Grey Area

GREY AREA

inside by tay wan lin

Š 2013 by Tay Wan Lin. All rights reserved.

No part of the book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying form without written permission of the author, Tay Wan Lin, photographer Annaliza Tan Suat Ching, or the publisher, Lasalle Press Ltd. Books may be purchased in quantity and/or special sales by contacting the publisher Lasalle Press, at PO Box 968737, Auroro Co 80046, 303-885-4460, by faxing 303-627-9184 or by email at Lasallepress@lasalle.com Published by Lasalle Press, Ltd. Auroro Canada Cover Design by: Tay Wan Lin Editing by: Tay Wan Lin Creative Consultant: Michael Chen, Abdul Basit Khan Library of Congress Control Number: 2008911644 ISBN: 978-885331-32-8

first edition

Printed in Singapore

GREY AREA

Design Responsibilities: Where Does Your Work Stand?

FOREWORD Have we designers ever thought of the purpose of designing, what impact we want to get out of it? Do we only design for the sake of designing or do we just do design for the sake of money?

Based on Michael Bierut’s “I am a Plagiarist” short essay, Grey Area explores to define plagiarism and what it means to be socially responsible in design making.

What Grey Area hopes for is to ignite designers to reflect on their purpose of designing and ponder upon what kind of designer they aim to become.

ABOUT MICHAEL BIERUT

Michael Bierut was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1957. He studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, graduating in 1980. Prior to joining Pentagram in 1990 as a partner in the firm’s New York office, he worked for ten years at Vignelli Associates, ultimately as vice-president of graphic design. His clients at Pentagram have included Alfred A. Knopf, Disney Development Company, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Princeton University and Interiors Magazine. His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Montreal. He was president of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) from 1988 to 1990 and is a member of the AIGA’s national board. He has been director of the American Centre for Design and was elected to the Alliance Graphique Internationale in 1989. In 1991, he chaired the AIGA National Conference in Chicago with his fellow Pentagram partner Paula Scher. Recent activities include the identity and environmental graphics for a new children’s museum in St Paul, Minnesota, and coordinating all promotional material for the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He is the graphic design consultant to Mohawk Paper Mills and edits its annual critical journal Rethinking Design. He is a Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art and co-editor, with Steven Heller, of Looking Closer and Looking Closer 2, anthologies of writing on graphic design.

BLA o GREY ≠

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AM I A PLAGIARIST?

The issue about plagiarism has been lying in the grey area as the design scene grows over the years. It now seems that designers find it really hard to find original designs or how much they are able to get ‘inspired’ by a particular design so as not to be deemed as a plagiarist. Michael Bierut, (2007, p. 197 ) admits that he too is guilty in being a plagiarist in his book of short design essays. In the book, he covers a story of Kaavya Viswananthan, a Harvard undergraduate who was alleged of copying passages from books by another young adult author after the publication of her first novel, “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a life”. When being confronted of the near-duplicate passages, she denied everything explaining that she had no idea what the press were saying. Upon further questioning, she explained that any phrasing similarities with her works are unintentional and unconscious. In the end, she admitted to the New York Times that the problem was her photographic memory and emphasized that she did not take down any notes and genuinely thought that whatever she wrote were her own. Perhaps, the situation of plagiarizing text could be easily solved by churning in essays or text into websites to avoid the plagiarism issue even when one does really have photographic memory. This issue therefore boils down to whether the party was willing to go through the extra mile to check for plagiarism instead of being too caught up with the high amounts of earnings she would be able to get out from the book deals.

“Plagiarists almost never simply confess. There are always mitigating circumstances.�

- Kurt Andersen observing and assessing the controversy in New York Magazine

However, it is definitely not the same for design.There are definitely no websites to help check if one is plagiarizing an idea, unless the imagery is an exact replica of another. Bierut was asked to design a poster on “Non-Standard Structures: An Organic Order of Irregular Geometries, Hybrid Members, and Chaotic Assemblies” for the Yale school of architecture. He had in mind to use the unreleased Retina typeface version of Hoefler & Frere-Jones’s as suggested by Abbott Miller. Designed for very small newsprint production, the typefaces’ interior forms of the font drawn exaggeratedly to compensate for the Ink spread. When blown up headline size, the distortion and abnormality would be fitting for the design work the symposium had intended. Although that seemed like a solution, Bierut had difficulties demonstrating the distortion with the long title given.

Submission deadlines were nearing and out of nowhere, Bierut thought of an idea, big type at the top, descending in size from line to line towards the bottom of the poster, with thick lines underlining every word, becoming a parody of the long title. This natural occurrence happened for a simple reason. The solution was greatly similar to that of Willi Kunz work some thirty years ago. Kunz typography went from small to large while his went the opposite way. The typeface choice was obviously different too due to the time periods. Michael Bierut (2007, p. 198 ) adds on, “I don’t claim to have a photographic memory, but my mind is stuffed full of graphic design, graphic design done by other people.” In Michael Bierut’s later sharings in The Lazy Designer’s Guide to Success (Nina, 2013), he states to steal if your idea does not work.

Clearly this is a contradiction to the disagreeing to that of plagiarizing. How is it then that we are able to be sure that the idea came out absolutely from our own minds?

Left: Comparison of the Retina typeface’s irregularity with other typefaces

Image: Willi Kunz poster done 30 years ago

Image: “Non-Standard Structures: An Organic Order of Irregular Geometries, Hybrid Members, and Chaotic Assemblies� for the Yale school of architecture.

Steal.

If your idea isn’t working, says Bierut, steal one. The new brand identity he created for Guitar Hero is a riff on the logo art for the rock band Chicago.

Make other people do the work.

If the idea isn’t working, don’t come up with a new one. “Beat it to death.” Bierut cites the logo he created for New York’s Museum of Arts and Design, which is based on the physical footprint of the structure itself. The final approved identity, based on this concept, was Bierut’s third design.

Do as you’re told.

Simply following the client’s instructions will yield wonders. For Bierut – who likes limitations – creating the gargantuan sign for Renzo Piano’s New York Times building was fairly straightforward. The Times Square Alliance mandates that all buildings in the neighbourhood feature bright, large signage, to “keep Times Square looking like Times Square,” says Bierut.

(He adds that, for Piano, hearing the words largesign-stuck-on-your-building must have been, “like, the biggest 6-word, ‘F— you, architect’.”) And so, the almost 6 meter-tall logo was chopped into 893 pieces and applied to Piano’s ceramic rod façade.

Rotate the tires instead.

Once you come up with something, never let it go

Keep what the client has, just tweak it. “I say, ‘What you have is great, it just needs some improvement’,” says Bierut. For the signage he created for Saks Fifth Avenue two years ago, Bierut kept Saks’s age-old cursive logo in the square, but created a program that sliced the square into 64 smaller squares. The smaller squares are randomly assembled on 90 pieces of packaging, including gift bags and gift certificates.

Even if the designers are dead or retired, pawning off the work will always yield great results. Take, for instance, the work Bierut did (or didn’t do) for the Robin Hood Foundation, an organization that helps rebuild school libraries in impoverished areas of New York. Bierut commissioned designers and artists (including illustrator Lynn Pauley, Stefan Sagmeister and even his own wife) to create the wall murals above the library shelves.

Don’t reinvent the wheel.

Instead of starting a project with a clean slate, take the MacGyver approach.

“I come on the scene and think, there’s got to be something around here I can use,” says Bierut. The logo for the New York restaurant The Oak Room has gone through a series of changes since its opening more than a century ago. After trolling through some of those logos, Bierut decided to restore the original logo.

Lazy Designer’s Guide

“I don’t claim to have a photographic memory, but my mind is stuffed full of graphic design, graphic design done by other people.” - Michael Bierut

It is impossible to create a completely original piece of work as design is the process of rearranging existing elements into new outcomes (Kate 2013). The ability of the designer to reposition materials in the most successful way determines the effectiveness of the design. As such would be that of styles, tropes, inspirations, culture, language and symbols.

The use of identifiable symbols by Michael Hertz’s 1979 (Fig. 3) reredesign of the New York City subway map has allowed it to achieve tremendous success. A dot represents a marked stop while a thin linking line indicates connection with the degree of the line showing direction. These symbols are easily understandable and identifiable by readers and thus works. It works not because it is original but because its unoriginality means that decoding it is effortless (Fig 1 and 2).

William (2005) suggests that the charge of plagiarism is not a simple one with the idea of borrowing ideas getting more complicated daily.

Even though modern definition has defined originality as the extension of ideas, language expansion and structure redefinition, one has to work with this complexity in “appropriation� so as to allow the design world to benefit greatly instead of turning into copycats.

A dot represents a marked stop while a thin linking line indicates connection with the degree of the line showing direction.

Fig 1: Henry Beck’s 1933 London Underground map.

Fig 2: Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 New York Subway map (detail).

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It works not because it is original but because its unoriginality means that decoding it is effortless.

Fig 3: Michael Hertz’s 1979 New York Subway map (detail)

“Building upon what already exists is more productive than starting from scratch.”(Aucklander, 2013) It is evident that original ideas are unachievable now as mankind has seen all that is needed to be invented already invented in the society. Ideas now recur, regenerate, take new forms and change into alternative forms. The only way to break out of the situation of plagiarising, is to find reason for the design and not just copy another’s style or idea blindly. The application should be used with appropriation and not be done just because it looks nice. Things that work should be learnt from and tweaked such that it works for your own brief and communicates a message. One should not end up like Mr Brainwash in Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) creates “art pieces” from other people’s work and sells it at a high cost without any reason but just for the sake of fame. “Building upon what already exists is more productive than starting from scratch.”(Aucklander, 2013) A scientist does not repeat an experiment that has the same outcome but further explores from the old findings to achieve new breakthroughs.

Right: Mr Brainwash

Right: Mr Brainwash’s Life is Beautiful

“If I was financially secure, and if I felt strongly about it, no, I wouldn’t take the client. If I wasn’t busy and needed the money, I would think about it …within reason. Regarding cigarettes, I don’t think the design of a cigarette pack encourages people to smoke. It only encourages people who already smoke to buy different cigarette brands. Over 50% of the front of cigarette packaging says this product will kill you.

If someone doesn’t get that message, quite frankly, they are beyond help.” (David, A 2007)

WHERE DO I STAND SOCIALLY?

All that aside, being responsible is more than just making sure that the design speaks but what you want to communicate through your designs. I believe in designing for social good such that the community and world would benefit from my designs.

Therefore, taking up design jobs which goes against my moral values or ethics would not be considered.

One such example would be to design for Marlboro, a wellknown cigarette company in the world. However, my stand shakened upon Lee NewHam’s answer in whether to take up Marlboro as a client. He commented, “If I was financially secure, and if I felt strongly about it, no, I wouldn’t take the client. If I wasn’t busy and needed the money, I would think about it … within reason. Regarding cigarettes, I don’t think the design of a cigarette pack encourages people to smoke. It only encourages people who already smoke to buy different cigarette brands.

Over 50% of the front of cigarette packaging says this product will kill you. If someone doesn’t get that message, quite frankly, they are beyond help.” (David, A 2007) I cannot be 100% certain that I would not even consider a client like Marlboro if I am on the verge of turning into a bankrupt. It is often easier to stick to one’s moral values when they are not earning big bucks compared to someone else who is high up on the social ladder who has the greed to climb even higher, as often people equate high pay to higher power and social standing. As humans, we are greedy by nature and often want the best for ourselves especially when it comes to having higher ability of spending. The only solution is to stick to our moral values and ethics would be to keep ourselves in check every once in while reminding ourselves of why we chose to become designers and what kind of designers we want to end up becoming. I would not want to be part of the cigarette production society. Even though rejecting the job might mean that someone else would take it up, I believe that my move would prove my conscience clear and hopefully my firm stand would cause another to reconsider their stand. A small move might not be able to move mountains, but a small move is like a seed planted and why not, if I could make that small difference?

A small move might not be able to move mountains, but a small move is like a seed planted and why not, if I could make that small difference?

BIOGRAPHY. Aucklander, 2013, Young designer wins two international awards, viewed 11 October 2013, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/aucklander/ news/article.cfm?c_id=1503378&objectid=11096113 David, A 2007, How ethical are your design practices?, viewed 11 October 2013, http://www.davidairey.com/how-ethical-are-yourdesign-practices/ Exit Through the Gift shop 2010, video recording, Banksy, United Kingdom Kate, C 2013, The Original Paradox, viewed 10 October 2013 http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=37733

Michael, B 2007, Seventy-nine short essays on design, Princeton Architectural Press, New York Michael Bierut Interview 2012, video recording, Philbrook Museum, Tulsa Nina, B 2009, The Lazy Designer’s Guide to Success, viewed 9 October 2013, http://www.azuremagazine.com/article/the-lazydesigners-guide-to-success/ William, D 2005, Bird in Hand: When Does A Copy Become Plagiarism?, viewed 10 October 2013, http://observatory. designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=2837