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My Manifesto This is a collection of thoughts and principles I will try to keep by through my journey in third year in the discipline of Graphic Design. Bikrant Pakhrin
19.10.2013
PREFACE What makes for good design? What makes for bad design? What should design try and achieve? Is design leaning more towards what in the past had been described more as art (whether it be performance or fine)? When we look at the works of Marcel Duchamp and his works of art like the chess-set blurred the lines between art and design and what the two disciplines tried to individually achieve. Art has always been a discipline that has highlighted and challenged itself and what were considered norms that were set by the discipline itself. Where does design find itself in this plethora of constant change and redefinition? Change is inevitable and yet it is often not accepted. It is seen as being foreign and even unnatural. I intend to fight this. Design has always been logical and always involved problem solving. The first round object being used as a wheel was a strictly functional and necessary stroke of design—maybe even the first! Today, design has become highly stylised and in that we seem to have lost functionality. It seems that we are, as designers, more inclined to art and making a statement rather than solving problems (as was our first intention). I will be stating my observations about my own practice and it’s repercussions in the wider world. My vision of what Graphic design as a discipline is and how that relates to the society and whether I am complying by my own values within the discipline. 3
CRITIQUE EVERY PIECE OF WORK PRODUCED. IDENTIFY ITS STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES Being critical is extremely necessary when it comes to design. Every designer (be he/she a graphic designer, interior designer, an architect, et cetera) wants to achieve the best they can out of any set brief. It is important that one is critical of one’s own work as he/she is of others. Take criticism well and you will be able to see things from other people’s perspective. Be objective when looking at your own work. Subjectivity will lead to an unfounded ego which is further inflated the harder you work. This becomes the pitfall of many a hard-working designer who receives one too many praises from those who ‘critique’ his/her work. Remember that there should be a certain amount of seriousness to every project no matter what the content of the brief—if it requires you to be silly, be seriously silly! There are many substandard ‘designers’ who can produce the same things that everyone else can. Remember that what separates that which is good design1 and that which is bad design is how critical one is of oneself. Design is always the pursuit of perfection without ever wanting to achieve it. Criticism is the medium through which you better yourself and compete with that which your were prior to the critique. However, remember that the criticism has to be objective and you have to train yourself to look at the work produced from a fresh perspective. Look with eyes unclouded with prejudices or favours. This is something that is very hard to achieve with one’s ego in tact. Discard your ego when evaluating and analysing your work. Do not use this as an excuse to massage your ego. While 4
it is good to notice and take into account your strengths—make sure that you do not dwell on them for too long because there are always weaknesses to be found in your work and these are the ones that need to be worked on. It is crucial that you find weaknesses—no matter how small—in your work for this is how you determine that which you should be working on to improve.
A very badly drawn plan of Castelvecchio (Verona, Italy). Could have been redrawn to a better standard quite easily
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ALWAYS FOLLOW THE RULE OF A.C.D —ANALYSE, CRITICISE AND DELIVER 2 Any project you do should be carefully analysed. The analysis forms a very important part of the project. If a research is not through enough you might end up with something that is ill-informed and incorrect. You might produce work that is substandard and not well thought of. Your portfolio of work is what determines your capabilities as a designer. You should always be analysing and trying to understand your environment. Be a tinkerer! Play with things and take them apart 3. The more you understand, the more it informs your design. Also, the more you understand, the more knowledge you gain. You can always refer to that which you have understood in future project. You will be able to connect and find tangents to other projects and it gives your whole portfolio a relative and cohesive nature that cannot be achieved through pretentious design 4. Criticise that which you have gathered from the analysis. It is important that you break the data into concise and informed interpretations to understand that which exists already. It is through this that you identify and determine what works and what doesn’t. Unlike criticising your own work, you need to understand someone else’s intentions in this particular instance. How do you gage the intention of the original creator when that intention is not clear and that person is not present? Thoroughly analyse the information in order to correctly criticise 5 the environment. This step should filter the analysed data into what is relevant to the project and how it could be categorised and organised. You should be able to form opinions 6
on whether you believe something works as a piece of design or not and what could be done to improve it. You identify strengths and weaknesses within the work or object and base a judgement upon it. Finally, this leads to delivering a proposal. This is informed by the analysis and criticism. Delivering a design solution or a product is the final step where you physically design and/or make something tangible or at least put forward a proposal to do so.
The Analyse, Criticise and Deliver Form. This is to be filled out after the review of every project
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PRODUCE WORK IN RELATION TO THAT WHICH EXISTS IN MY OWN ENVIRONMENT It is often easy to get carried away with what the possibilities of a project are. Proposing a new religion which forces the wealthy to look after those that are less well off may sound idealistic but what would be the repercussions of that? If you are going to propose something extremely unorthodox then take into consideration what the implementation of that would be in reality. That and design for that which exists. This is, however, not to say that you cannot be creative and experiment. Take your flight of fancy and delve into the world of the unorthodox. Make sense of that which doesn’t and ground unrealistic proposals in realistic environments using real analysis and criticism. Do not limit yourself to work that you find boring. Make proposals that are outrageous that become less and less ridiculous with every justification you provide for its existence. I suppose what really matters in this section is that you make sure that every proposal is justified with a healthy helping of clear, concise and honest analysis. Remember that what you propose is a natural conclusion of a rigorous thought process and it should reflect that!
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A 1:5000 context plan of Santiago de Compostela for Albergue Project with Unit G
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TRY TO UNDERSTAND THAT WHICH EXISTS OUTSIDE OF MY IMMEDIATE CIRCLE—THINGS THAT SEEM UNRELATED TO MY DISCIPLINE AND YET IS ALWAYS INDIRECTLY TANGIBLE Not everything is related and yet the more you know and understand the more you relate one subject to another. Remember that knowledge is fluid in nature and just like water every little droplet makes an ocean, a river or a stream and they all flow into one another, thus making them all relative to one another. Such is the nature of the flow of information and the more we immerse ourselves in the unknown, the more we discover. These could be visiting exhibitions that I would normally not visit or generally things that are new to me. Going to new places and discovering new things are crucial in feeding design and increasing experience that all feed into the process of design. Push boundaries and experiment with things unrelated. Find links and observe play. It is only when play 6 occurs that creativity can be found.
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Ariel picture of Cabo de Gata, Spain. Contextualising the open brief project of Unit A (2010/11)
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DO NOTHING EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE (BUT NOT TOO OFTEN) Doing nothing does not necessarily mean being idle and unproductive. It is an opportunity to reflect not just on work but also on life. It gives you a break and to look at things from a fresh perspective. This is not to say that analysis and criticism cannot occur during this time. This is a time when you should be able to revise goals and ideas. However, it is easy to get carried away in dealing with the theological and to stop producing work—this should not happen and, therefore, it is important that you allocate set times for reflection.
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RELATE DIFFERENT SUBJECT MATTERS FROM DIFFERENT MODULES TO ONE ANOTHER TO PRODUCE A LARGER BODY OF COHESIVE WORK It is important that you relate the different subjects so that you can apply what is gathered from one project to feed another. This results is a consistent and more wholesome piece of work. Just like a watch being made of different parts the different modules should come together to make one big ‘project’. A more cohesive and well rounded portfolio with projects relating to one another makes for a more focused designer. This also ties in with the idea of having one common theme for the year.
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(From top to bottom) Santiago de Compostela 1:5000, Rua de San Lourenzo 1:1250, Carballeira de San Lourenzo 1:500 All different drawings but all related and put together to form a larger and more cohesive piece of work.
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IT’S NOT ABOUT THE GRADES BUT RATHER ABOUT THE PROJECTS! If you focus on the grades, you lose sight of the project. Remember that you’re doing this for the projects and to pursue something of interest. It is easy to lose track of why you’re doing this if you chase the grades. Do what pleases you and stop worrying about whether your tutor will like it or not. They are there to support you and not to be used as a marker for gauging an approximation of a grade!
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A sketch of the approach to Santiago de Compostela, Spain on the Via de la Plata—Loved the walk, hated the grade
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CONSIDER DETAILS—INCLUDING THOSE THAT SEEM TOO TEDIOUS AND CUMBERSOME It’s often the details that make the work. It’s okay to obsess over details and more often than not it pays to obsess over details. These might be minute details that might not have obvious implications but it is exactly these kinds of small details that make a piece of work whole. For example, if a typesetter were to completely ignore kerning and other such details then he would soon end up with a piece of text that was difficult to follow. If you are not designing to consider details then why are you even bothering to half-arse a project? Why do the pieces of work if you are not to pay attention to details. God is to be found in details. No matter how tiresome it is, the end results are definitely worth it.
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A 1:20 detail section of proposal showing different materials used (Unit G—Albergue)
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RELATE TO IDEOLOGIES—WHAT IS THE BIGGER PICTURE? WHY DO THE THINGS YOU DO? Always question your intentions7 and remember the ideology that you are trying to adhere to. Be a visionary and have a set of principles that are believed upon with a strong enough conviction for them not to have a monetary value. It is important that you keep to a set of principles 8 because without them your design will have no soul. It is an empty husk of style. Nothing more than an aesthetic piece with no substance! Remember that you don’t want to be a designer for the sake of telling people that you are a designer. You are not in this discipline for the sake of style or to be quirky. Design has the power to change the world and shape society—use it to it’s full extent and never stray from your principles.
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LESS IS MORE Ludwig Mies Van de Rhoe
I’M A WHORE Philip Johnson
YES IS MORE Bjarke Ingels 21
FORM ALWAYS FOLLOWS FUNCTION! 9 This is probably the most important point to remember in design. There are too many ‘designers’ who consider the ‘look’ prior to working out the functionality. Form should always be dictated (or at least influenced in the majority) by the functionality. Remember, that the function is something that you’re trying to propose. The form is an aesthetic value. Consider the function the innards of the proposal—the engine that powers the proposal. The form is the outer shell—the packet that holds the proposal. Aim for a minimalistic outcome. An idea is something that should be easy to take root. It should be easy to explain and easy to understand and replicate.
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A 1:50 plan of proposal showing how the existing trees (green circles) in the park gave rise to the eventual shape of the structure (Unit G—Albergue)
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FOOTNOTES
1. One that is informed and honest—one that doesn’t shout and is aesthetically pleasing while also being fully functional 2. Also refer to the A.C.D form 3. Physically, mentally and metaphorically 4. Not to say that pretension is always bad. It does have it’s merits. 5. Objectively 6. Play relating to design and the gathering of experience. 7. Intentions—Design implications and the overall aim and achievement of the project 8. These may change with maturity and with experience but are always present 9.
Form should always follow function but it doesn’t always. Sometimes, they are one and the same thing. Sometimes, the form is the function.