optimistic design.
Posted on August 30, 2006