Foundationally, design is a search, not for the right answers, but for the significant questions. — Unknown
Exploration
Introduction As a way of filling the need for theoretical and historical perspectives on graphic design, this course module will focus on defining the contexts or frameworks of some historically significant and successful designers in the field. The factors that have impacted their approaches to defining and solving design problems, their processes and inspirations can provide rich sources for enhancing our own processes and expanding the ways we generate ideas. The diverse contexts of the artists who have established and continue to define the theory and practice of graphic design provide alternatives to our own contexts and the strategies that they dictate. One way of moving beyond the familiar and personal is to explore graphic design and visual communication from alternative perspectives. But to realize these viewpoints requires an examination and analysis of not just visual productions, but of the cultural, historical, personal, and educational influences that shaped their contexts as designers. The assignments in this module are intended to challenge you. You will be required to reflect and think critically about the ideas and practices that you usually don’t question. For example, you are familiar and skilled in finding information about a subject in multiple ways, but in addition to finding information, this first assignment will require that you to filter and categorize the material you gather, determine its characteristics and relevance to specific (and sometimes overlapping) categories, and to integrate the information in these categories into a framework for understanding the designer within a context. This context or framework that a designer works within determines not only his or her process and strategies, but also the visual problems he/she defines and the solutions that result. If we can understand context, we can know something deeper about the designer’s work and his/her approaches to design problems. The benefit of these explorations is that they provide alternative and innovative approaches to ideation (idea creation). They encourage us to go beyond imitation of exemplary work, to explore and experiment, directly, and in more complex ways, using the strategies, tools, processes, etc. of exemplary artists.
Assignment 1
Exploration of Exemplary Graphic Designers This project will have 3 milestones: 1. 2. 3.
Presentation of research and description of the context of your selected designer and the influences that are relevant in defining it. Deconstruct, describe, and analyze the designer’s work (at least 3 examples). Determine the elements, strategies, techniques, principles, etc. that structure the work. Using these the same elements, strategies, techniques, principles, etc. create an original design.
Wednesday, 4/16/2014
Select a Graphic Artist and Begin Research Select a graphic designer. You can choose someone who has influenced you or someone you just want to know more about. I have included a list of recognized/historically significant designers in the modules link of this course. Include your rationale for your selection. Below are some suggested ideas/categories for your searches: Biographical influences Historical place and time Cultural influences Education Audience Styles Process Philosophy Theories Technology (innovations) Example: In the following example, I’m using the suggested categories to guide my research and to ensure that my scope encompasses as many relevant ideas as possible. Some of the information is repetitive and overlapping but is included because of its relevance to the category/idea. In thinking about the parameters of the various categories and how they are integrated, I have begun to construct a context for the artist. At the same time, I have included as many of the salient ideas about the designer’s process as I could find. I include information about his approaches to communication and problem solving, his strategies for using elements and principles of design, his philosophy and theories, his education, professional experiences, his techniques, the media he uses to create, and the types of media he creates (magazines, posters, etc.) to inform my definition of his process. David Carson Reason for selection: • In a feature story, NEWSWEEK magazine said he “changed the public face of graphic design”. • Graphic Design USA Magazine (NYC) listed Carson as one of the all time 5 most influential designers, with Milton Glaser, Paul Rand, Saul Bass and Massimo Vignelli. • Design writer Steven Heller has said, “He significantly influenced a generation to embrace typography as an expressive medium”. Biographical influences: David Carson is an American graphic designer, born on September 8,1954 in Corpus Christi, Texas. Since then he has lived in and traveled extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe and lectured frequently around the world. Historical place and time: An important idea of this era is Postmodernism: a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality. It stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one’s own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal. It is denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for everybody - a characteristic of the so-called “modern” mind. He was the art director for the magazine Ray Gun. Carson was perhaps the most influential graphic designer of the 1990s. In particular, his widely imitated
aesthetic defined the so-called “grunge typography” era. Culturally, the 1990s were characterized by the rise of multiculturalism and alternative media. Movements such as grunge, the rave scene and hip hop spread around the world to young people during the decade, aided by thennew technology such as cable television and the Internet. A combination of factors, economic: mass mobilization of capital markets, free trade, open markets, privatization, deregulation, and the increased role of the private sector (moving power away from governments towards private corporations; political: the end of the Cold War (realignment and reconsolidation of economic and political power across the world), new ethnic conflicts in Africa, the Balkans and the Caucasus (genocides), technology: the beginning of the widespread proliferation of the Internet, the dot com bubble of 1996-2000 (brought wealth to entrepreneurs before its crash in 2000-2001). Cultural influences: Television: Seinfeld, Beavis and Butthead, South Park (characters were sassy and rebellious), MTV, reality show genre; music: pop, rap, techno (dance or house music), hip-hop, grunge, alternative rock, Madonna (pushed boundaries); fashion: simpler, more comfortable, casual, oversized, ripped, Goth, grunge, revival styles; art: performance art, combinations (of people, video, paintings, sculpture, photography), digital art, interactive; Sports: extreme sports, dream team, women’s basketball and soccer. Education: He is almost entirely self-taught, and thus escaped having dinned into him the “right way of doing things” which inevitably congeals into dogma, the destiny of which is to be torn apart. Carson’s first actual contact with graphic design was made in 1980 at the University of Arizona on a two-week graphics course, taught by Jackson Boelts. He attended San Diego State University as well as Oregon College of Commercial Art. Later on in 1983, Carson undergraduate degree is in Sociology. He was teaching high school Sociology in del mar California when he went to Switzerland, where he attended a three-week workshop in graphic design as part of his degree. This is where he met his first great influence, Hans-Rudolf Lutz. Audience: His ‘experimental’ editorial design work for lifestyle and music magazines such as Surfer, Transworld Skateboarding, Beach Culture, Blue and Ray Gun gained him worldwide acclaim, as did his television commercials for global corporations such as Nike, Pepsi and Microsoft. At the pinnacle of his popularity, Carson’s trademarks became a cold bottle of beer, a long queue of adoring fans (male and female) and a felt-tip marker, which he used for autographing anything from T-shirts to books. This was the graphic-designer-as-rock-star, living an itinerant life of wall-to-wall airport lounges, luxury hotel rooms and limousines. The subject matter of much of David’s work appeals to a younger audience. He is really very much about the ‘now’” Although he still commands a tremendous amount of respect from his fellow designers, it is debatable whether Carson’s work would be considered by them to be anything remotely resembling ‘cutting-edge’. Consumer-based youth culture of the 1990s. Styles: He is best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of experimental typography. His layouts featured distortions or mixes of ‘vernacular’ typefaces and fractured imagery, rendering them almost illegible. grunge typography
Process: Carson uses letterpress prints, overprinted posters, press proofs and photographic prints, collages constructed of elements of found paper, printed graphic ephemera and blurred photographs that highlight graphic minutiae. Carson forms a sort of typographic variation on a theme, David Carson’s name appears repeatedly as a visual element. Carson suggests that this was a matter of convenience: “The type just happened to be around.” The design process involved overprinting pieces on found paper. Carson explains: “I spent time in Barcelona doing lithographic work on these big stone pieces, where you literally got up there, put the paint on and did the whole thing. I’ve come late to this process, but I found it fascinating. I wouldn’t say this is the new work. The new work is the old work, in a sense. It’s discovering a new technique, and it’s moving into fine art.” Carson integrates the image and text in interesting, and questionable ways using the page as the context. Philip Meggs writes in Fotografiks: “Designers see the page, not the photograph, as the locus of their creative enterprise, David Carson formed attitudes about this visual/verbal interface and its potential for expression.” Intuition forms the basis for much of Carson’s image making. Carson notes: “The early magazine work was very subjective, reacting to something I had just read, music I listened to, or people I met.” Carson expresses the idea behind his design in a piece that states: “Don’t mistake legibility for communication.” Carson approaches design subjectively. In preparing to do a CD cover, he’ll listen to the CD. He’ll use his intuitive sense or emotional response to the work as a foundation for a graphic design. His work elicits a similar intuitive grasp from the viewer. His approach is subjective and specific, an attempt to find “the solution in the thing itself.” He intimately entwines this approach with his consideration of locality. He does not approach each job with an “objective-universal” frame of mind. “Neutrality,” he says, “is impossible.” “His unique style has been called illegible. Rules of design are constantly and consistently broken in Carson’s work. He would let typed lines run into each other, cross gutters, or be upside-down. He would layer type and image until neither was distinguishable on the page nor even continued an article on the front cover of a magazine. Carson has never believed that one must first know the rules in order to break them.” (http:// www.complink.net/greg/designsite/carson.htm). Philosophy: His maxim of the ‘end of print’ questioned the role of type in the emergent age of digital design. Carson claims that his work is “subjective, personal and very self indulgent”. The predominant Modernist design movement criticized his work of the 1980s and 1990s. Language itself is a representation. Archetypes in literature and art are representations. When these archetypes are familiar, we respond with an immediate intensity. The image is the key fit and clicked into the ignition; fractions of a second later, our thoughts begin to turn over like the engine of an old, cold car. These images engage our feelings about our world. The spark is our intuition, our emotion. It is not an intellectual analysis of the “thinking which must prove its point.” What happens in this instant can be described as a type of “felt logic” in relation to the power of symbol. Carson approaches design subjectively. In preparing to do a CD cover, he’ll listen to the CD. He’ll use his intuitive sense or emotional response to the work as a foundation for a graphic design. His work elicits a similar intuitive grasp from the viewer. His approach is subjective and specific, an attempt to find “the solution in the thing itself.” He intimately entwines this approach with his consid-
eration of locality. He does not approach each job with an “objective-universal” frame of mind. “Neutrality,” he says, “is impossible.” In the radical vision of Carson’s graphics, a generation of designers has a new creed to follow. This involves, to describe the work crudely, free-form pages and films, beautifully difficult-to-read typography, distressed images and eclectic multi-cultural sources of material, all working to spin a richly seductive form for his client’s communications-messages which range from the latest Microsoft poster campaign to the Giorgio Armani magazine, anti-smoking ads, short films, books and commercials. Theories: ‘You cannot not communicate’ -David Carson Carson is Marshall McLuhan fan. Technology (innovations): Digitization/computer hardware and software Other influences/information: He is a one-time professional surfer, reaching number eight in the world. Carson learned how to design a magazine by doing it. He designed his skateboarding magazine in the evenings after teaching at high school near San Diego. The distinct difference of Carson’s work, and its pervasive effect on the imagination of young designers, has ensured that he is applauded or attacked as the art director/designer of this era (1980s and 1990s). Milestone 1: Due Wednesday, 4/23/2014
Presentation of research and description of the context of your selected designer and the influences that are relevant in defining it. The next part of this assignment should be supported by your research. The choice of works that you will analyze should reflect your ideas about the artist’s influences and context. Deconstruct, describe, and analyze the designer’s work (at least 3 examples). Determine the elements, strategies, techniques, principles, etc. that structure the work. Example 1: Ray-Ban Sunglasses Ad
In analyzing individual elements, it may be helpful to include descriptions of how each is made. This could guide your work in creating an original work in milestone 3. The image is an ad for Ray-Ban sunglasses. Elements are placed on a bright yellow background. A photo of one lens of a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses (with the red logo apparent) is placed in the upper left, behind the R letter construction. There are three letterforms constructions from printed pieces on the page, an R, a B and an S, all upper case. The R is the largest of the three letterforms and is centered on the page. The B, on close inspection seems to be constructed of two upper case Ds and its baseline almost aligns with the baseline of the R. This B overlaps the third letterform, an S. Each of the three letterforms is a layered construction. They are not carefully cut from their original background, but rather include what seem to be the parts of the white page of on which they were printed. Both the R and the S appear to be created by overlaying a darker version of the letter over a grayed-out version of itself, offset a little higher and to the left in each case. The upper part of the B, (a D) seems to replicate the same construction, but offset left and downward. Related scraps, perhaps parts of the same printed letterforms are placed at right angles, one behind the photo of single sunglasses lens, the other over the B. Faint white horizontal lines appear behind the B letterform. Shorter white lines appear near the top of the R and at the bottom left of the faded R behind it. There are a couple lines of text and Carson’s name, under the R and B. Another small Ray-Ban logo appears to the left of the S. Example 2: Guinness Ad
Carson’s “Guinness” design shows a pattern of rhythmic bands or waves that create visual motion; colors are saturated and intense; it contains multiple overlapping layers; textures are varied but don’t necessarily describe surface qualities in a representational way. The block or legend at the right reiterates the color scheme and blurs the textures of the design.
Example 2: RayGun Cover Continue analysis of works.
Milestone 2: Due Monday, 4/30/2014
Presentation of analysis of 3 examples of your designer’s work, referencing elements, strategies, techniques, etc. Using your analysis and descriptions of work in Milestone 2, create an original design based on your selected designer’s process and work examples.
Milestone 3: Due Wednesday, 5/7/2014
Presentation of your original design based on your designer’s work, referencing elements, strategies, techniques, etc.
Learning Goals Students who successfully complete this module are able to: • select, filter, and integrate relevant information from various sources to answer specific questions and formulate concepts • describe, evaluate, and communicate research evidence • communicate ideas and processes, verbally, in writing and visually • describe the influences that impact context and process • and apply the elements and strategies of a specific process in creating visual communication