A Baker’s Dozen
by Laura Yearley
13 13
designer’s manifests
MILTON GLASER 1. Designing a package to look bigger on the shelf. 2. Designing an ad for a slow, boring film to make it seem like a lighthearted comedy. 3. Designing a crest for a new vineyard to suggest that it has been in business for a long time. 4. Designing a jacket for a book whose sexual content you find personally repellent. 5. Designing a medal using steel from the World Trade Center to be sold as a profit-making souvenir of September 11. 6. Designing an advertising campaign for a company with a history of known discrimination in minority hiring. 7. Designing a package aimed at children for a cereal whose contents you know are low in nutritional value and high in sugar. 8. Designing a line of T-shirts for a manufacturer that employs child labor. 9. Designing a promotion for a diet product that you know doesn’t work. 10. Designing an ad for a political candidate whose policies you believe would be harmful to the general public. 11. Designing a brochure for an SUV that flips over frequently in emergency conditions and is known to have killed 150 people. 12. Designing an ad for a product whose frequent use could result in the user’s death.
KEN GARLAND We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it. Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds, detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt toners, light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles. Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession’s time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best. Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizenconsumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse. There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programmes, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help. We propose a reversal of priorities in favour of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication – a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design. In 1964, 22 visual communicators signed the original call for our skills to be put to worthwhile use. With the explosive growth of global commercial culture, their message has only grown more urgent. Today, we renew their manifesto in expectation that no more decades will pass before it is taken to heart.
BRUCE MAU Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fuelled by desire and innocence. Assess
the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you. Read only left– hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our ‘noodle’. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device–dependent. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between ‘creatives’ and ‘suits’ is what Leonard Cohen calls a “charming artifact of the past.” Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object–oriented, real–time, computer graphic–simulated environment. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea—I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else… but not words. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old–tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces—what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference—the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals—but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.
DIETER RAMS 1. Good design is innovative. 2. Good design is innovative. 3. Good design is aesthetic. 4. Good design makes a product understandable. 5. Good design is unobtrusive.
6. Good design is honest. 7. Good design is long-lasting. 8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail. 9. Good design is environmentally-friendly. 10. Good design is as little design as possible.
ULLA ENGESTROM 1. People get satisfaction for being able to create/craft things because they can see themselves in the objects they make. This is not possible in purchased products. 2. The things that people have made themselves have magic powers. They have hidden meanings that other people can’t see. 3. The things people make they usually want to keep and update. Crafting is not against consumption. It is against throwing things away. 4. People seek recognition for the things they have made. Primarily it comes from their friends and family. This manifests as an economy of gifts. 5. People who believe they are producing genuinely cool things seek broader exposure for their products. This creates opportunities for alternative publishing channels. 6. Work inspires work. Seeing what other people have made generates new ideas and designs. 7. Essential for crafting are tools, which are accessible, portable, and easy to learn. 8. Materials become important. Knowledge of what they are made of and where to get them becomes essential. 9. Recipes become important. The ability to create and distribute interesting recipes becomes valuable. 10. Learning techniques brings people together. This creates online and offline communities of practice. 11. Craft-oriented people seek opportunities to discover interesting things and meet their makers. This creates marketplaces. 12. At the bottom, crafting is a form of play.
plug into a creative blog
ITSNICETHAT.COM
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It’s Nice That believes passionately that creative inspiration is for everyone and by championing the most exciting and engaging work online, in print and through our events programme, we want to open up this world to the widest possible audience. Founded in 2007, It’s Nice That has grown across many platforms and reaches over a million people each month. These include the website which is updated daily, a bi-annual magazine Printed Pages, a summer symposium Here and the monthly Nicer Tuesdays talks series.
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The blog, which covers all aspects of art and design, is divided into categories including advertising, furniture design, sculpture and set design. Each category is packed with news articles, advice and interviews with both famous and upand-coming artists. The huge amount of information means there is something for everyone to learn from.
The wide range of art and design categories that It’s Nice That has information and articles on. Either weekly or monthly, there are articles which are updated regularly, engaging readers to seek new information. The blog isn’t just an online website, it’s reputation and appearance is built on social media presence too. It’s Nice That provides quick and easy links to it’s social media, making use of icons as well.
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In an attempt to refresh the company before it was too late, the consultancy created a rebrand that never saw the light of day. Now when we look at it, we cannot help but wonder, what if? Perhaps this nostalgic remodelling would have encouraged “Parennials” (Millennial parents) to remember their past, bringing Toys “R” Us out from amongst the dust.
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I found this article particularly upsetting, because this rebranding never got a chance to save the company from liquidation.
DESIGNCLEVER.COM
click the picture to be directed to the website
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This blog, Design Clever, is a collaboration started by Jonathan Ring and Bethany Baker, two aspiring Graphic Designers with a passion for everything Design related. It was created to showcase talented Designers all over the world and their amazing talents. Jonathan and Bethany also take submissions, giving the public / aspiring designers a chance for their work to be displayed on their blog. The blog itself has been created through Tumblr, a social media/blog platform, which enables us to ‘follow’ it for regular updates.
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Not only is this blog found on hundreds of sites featuring ‘top 10’ and inspiring design blogs to follow, the site has also won The Best Design Media Award from Design Award thanks to the thousands of award winning designers who have voted Design Clever as one of the best design publications to follow, admire and get inspired by.
As a firm believer in women’s rights, this design caught my eye. The illustrations demonstrate the jobs that are most associated with the male population, such as a builder, doctor and scientist. However, this piece boldly states that a woman can choose whatever job she wants to do.
MINDSPARKLE.COM
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Mindsparkle Mag is more than a high quality online magazine. It is a platform for like-minded people sharing the same values and beliefs. Mindsparkle Mag promotes the most beautiful and inspiring projects in the fields of Design, Web Design and Video. We showcase the finest selection of websites we love, and our Design category covers the best of graphic design, branding, photography, art, interior, product design and architecture. Since its launch in 2011, Mindsparkle Mag has steadily built up a global community, with appearances on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. We value timeless over trendy, few over many and plain over fancy. We honor established names and talented newcomers. We grow a community of likeminded believers and design lovers.
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This 3D design by Peter Tarka is particularly engaging due to the realistic details and textures the artist has used for this portraiture piece. It appears to feature feathers and veinlooking tubes, which although initally sounds disturbing, it has been made to look much more appealing and artistic.
read a poem, write a poem
I get sad because you are and I am over over there here when we should be together
can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be? k.w
whatever makes you feel the sun from the inside out, chase that. gemma troy
deep into the night she clings to glorious light morgan harper nichols
you want more, I want more and they want more, and the saddest thing is, how none of us know what to do with what we have
we cannot become what we want by remaining what we are max depree
r.m drake
Deep into the night, She lays wide awake, Hugging her pillow tight, Thinking about cake.
go to an exhibition or museum
Dubrovnik Natural History Museum, August 2018
gather a collection a pinterest mood board featuring inspiring art & design
click the categories to be directed to the full collection / mood boards
3 things I love from a design perspective
#1
sleek, symmetrical designs
The first thing that I love, from a design perspective, are symmetrical, neat designs in editorial and posters. Symmetry creates lines that allow the eye to follow at ease across the page, making the design look organised and sleek.
#2
chilly’s flask bottles The next thing that I love from a design perspective are chilly’s bottles. I have one myself, and I love using it not just because of the vibrant design on the front but because of its functionality. It keeps cold drinks cold for 24 hours and works as a flask to keep hot drinks hot for 24 hours, and it actually works! You can also choose from a variety of designs, from tropical to floral, to plain pastel colours.
#3
neat, sans-serif font
Another design that I love is sans-serif font, which creates the impression of simplicity and therefore it is likely to be more legible in comparison to serif font. The neater, more minimal font is what you are reading now.
3 things I dislike from a design perspective
#1
fancy, curly, serif fonts
Following on from my love of serif fonts, is my dislike for curly, over-the-top fancy fonts that are usually too decorative for my liking. They can appear messy and child-like, so therefore they have an appearance which cannot be taken seriously. Serif fonts should be used appropriately and correctly not when you want to address something seriously.
#2
women’s jeans with little or no pockets
Another issue I have with design is something which is a little more personal to me and other girls/women in particular. Pockets in our jeans are becoming smaller or even becoming false (where the illusion is made that they are there, but you physically cannot put your hand inside because it’s just for show). On the other hand, it could be argued that the things we are putting in our pockets are becoming bigger, such as mobile phones. They are increasingly getting bigger, so much so that they do not fit in our pockets and hang out. I have to admit though, it is a clever idea for handbag designers and sellers because we are now being left with no choice but to use or buy a bag for our phones or other bits and pieces that can no longer fit or go into pockets.
#3
brutalist architecture
My last, but not final, design-hate is brutalist architecture. I find it especially ugly when the buildings surrounding it are modern and constructed by glass, the complete opposite of these concrete blocks. In London you’ll find a lot of brutalist concrete jungles, such as the Barbican Centre/Estate and the London Southbank Theatre. Although they are part of our history and some argue that they shouldn’t be knocked down, they do add character to London’s streets.