Creative Process Journal 2014/15 by Kwok yt

BA (hons) Design Communication

Kwok Yun Theng 15221

Readings Documentation Reflections

BADC6B

Creative Process Journal

2015

This project manifested from an initial interest in critical graphic design, more specifically, the visual forms put out by its practitioners. While the term “critical graphic design” remains ambiguous, there seems to be a commonality in the choice of aesthetics by these designers — design that is seemingly done in a deliberate amateurish and untrained manner, with the use of stretched type, dissonant colours, and heavy photoshop effects. The other observation on aesthetic trends, is the rise of “post-internet”, a visual phenonmenon which I find very bizzare and even uncomfortable (for some works). The appreciation of these visual forms may be subjective, but I liken them to “ugly design” of the 90s, where it received huge backlash from “purist” designers and design critics. This publication is a documentation of the process and progress of my research in ugly design, its meanings, and its possible effects on graphic design.

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Current styles of ugly: 1. Gerrit Rieveld Academie Graduation poster 2. Wikileaks darkstore poster by Metahaven 3. Zurich London Poster by Abake 4. A Veil That is A Network, Disposable Imagecraft by Metahaven.

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Readings/ Reflections

Creative Process Journal

Excerpt from What is “critical” about critical design? Jeffrey and Shaowen Bardzell Critical design is a research through design methodology that foregrounds the ethics of design practice, reveals potentially hidden agendas and values, and explores alternative design values. Drawing references from Frankfurt School of critical theory, the authors outlined the origins and goals of critical design: The Frankfurt School of critical theory, embodied in the works of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse, argued that products of mass media and consumer culture were politically regressive. In developing this argument, Adorno offered a concept he called reification, which “refers to the way that things are produced by society, including the way that it is organized, appear as entirely natural and beyond question. The underlying concepts here are notions of ideology and alienation as interpreted by some theorists in the Marxist tradition. Simplifying, the basic idea is that dominant social classes maintain their dominance by disseminating a system of myths presenting the status quo as natural and good (this is ideology) which encourages the working class to buy into a system that works against its own interest (this is alienation). Consumer culture is the key mechanism of this system: movies, magazines, and design represent and implement a collection of norms and behaviors that condition the working class (this is reification). The hope was that if critique could expose such operations and bring them to our collective consciousness that we might be better able to resist ideology and reification and instead work towards a more just society. The authors also mentioned Dunne and Raby in their paper, as they drew parallels between the intentions behind their works and critical theory from the Frankfurt School. Although Dunne and Raby in an interview distance critical design from the Frankfurt

School [16], their formulation of critical design has unmistakable affinities with it: “Product genre…offers a very limited experience. Like a Hollywood movie, the emphasis is on easy pleasure and conformist values. This genre reinforces the status quo rather than challenging it. We are surrounded by products that give us an illusion of choice and encourage passivity. But industrial design’s position at the heart of consumer culture (it is fuelled by the capitalist system, after all) could be subverted for more socially beneficial ends by providing a unique aesthetic medium that engages the user’s imagination.” [15, p.45] Their language “illusion of choice,” “passivity,” “reinforces the status quo,” “easy pleasure and conformist values,” and “fuelled by the capitalist system” bear the unmistakable stamp of the Frankfurt view of ideology. And Dunne and Raby, correctly in our view, pick up on an important implication of this thought for designers: in many ways, harmful ideologies are perpetuated through our work, which is to say that we can become a locus of resistance, and thus by implication designers are ethically implicated one way or another in the problem domain of social domination no matter what we do. –– With this description of what “critical design” should entail, examples of designers or design works (besides Dunne and Raby) that correspond to the above explanation can be drawn out.

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Example 1 Superstudio’s radical architecture (1966 — 1978)

Text taken from: http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/about/ blogs/2013/02/04/superstudios-radical-architecture

Nowhere was the postwar avant-garde more radical than in architecture. In order to shake off the “hegemonic grip” of academic classicism — and therefore bourgeois society — architecture would have to undergo a complete definitional transformation. Instead of buildings serving functional uses for consumers’ lives and thereby reinforcing unjust social divisions, architecture would form a “single continuous environment, the world rendered uniform by technology, culture, and all the other inevitable forms of imperialism.” And just what does that look like? What does it look like to start over? To traverse the radical city of the mind?

Formed in 1966 in Florence by a group of architecture students, Superstudio was at the heart of the avant-garde for about a decade. With Adolfo Natalini at the helm, the young firm undertook a stunning and extensive visual experimentation at the intersection of graphic design, architecture, and technology. Florence, the bastion of Italian humanist architecture and home to the University and its attendant bourgeois attitude, proved a poignant site to reject architecture and engage the “flip side of the Italian dolce vita.” Superstudio’s signature designs played with the interface between natural and artificial environments, to wit, the iconic grid, overlaid onto New York City, Niagara Falls, the desert, etc. Superstudio wrote that ultimately the grid would allow for a truly democratic human

experience: because every point on the grid is identical, no place is better than any other. It was a proudly utopic vision of a world undesigned and made whole by technology. Because much of their work would never come to physical realization, Superstudio’s presence in print remains an important legacy. Their visual experiments appeared in and gained renown through Casabella and Domus, Italy’s leading design magazines, and in self-

published catalogs. Rethinking the architectural profession altogether, Superstudio, among others, managed to shift the focus of their practice toward conceptual and theoretical cultural criticism. Symbolic, poetic content not only took precedence in their work, but was supercharged. This campaign of images they created initiated an entirely new and to this day, enduring, way to explore and share ideas.

Creative Process Journal

Example 2 Jan Van Toorn In a world in which channels of communication are as clogged with pollution as the environment, the Dutch designer Jan van Toorn is seeking to reverse some of the damage. For 30 years, Van Toorn’s aim has been to rescue the media from its role as a distribution network for dominant ideology, and to reassert what he sees as its legitimate function of communication. Few designers are more clearsighted about the part they play in the transmission of society’s assumptions and values.

the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. Van Toorn saw the museum as a manufacturer of art-media ideology and sought a way of jarring consciousness through visual unorthodoxy. Where Modernist predecessors like Max Bill, Otto Treumann and Josef Müller-Brockmann had been content with the least ornate, most rational typefaces — a level of neutrality that Van Toorn viewed as naïve — he sought out the more idiosyncratic

‘In my opinion designers are connected to the existing order,’ says Van Toorn. ‘That’s the reality and you have to deal with it. But within that you can still make a choice about your position in the field, depending on your background and ideas, and then if you want you can be a hindrance. And I would like to see many more hindrances.’ Van Toorn’s goal is to contribute to what he calls a ‘counter public sector.’ And as the recently appointed director of Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht — where he is establishing a challenging teaching programme for art, design and theory — he will be well placed to continue the political and aesthetic agitation that has marked his career.

Counter cultural His first challenge to official culture came in a series of posters and catalogues for exhibitions organised by Jean Leering at

fonts, flaunting the typographic taboos of the then all-pervasive International Style. In Van Toorn’s eyes, the post-war period had witnessed the disciplining of graphic design into a gutless mediator between the interests of international economic and institutional forces, and an audience of passive consumers. Van Toorn’s interactive programme fitted well with a 1960s radicalism that suggested a world in which everyone might be an artist — a do-it-yourself alternative to the elitism of existing cultural norms. One catalogue required the reader to destroy its binding (and hence his or her property values) in order to access the information. Another, for a Piero Manzoni retrospective in 1969, embraced the kitsch aesthetic with a white fake-fur cover. Van Toorn’s dismissal of a house style for the museum, and the deliberate informality of much of his work — often using cheap papers and typewritten or hand-rendered texts — could not have been more different from the

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structural programme operated at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Under the supervision of Wim Crouwel and Total Design, the Stedelijk used a standard grid for all posters and catalogues, giving its products an unmistakable identity no matter how diverse their subjects. Van Toorn’s and Crouwel’s opposing views led to a public debate in November 1972 in which Crouwel argued for a rationalised approach to the packaging of culture, while Van Toorn maintained that this type of uniformity conditioned expectations rather than informing or communicating. This ‘designers’ rodeo’, as it has been called, has assumed a legendary place in the history of Dutch graphic design, but Van Toorn is dismissive of the hype. ‘The best thing we gained is that nobody believes in neutrality any more. But that’s not what the discussion was about.’

with images of unprecedented power. ‘I found out in these calendars that it is possible to construct a counter-reality, with more brutality and more openness than I will ever dare do again. That’s the challenge I still have.’ Calendars are by nature ephemeral and Van Toorn’s focus on current affairs means the material has dated, though images such as the bikinied group portrait of Miss Israel, Miss Saudi Arabia, Miss Syria and Miss Egypt, collaged with a photograph of Henry Kissinger, is as relevant a comment on sexism and US imperialism today as it was in 1974. Other pieces are more personal, exploring themes such as the manifestations of identity,

Calendar entries If Van Toorn’s work for the Van Abbemuseum was, as he says, ‘friendly’, then he was to take a far more combative approach in the calendars he designed in the early 1970s for the printer Mart Spruijt. The collaboration had begun in 1960 with Van Toorn still in his ‘classic’ phase, using formal exercises and typographic jokes as an essentially

self-affirmation and territoriality in Belgian private houses. Another used double images of Holland’s ordered terrain, requiring us, Warhol-style, to look, reflect, compare and look again. Interspersed with quotations from Cage, Lenin, Leonardo, McLuhan, Socrates and Trotsky, the calendars confirmed Van Toorn’s rejection of all that was insular and self-referential in graphic design. ‘It’s a very practical profession and I, by accident, am very much interested in the history of ideas.’ aesthetic programme. But Van Toorn’s work soon developed into what he describes as a ‘laboratory situation’ in which he experimented

In 1980 Van Toorn began work on seven posters for a series of exhibitions with the generic title ‘Man and Environment’ for the De Beyerd

visual arts centre in Breda. In each poster he used a television image of Sophia Loren and her son — a media-age Madonna and child — as an iconic reference point for a complex layering of images. Van Toorn regards the series as the most challenging of his designs: ‘I succeeded, in my opinion for the first time, in arguing with visual means.’ Yet the theoretical intensions underlying these works are not immediately apparent, and one wonders if, without the benefit of a personal explanation, Van Toorn’s designs are significantly different in their final effect from the output of experimental designers with less cerebral concerns.

Academic positions For Van Toorn the 1980s witnessed a narrowing of the possibilities for challenging work and he favoured instead an increasing involvement in education. During the last decade he has added to his list of academic positions those of head of printmaking, photography, film and video at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam and visiting professor at America’s Rhode Island School of Design. He has avoided expanding his two-person operation (his wife takes care of business matters), choosing to continue to work from his home in the north of Amsterdam. His appointment as full-time director of the Jan Van Eyck Academy will certainly reduce his activities as a practising graphic designer. Today Van Toorn cites only people in other disciplines as having ideas that parallel or supplement his own: Umberto Eco, Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder. This does not mean, however, that he has lost interest in contemporary graphics — on the contrary, he admits to being envious of the professionalism

of his colleagues, though he feels that many designers are too concerned with what he calls the ‘gesture’ or ‘performance’ of design to be able to escape the ‘trap of conventions’. ‘Everything is possible, you can quote everything, you can use every style, but where are the arguments that are really contributing to a fundamental change in our social conditions?’ Van Toorn remains the Brecht of graphic design, working on the line between seduction and alienation, constantly finding ways to expose rather than disguise his own role as a manipulator, continually challenging the existing networks of interpretation. On the eve of a new phase in his career, Van Toorn is modest about his achievements. ‘I’m trying to find a solution,’ he says, ‘trying to find the means to say things in a different way.’

Text taken from: http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/ article/the-designer-unmasked

Creative Process Journal

2015

It seems “ugliness” is an underlying quality of critical design. The works of Superstudio and Jan Van Toorn share the same purposeful act of “undesigning” as a critical response to social conditions of their time. The works of these designers probably have had an influence on later and current practitioners of anti-design or “ugly design”.

Creative Process Journal

Excerpt from The Cult of The Ugly Steven Heller In the early 1990s Steven Heller takes on the word ugly as he sees it applied to graphic design and design education. En route, his views of art history, pop culture and recent design trends are considered in his essay about style and meaning in design. ‘Ask a toad what is beauty… He will answer that it is a female with two great round eyes coming out of her little head, a large flat mouth, a yellow belly and a brown back.’ (Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 1794). Ask Paul Rand what is beauty and he will answer that ‘the separation of form and function, of concept and execution, is not likely to produce objects of aesthetic value.’ (Paul Rand, A Designer’s Art, 1985). Then ask the same question to the Cranbrook Academy of Art students who created the ad hoc desktop publication Output (1992), and judge by the evidence they might answer that beauty is chaos born of found letters layered on top of random patterns and shapes. Those who value functional simplicity would argue that the Cranbrook student’s publication, like a toad’s warts, is ugly. The difference is that unlike the toad, the Cranbrook students have deliberately given themselves the warts. Steven Heller starts off his essay with a very emotive paragraph. The rest of the essay is also written in the same “visceral” tone, suggesting a great importance in this subject matter at that time, as the design profession underwent technological and stylistic shifts. Heller goes on to define what “ugly” means in a Postmodern era. How is ugly to be defined in the current Postmodern climate where existing systems are up for re-evaluation, order is under attack and the forced collision of disparate forms is the rule? For the moment, let us say that ugly design, as opposed to classical design (where adherence to the golden mean and a preference for balance and harmony serve as the foundation for even the most unconventional compositions) is the layering of inharmonious graphic forms in

a way that results in confusing messages. By this definition, Output could be considered a prime example of ugliness in the service of fashionable experimentation. Though not intended to function in the commercial world, it was distributed to thousands of practising designers on the American Institute of Graphic Arts and American Center for Design mailing lists, so rather than remain cloistered and protected from criticism as on-campus “research”, it is a fair subject for scrutiny. It can legitimately be described as representing the current cult of ugliness. Raising his concerns on an increasingly popular style, he questions the justification of its emergence. Does the current social and cultural condition involve the kind of upheaval to which critical ugliness is a time-honoured companion? Or in the wake of earlier, more serious experimentation, has ugliness simply been assimilated into popular culture and become a stylish conceit? This is also a relevant question to think about in our current time, has current styles of ugly become just another trend? The current wave began in the mid-1970s with the English punk scene, a raw expression of youth frustration manifested through shocking dress, music and art. Punk’s naive graphic language – an aggressive rejection of rational typography that echoes Dada and Futurist work – influenced designers during the late 1970s who seriously tested the limits imposed by Modernist formalism. Punk’s violent demeanour surfaced in Swiss, American, Dutch and French design and spread to the mainstream in the form of a “new wave”, or what American punk artist Gary Panter has called “sanitised punk”. A key anti-canonical approach later called Swiss Punk – which in comparison with the gridlocked Swiss International Style was menacingly chaotic, though rooted in its own logic – was born in

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the mecca of rationalism, Basel, during the late 1970s. For the elders who were threatened (and offended) by the onslaught to criticise Swiss Punk was attacked not so much because of its appearance as because it symbolised the demise of Modernist hegemony. Ugly design can be a conscious attempt to create and define alternative standards. Like war-paint, the dissonant styles which many contemporary designers have applied to their visual communications are meant to shock an enemy – complacency – as well as to encourage new reading and viewing patterns. The work of American designer Art Chantry combines the shock-and-educate approach with a concern for appropriateness. For over a decade Chantry has been creating eye-catching, low-budget graphics for the Seattle punk scene by using found commercial artefacts from industrial merchandise catalogues as key elements in his posters and flyers. While these ‘unsophisticated’ graphics may be horrifying to designers who prefer Shaker functionalism to punk vernacular, Chantry’s design is decidedly functional within its context. Chantry’s clever manipulations of found ‘art’ into accessible, though unconventional, compositions prove that using ostensibly ugly forms can result in good design. Post-modernism inspired a debate in graphic design in the mid-1970s by revealing that many perceptions of art and culture were one-dimensional. Post-modernism urgently questioned certainties laid down by Modernism and rebelled against grand Eurocentric narratives in favour of multiplicity. The result in graphic design was to strip Modernist formality of both its infrastructure and outer covering. The grid was demolished, while neo-classical and contemporary ornament, such as dots, blips and arrows, replaced the tidiness of the canonical approach. As in most artistic revolutions, the previous generation was attacked, while the generations before were curiously rehabilitated. The visual hallmarks of this rebellion, however, were inevitably reduced to stylistic mannerisms which forced even more radical experimentation. Extremism gave rise to fashionable ugliness as a form of nihilistic expression.

In “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1819), the Romantic poet John Keats wrote the famous lines: ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ Yet in today’s environment, one standard of beauty is no more the truth than is one standard of ugliness. It is possible that the most conventional-busting graphic design by students and alumni of Cranbrook, CalArts and Rhode Island School of Design, among other hothouses where theoretical constructs are used to justify what the untutored eye might deem ugly, could become the foundation for new standards based on contemporary sensibilities. Certainly, these approaches have attracted many followers throughout the design world. Heller presents a difficulty in trying to define standards of aesthetics, i.e., what is beautiful and what is ugly? with constant cultural and stylistic evolution. Pluralism within design today makes it even tougher to define what “ugly” is, as diversity is embraced. ‘Where does beauty begin and where does it end?’ wrote John Cage in Silence (1961). ‘Where it ends is where the artist begins.’ So in order to stretch the perimeters of art and design to any serious extent it becomes necessary to suspend popular notions of beauty so that alternative aesthetic standards can be explored. This concept is essential to an analysis of a recent work by the Chicago company Segura, who designed the programme/announcement for the 1993 How magazine “Creative Vision” conference and whose work represents the professional wing of the hothouse sensibility. Compared to the artless Output, Segura’s seemingly anarchic booklet is an artfully engineered attempt to direct the reader through a maze of mundane information. Yet while the work might purport to confront complacency, it often merely obstructs comprehension. … The ugly excesses – or Frankenstein’s little monsters like Output – are often exhibited in public to promulgate “the new design discourse”. In fact, they merely further the cause of ambiguity and ugliness. Since

Creative Process Journal

graduate school hothouses push their work into the real world, some of what is purely experimental is accepted by neophytes as a viable model, and students, being students, will inevitably misuse it. Who can blame them if their mentors are doing so, too?

‘Rarely has beauty been an end in itself,’ wrote Paul Rand in Paul Rand: A Designer’s Art. And it is equally mistaken to treat ugliness as an end result in itself. Ugliness is valid, even refreshing, when it is key to an indigenous language representing alternative ideas and cultures. The problem with the cult of ugly graphic design emanating from the major design academies and their alumni is that it has so quickly become a style that appeals to anyone without the intelligence, discipline or good sense to make something more interesting out of it. While the proponents are following their various muses, their followers are misusing their signature designs and typography as style without substance. Ugliness as a tool, a weapon, even as a code is not a problem when it is a result of form following function. But ugliness as its own virtue – or as a knee-jerk reaction to the status quo – diminishes all design.

Text taken from: https://www.typotheque.com/ articles/cult_of_the_ugly/

Common to all graphic designers practising in the current wave is the self-indulgence that informs some of the worst experimental fine art. But what ultimately derails much of this work is what critic Dugald Stermer calls “adults making kids’ drawings”. When Art Chantry uses naive or ugly design elements he transforms them into viable tools. Conversely, Jeffery Keedy’s Lushus, a bawdy shove-it-in-your-face novelty typeface, is taken seriously by some and turns up on printed materials (such as the Dutch Best Book Designs cover) as an affront to, not a parody of, typographic standards. When the layered, vernacular look is practised in the extreme, whether with forethought or not, it simply contributes to the perpetuation of bad design.

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Studio Outcome Draft 1

This poster acts as a “teaser” to my project on the exploration of “ugly styles” in design. Borrowing a quote from John Cage, the intention was to make viewers question the standards of beauty and ugly within design. How is a piece of work considered beautiful and under what conditions is it ugly? Using a font designed by Jeffrey Keedy and then defacing it further pushes the limits of “beauty”/”ugly”.

Comments/critiques Intention isn’t very clear “I think it would be clearer if there were two things that I could look at to draw comparisons, as there’s only one item now and it becomes difficult for me to draw conclusions and make a judgement based on itself (there’s no basis for me to know what I think of the question posed, unless I’m supposed to base my response on my own experience, preference. But then again, how do you qualify or measure that and also the accuracy of my standards?” “I think it was your intent to be ambiguous. I understand the question you’ve posed.”

Creative Process Journal

Excerpt from an interview between Rick Poynor and Katherine McCoy — Reputations: Katherine McCoy RP: One of your graduates, Andrew Blauvelt, made a comment recently in Emigre, which I would like to hear your views on. He talked about graphic design as symptom and cure. ‘We had the cure in Modernism. In the other camp, graphic design as symptom, we have Cranbrook.’ Do you agree with this analysis? KM: It does seem that graphic design should reflect its cultural milieu if it is honest to its time and its audiences. Designers are responsible for a significant part of our society’s cultural production, so I think we have a responsibility to produce culturally current work. If a designer takes a nihilistic view of the cacophony of modern life, then I suppose confused complexity would be an honest expression, although that certainly is not my view. One thing I would like to point out is that a lot of work coming out of Cranbrook is not formally complex. If you look at the New Discourse book some of the work has only three elements to it. That is not, to me, formally complex design. Most people think of Cranbrook as only doing layered work, but a lot of this goes back to the pre-post-structuralist period – the ‘high formalism’ – although certainly Allen Hori’s work, for instance, continues to be very complex and layered. But the complexity I’m interested in is complexity of meaning. I’m not so much interested in the layers of form as the layers of meaning. The first reading is the ostensible first layer of objective meaning. But what is the second? The third? If you were to live with a poster in your dining room for the next three months, what would you continue to find as you spent more time with it? I think this approach fits modern society because the contemporary world is subtle and complex. Simple black and white dualisms no longer work. Graphic design that tries to make things simple is not doing anybody any real benefit. Society needs to understand how to deal with the subtlety, complexity and contradiction in contemporary life. I also think it is possible and necessary to have both complexity and intelligibility in graphic design. What is the “culturally current” work of today? Is it up to the interpretation of each designer as described by McCoy? RP: What are your personal criteria for evaluating the quality of a design? KM: That is a really crucial point. That is half the challenge for each student who comes to our programme – to develop a personal set of standards for judging design. Actually, that is one of the things I felt most uncomfortable about with the first use of deconstructive theory: the rejection of dominant paradigms. Does that mean that everything is OK? That there are no valid standards? I have come to think that a different view of standards is needed, something each designer needs to define themselves. Every graphic work has relative degrees of success and failure; each designer must define their their own criteria for evaluating relative success and failure. RP: The logic of that might be that everyone arrives at such a radically different value system that there could be no conversation. Can any form of consensus be reached?

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KM: Certainly that is the crucial question for a contemporary multicultural democratic society. As much as I believe in pluralism, I am also convinced of the necessity for consensus. In design, it is possible to have a conversation because we really arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t all that different; we share a common history and communicate intensely. Occasionally you will find a piece of graphic design that is so clearly successful that everybody can agree on its quality, regardless of their biases. RP: How would you characterise that quality?

Text taken from: http://www.eyemagazine.com/ feature/article/katherine-mccoy

KM: Resonance, an instinctive recognition and response from a viewer/ reader. The resonance I am thinking of is resonance within our audience. I think it has to do with some sort of interaction with individual experiences and value systems. Of course, that is more and more difficult to do in these days of highly segmented multicultural audiences.

Creative Process Journal

Excerpt from Subculture: The Meaning of Style Dick Hebdige Style in subculture is, then, pregnant with significance. Its transformations go ‘against nature’, interrupting the process of ‘normalization’. As such, they are gestures, movements towards a speech which offends the ‘silent majority”, which challenges the principle of unity and cohesion, which contradicts the myth of consensus. Our task becomes, like Barthes’, to discern the hidden messages inscribed in code on the glossy surfaces of style, to trace them out as ‘maps of meaning’ which obscurely re-present the very contradictions they are designed to resolve or conceal. Dick Hebdige uses Punks as an example to show how subculural groups choose to dress a certain way to convey certain messages and to portray a difeerence and group idenity. Ugly design can perhaps be considered a subcultural style, with its practitioners’ deliberate resistance of “dominant ideology”, as a form of visual/cultural protest.

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Studio Outcome Draft 2

Taking into consideration the feedbacks from the first draft, a series of three posters were done to illustrate the effects of visual complexities on the tone and message of each poster. Inspired by Dan Friedman’s typographic experiments, the posters were done in increasing degree of complexity, using the same visual elements throughout, i.e., the title, the body copy, and an image, with the allowance of simple vector shapes as complementary graphics.

Postmodern Design

Text taken from Meggs’ History of Graphic Design

Comments/critiques

Postmodern Design

Context missing “It’s good that you are experimenting, but the intention still isn’t clear enough, maybe you need some form of write-up before showing these experiments.” “What is the point of it all if they are just type experiments?” “Not ugly enough.”

Text taken from Meggs’ History of Graphic Design

In design, postmodernism designated the work of architects and designers who were breaking with the international style so prevalent since the Bauhaus. Postmodernism sent shock waves through the design establishment as it challenged the order and clarity of modern design, particularly corporate design.

Design forms and terminology have political and social meaning, expressing attitudes and values of their time; postmodernism gained a strong foothold among the generation of designers who emerged in the 1970s. Perhaps the international style had been so thoroughly refined, explored, and accepted that a backlash was inevitable. Historical references, decoration, and the vernacular were disdained by modernists, while postmodern designers drew upon these resources to expand the range of design possibilities. Text taken from Meggs’ His tory of Graphic Design

Creative Process Journal

Excerpt from The New Ugly Patrick Burgoyne Stretched type, day-glo colours and a ﬂagrant disregard for the rules: are we witnessing a knee-jerk reaction to the slick sameness of so much design or a genuine cultural shift? In the early 90s, the mother of all rows blew up between, on the one hand, the traditionalist school of American designers led by Massimo Vignelli and, in defiant opposition, the avant garde of Emigre and the Cranbrook Academy of Art. The catalyst was an essay in Eye magazine by Steven Heller entitled Cult of the Ugly, in which the world’s most prolific design writer took Cranbrook and its students to task over, as he saw it, their gratuitously ugly output. Well now, it seems, ugly is back.

In his original essay, Heller slammed those using ugliness as a knee-jerk reaction to the status quo. “Ugliness as its own virtue diminishes all design,” he said. All three projects cited here could be accused of such a crime. However, Heller also argued that ugliness “is not a problem when it is a result of form following function”. Though none of Wolff Olins, Slocombe or Meiré may feel comfortable with describing their work as ugly, they all lay claim to their pursuit of the latter. “Making a magazine is about finding the right look for its content, its attitude,” Meiré argues. “To me it’s the only way to create a unique identity. [In doing so] maybe you don’t please the [mainstream] anymore – but you become who you are, authentic in your own way.”

Text taken from: http: //www.creativereview.co.uk/ cr-blog/2007/august/the-new-ugly

Steve Slocombe and Mike Mierè’s design of respective magazines, Super Super, and 032C sent shockwaves throughout the design community as they were deemed the return of ugly design.

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Excerpt from When “Ugly” Reared its Head An interview with Steven Heller Alan Rapp: Tell me about the specific circumstances that prompted you to write “Cult of the Ugly?” Not just the artifacts you named—Cranbrook’s edition of the studentdesigned publication Output or Segura’s program for the 1993 HOW conference—but what else were you seeing that caused you to respond so viscerally? Steven Heller: First of all, at that time I was quite close to Paul Rand, who had just published a couple of career-capping books, the third was on its way. You might say I was under the influence of Modernist nostalgia, if not dogma, about the “right way” to design. In any case, I had urged Rand to write a screed about the “new new typography” in the AIGA Journal, which I edited, for which he was immediately clobbered as out-of-touch and reactionary. I felt the obligation and need to support him in some fashion. Call it loyalty to a person with an ideology, rather than the ideology itself. Of course, I was seeing a lot of the Cranbrook-styled “visually linguistic”—as I call it—typography. At first it meant nothing more than a Declaration of Independence of a new generation from the old. There was a post-modern dance going on, that included retro, vernacular, Emigre, Cranbrook, and, of course, David Carson. Also, Rick Valicenti was actively busting rules that seemed to emerge from April Greiman and Dan Friedman via Wolfgang Weingart. It was actually very rich “experimental” territory—more than today. But the more the computer was involved the more anarchic was the output. Hence when the publication called Output was released I saw it as a great opportunity to launch a few critical barbs at the devolution of the newly evolved style. To be honest, it was as much to provoke as it was to stoke some flames. A few years thereafter I did a book called Faces on the Edge celebrating to a certain extent the new expressive, raw and “ugly” styles of fonts. Was it hypocrisy or enlightenment—maybe both. AR: You’ve said before that the merits of this debate may be relative or overblown—but what should we be debating in design today? Or, why aren’t we really debating on the stylistic level anymore? SH: I think the argument got out of hand in a personal sense, but in a professional or intellectual one it was useful. First, a lot of this kind of debating played out when blogs like Speak Up and Design Observer began running “comments.” That early 2000s period was very fruitful for the so-called “new discourse.”

Creative Process Journal

People began writing more (not always great stuff) critiques. It made the “fame” of some of these writers too. Criticism turned a corner then. Of course, there are still blogs, but not as much “conversation.” The discourse is commanded by a few steady voices. What should we be debating now? There are many aspects of design, especially now that the web and mobile are determining certain aesthetics, which should be scrutinized. Style, which what “Ugly” was really all about, is a thin topic, but consequence of design is something to be addressed. Of course, there is room for the superficial too. Design is also about surface.

Text taken from: http://www.designersandbooks. com/blog/when-ugly-reared-its-head

“Cult of the Ugly,” was at the very least, a catalyst. For that I am glad. I still get students contacting me about the essay. I’m glad to have it in my portfolio. But time has passed to the point where many of the tropes I found “viscerally” annoying then, are either gone (like the mullet) or integrated into our visual vocabularies.

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Excerpt from The Provocative Mr Meiré An interview with Mike Meiré CR: Did you deliberately set out to break rules with the redesign of 032c? Is it a provocation? Mike Meiré: Why? Just because it looks different? Or because we stopped following the aesthetical path of the former issues, so people feel disappointed because we haven’t fulfilled their expectations? Making a magazine is about taking a decision, either you do it because you believe in your vision or you follow a market. 032c is a very strong independent magazine with highly sophisticated content, but it became visually predictable. Generally, that’s not a big concern, but for a contemporary culture magazine which appears only two times a year it is. When I met Jörg Koch, the editor-in-chief, it was quite clear from the beginning that he wanted to change the whole thing. He was talking about energy and experimentation, a radical step towards brutality. The meeting took place in my factory in Cologne where I moved my company two years ago – to be independent again, to free myself, to step aside from these everyday commercial expectations. So our profiles were matching immediately! There are so many magazines out there which pretend to be cool, sophisticated or even culturally relevant. They all look the same, more or less. (...oouh! I know! There are a few good magazines out there! But I am talking about the rest, the 99.9%!) They all play this stylish “classy” Feuilleton-inspired design game. In 1999 I designed the first issue of German economy magazine brand eins (Which is based on the rebirth of beauty. Classic typography combined with white pages and remarkable photography.) which became quietly iconic and got copied a lot. So I know what I am talking about. Since then I am looking for an alternative graphic design wave in Germany … but it hasn’t happened so far. So I used my chance with 032c to come up with something different. But this was only possible because of the incredible quality 032c stands for. In fact the new issue is exactly worked around the essence of 032c. Remember their first issue; bold, rough, intellectual, black and white, on the cover a huge square in pantone 032c? For the redesign I just went back to their roots, put the square back on the cover with Cecilia (the curvy girl in a black rubber cat suit) inside and the PANTONE 032c Red around it. Very simple, very strong. Feels like a subversive version of Germany’s number one politics magazine Der Spiegel. Of course the stretched typography makes you look twice. Like an accident in our eye candy lifestyle magazine world. ERROR.

Creative Process Journal

I am always interested in the concept of evolution = harmony/ break/harmony … Making a magazine is finding out the right look for its content, its attitude. And 032c has its own ways to combine different stories ranges from war-photography, fashion, art, architecture, politics, etc. To me it’s the only way to create a unique identity, if you don’t want to be “me too”. Maybe you don’t please the common sense anymore – but you become who you are, authentic in your own way. So coming back to your question. YES, I did deliberately set out to break rules with this and YES, it is a provocation – but in the first place to myself! I remember a quote from the German artist Martin Kippenberger I have published in my own magazine AD2G 1990 “Es gibt nur den Dreck und die Schönheit im Dreck” (There is only dirt and the beauty within) … if every magazine or every building or every brand or everybody tries to look appealing somehow in the same idea of being modern, it becomes interesting to go the opposite. Because life has different kinds of beauty to present. CR: Is the headline type stretched or did you have a special typeface drawn like that? MM: This was actually the hardest job to get right. Most of the time my assistant Tim Giesen was stretching types like hell. The idea was getting us into a kind of “darker”. We combined the stretched ones with types from the Helvetica and Futura family and the Times New Roman Condensed. We had to recondition our minds aesthetically wise while we were working on 032c. After some days everything commercial looked so boring… unbelievable! It was a bit like a trip. I wanted to reveal a darker beauty which embraces mature elegance and coolness. When the layouts were done we sent them to Jörg, based in Berlin, he replied with his one-word-code: “KILLER!”

MM: It is what it is. Isn’t it? If you call it anti-design, that’s fine with me. I think being anti is important these days. Sometimes there is a real need to say NO. There is so much stuff around us… As I already said I became a bit tired of all these look-a-like magazines. They’re all made very professional - but I was looking for something more charismatic. I wanted to search for an interesting look beyond the mainstream. Maybe something more “brutal” as Jörg used to say. We wanted a truthful intelligent independent magazine with a touch of underground. I think we did it. And people may feel this and that’s why they are a bit confused because we all are used to this kind of efficientstreamlined-whatever-correctness…

Text taken from: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/ cr-blog/2007/august/the-provocative-mr-meire

CR: Is it anti-design?

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Mandatory 1 Defining Scope Objective To provide an introduction to the project, and to define the scope of what the project will cover. The scope of the project will consist of two components: 1. Context Provides a background for the reader/viewer to understand the project. Answers the overarching question of “What is this project about?” 2. Reason A careful build up of the context leads to a definition of the reason of the project. Answers the overarching question of “Why is this project important?”

Creative Process Journal

Plans for mandatory 1 Feedbacks for previous outcomes all indicate a lack of context for the project, i.e., what the project is about. Taking into consideration the requirements for mandatory 1, the following contents should be included: • An introduction to briefly describe the project and the reason for it • Historical context to show the historical developments of ugly design (this would allow readers to get a better idea of the “what”, the “how” and the “why” of the project) Proposed deliverable: A5 Publication

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Initial cover drafts

These are initial attempts in creating an ugly cover—mimicking current “ugly” design trends, Typical elements include—heavy photoshop effects, warped, skewed texts, unnecessary visual elements, and gradient colours. Really struggled with this one, inner “trained” designer says no.

Creative Process Journal

Cover finalization The struggle to create an ugly poster/cover really showed, and I decided to make a compromise (for nowâ&#x20AC;Ś), and distil the visual elements into texts instead. The outcome could then be typographic-based.

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(Image copied and pasted directly from illustrator artboards)

Creative Process Journal

How to be Ugly Micheal Bierut I’m no purist when it comes to graphic design, and I thought I had seen it all. But that was before I saw Mike Meiré’s redesign of German culture magazine 032c. Am I easily shocked? No. But with 032c, Meiré builds a whole publication around what I now realize is the last taboo in graphic design: the vertical and horizontal scaling of type. Dear God in heaven: at long last, is nothing sacred? If you’re unfamiliar with the work of Meiré und Meiré, you might just assume that 032 was simply the output of a naive amateur. But Mike Meiré is a great designer, and he’s

been responsible for some extraordinarily beautiful magazines, including the innovative business journal brand eins and its predecessor Econy, both models of taste, precision and understatement. Meiré knows exactly what he’s doing, and what he’s doing with 032c is telling the world that we can take taste, precision and understatement...and shove them. Behold the style pendulum in the midst of another swing. The fits, literal and otherwise, that attended the unveiling of the London 2012 Olympics logo were a clear signal that ugly was getting ready for a comeback. It only took a day or two for the backlash to the backlash to set in; as the folks at Coudal told us, what we were witnessing were the birth pangs of the New

Brutalism. And lest anyone write this moment off as a mere anomaly, Wolff Olins, the design firm that created the 2012 campaign, quickly followed it up with the jammed-together-ona-stalled-downtown-No. 4-train-at-rush-hour New York City tourism logo, as well as the hey-mom-when-did-you-learn-Photoshop Wacom identity, both of which extend New Brutalism, or (in the case of Wacom) just plain ugliness, to new levels. When similar symptoms are detected at both hyper-trendy German culture magazines and massive corporate identity consultancies, a trend might be said to approach pre-epidemic stages. “Ugly is back!” With these words, Patrick Burgoyne confirmed the diagnosis a few months ago in Creative Review, recalling the “mother of all rows” back in the early 90s that attended the publication in Eye of Steve Heller’s now-legendary article “The Cult of the Ugly.” As for this time around, Burgoyne asks, “are we witnessing a knee-jerk reaction to the slick sameness of so much design or a genuine cultural shift?” Whether reactionary spasm or irrevocable paradigm shift, if history is a guide, once the game is afoot, scores of designers will be eager to get with the program. Obviously, doing ugly work isn’t difficult. The trick is to surround it with enough attitude so it will be properly perceived not as the product of everyday incompetence, but rather as evidence of one’s attunement with the zeitgeist. This is harder than it looks. Breaking rules is reactive and, perhaps, needlessly provocative. One approach is to declare a complete ignorance of the rules, and cloak oneself in a aura of Eden-like innocence. David Carson provides a classic example with his monologue in Helvetica, recalling his unawareness, at the outset of his career, that some guys had spent a lot of time setting up a bunch of standards or something. Rules? What rules? Burgoyne updates this approach with his “charitable” explanation for the design of the truly alarming

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magazine Super Super, the appearance of which has been likened to “a clown being sick.” Creative director Steve Slocombe’s lack of formal design training, he offers, “has left him unencumbered by the profession’s history and therefore more able to seek out new forms of expression.” That’s one way to put it. Not everyone, however, is so blissfully unencumbered. The alternative approach, then, is to elevate differentiation to the end that justifies all means. If you can’t ignore the rules, break them. “We have created something original in a world where it is increasingly difficult to make something different,” announced Wolff Olins chairman Brian Boylan in the midst of the brouhaha surrounding the London 2012 launch. “I became a bit tired of all these look-a-like magazines,” said Mike Meiré in Creative Review. “They’re all made very professionally but I was looking for something more charismatic. I wanted to search for an interesting look that was beyond the mainstream.”

neighborhood who has ever lost a cat — he answered, “This was actually the hardest job to get right.” When ugly is done properly, the conventionalminded are properly outraged. This should never be admitted as the goal, however. “This is the most appropriate way to communicate to our audience,” offered Super Super’s Steve Slocombe. Or, as Mike Meiré says, “It is what it is.” But finally there may come a stage when the public’s outrage is too much to ignore: at that point, claim that this was precisely the plan in the first place. “Its design is intentionally raw, which means it doesn’t immediately sit there and ask to be liked very much,” said Wolff Olins’s Patrick Cox of the 2012 logo. “It was meant to be something that did provoke a response, like the little thorn in the chair that gets you to breathe in, sit up and take notice.” And what say you, Mr. Cox, to the inevitable complaint is lodged that a four-year-old could do it? “When people are saying that a child could have done it, or are coming up with their own designs, that’s what we want: we want everyone to be able to do something with it.” Check and mate.

Text taken from: http://designobserver.com/feature/ how-to-be-ugly/5867/

So The New Ugly may be here to stay for a while. If you’re familiar with art and design, you know the perils of condemning the shock of the new. After all, no one wants to risk being one of the bourgoisie sneering at the unveiling of Les Mademoiselles D’Avignon or booing at the debut of Le Sacre du Printemps. At all costs, however, onlookers should be a reassured that the results, no matter how careless-looking, were achieved through the same painstaking attention to detail that one would associate with more conventional solutions. Maybe even more! “It takes perfectionism to get this kind of design just exactly not quite right,” said Hugh AlderseyWilliams about the work of the late master of anti-design Tibor Kalman, whose former employees all have stories about spending endless hours on deliciously bad letterspacing. Similarly, when Meiré was asked about the stretched headline type in 032 — a typographic effect seemingly mastered by everyone in my

But only some of the time does that little thorn in the chair turn out to be a Picasso or a Stravinsky. Most of the time, it’s just a pain in the ass. Until further notice, be careful where you decide to sit.

Creative Process Journal

Excerpt from Borderline A feature article on Metahaven …(inital content excluded) Another recent project, Affiche Frontière, for the CAPC Musee d’art contemporain in Bordeaux, took their concerns with national borders and supranational identity into the street. Metahaven created a series of ten posters for the street furniture used to carry advertising and these were displayed along the ring road that encircles the city, forming a boundary between the centre and the outskirts. ‘The ring is the demarcation line of a looming conflict,’ they write. ‘Its infrastructure is ready to be politicised.’ Each image responds with graphic urgency to the idea of borders around and within Europe. In one poster, Metahaven transform the phrase ‘L’Europe qui protege’ (The Europe that protects), used as the slogan for France’s European Union presidency, into a question: ‘L’Europe qui protege de quoi?’ (The Europe that protects from what?). Each MUPI (mobilier urbain pour l’information) has a more visible and more expensive ‘A’ side, used for commercial advertising, and a cheaper ‘B’ side, usually used for cultural posters, representing another kind of division, and Metahaven set out to gain access to some of the more favoured positions. ‘In the centre of the city there are more expensive brands on the commercial side than on the commercial side in other areas,’ says Kruk. ‘So this system produces other borders in the city.’ For Metahaven, it was important that their posters were allowed to intrude into some of these premium ‘non-cultural’ positions, a demand that required delicate negotiation between CAPC and Bordeaux city hall, and MUPI owners JCDecaux and Clear Channel Outdoor Advertising. The posters, each bordered by fierce diagonal slashes, like mutated warning signs, exemplify Metahaven’s graphic approach. The designs are simultaneously raw and ambiguous, loud and enigmatic, deliberately unsettling. Their painterly qualities, accentuated by screenprinting, might make them look more like art than information design, especially in the context of a gallery project, but Van der Velden is adamant that they are not art. The posters break with the conventions of poster-making because they are not products of the system that normally generates street posters and because new kinds of information require new kinds of form. They are still design. ‘If you say, “OK, now it has become art,”’ he concludes, ‘then it has also become useless for the discourse.’

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Van der Velden admits that in the early days of Metahaven, style was still a pressing concern for him – ‘it was much more about the role of exuberance, almost a longing for a new Gothic’ – and ‘Gothic’, with its suggestion of intricate formal density and emotional power, is the right word. His essay ‘Crypto Logo Jihad’, first published in Metropolis M magazine, is a loving analysis of the ‘symmetrical maze of jagged forms’ and the systematic illegibility seen in the overwrought logos of black metal bands. He has been a fan of metal, punk, grindcore, industrial and experimental music since his teens. As Van der Velden notes, Metahaven’s sometimes discordant and difficult visual style attempts to strike its own balance between hammering and poetry: ‘If you hammer too much it becomes too much like noise and if it becomes too poetic you lose the tension of the density of ideas.’ This was one of the first few interviews with Metahaven that I read, and I would say this interview allowed me to appreciate Metahaven’s works more. Although I still find some of their works very difficult to comprehend, I understand their intentions behind making them look somewhat "ugly".

Text taken from: http://designobserver.com/feature/ how-to-be-ugly/5867/

Metahaven is one of the few unconventional design studios that does work that are very research and politically driven (very much like Jan Van Toorn), and I respect and admire that a lot, because it takes a lot of courage and conviction to go against the grain (not just for the sake of it)— pushing boundaries and looking for new approches in graphic design practice.

Creative Process Journal

Mandatory 2 Extended Scope

The representation of an extension of the study of context; a comparative study of all schools of thoughts and conversations concerning the chosen issue.

Plans for mandatory 2 A publication collating opinions and views on the subject of ugly design— Structure of book • Introduction – What is “ugly design” – Where is it applied/practiced? – Why? • Interviews/ opinions – Not necessarily in support or opposing, but it could also be the general consensus that ‘ugly’ is becoming ‘pretty’, and it is hard to differentiatiate • Ugly design project examples

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Planned interview questions 1. Please give a brief introduction to what you do. What are the motivations behind your works? Is there a reason why you choose to work with a particular visual style? 2. Do you think the use of styles play an important role in visual communication? I.e., would you think a cleaner, structured, “modernist-styled” design be more effective in communication than design using disharmonious images and texts which could be considered jarring (something in the likes of the works by Jan van Toorn and Emigre), or vice versa? Or do you think it does not matter? (possible prompters) • Use Wim Crouwel and JvT’s great style debate to support • Can also talk about Vignelli criticizing Emigre • Steven Heller criticizing Emigre and Cranbrook 3. Recent conceptions of ugly design have different implications and functions. One of the reasons for its conception is the need to push aesthetic boundaries — to challenge notions of beauty and ugly. However it seems that the “boundaries” have been pushed to its limits, what we used to find ugly is becoming accepted. As a style, younger designers are increasingly adopting ugly design as a trend. It almost seems like there is no distinction between beauty and ugly anymore. • Is there any piece of graphic design work that you find ugly? Conversely, what is one piece of graphic design work that you find beautiful?

Creative Process Journal

In-class exercise / 14 October (last one for semester 1) Feedbacks and comments These were some of the questions raised regarding my project when Josh was presenting on my behalf (I thought he did a very good job representing it by the way). These are the questions followed by my written responses (since we weren’t allowed to defend our works, I thought it would still be good to consider the questions and provide answers to them) after the exercise: 1. Define what ugly design is to me — is it just something that’s visually ugly, i.e., unknowingly done ugly? Is it a consequence of experimentation? So the ugliness is unintentional. Or, is it done on purpose as an opposition to conventions? 2. Could relate it to the definition of graphic design — does graphic design mean just to visually communicate? If that’s the case, does ugly design do its job of communicating effectively? 3. Should you compare it to other styles? For example, modernist or “typical” design styles? 1. As a start, I think Heller’s definition of “ugly design” being the opposite of classical design sets a context to understand this project. Inevitably, all of the above mentioned are, I would think, “subsets” of what ugly design is, and would overlap. If anything, this project sets out to find out what “ugly design” means in today’s context, which essentially will be ‘my’ definition of it. 2. I’ve considered the communication aspect of it as well, and this is something that I will be exploring — which will be included in the definition of “ugly design”. I believe the “ugliness” is an undertone of the works from designers who are also trying to redefine or re-evaluate what graphic design is and should or could be. 3. I could. But I feel like if I did that, it might dilute the essence of my project, which is partly to define ugly design. The other objective is to encourage criticality in design production. The reason why I chose to examine “ugly design” is because past conceptions of “ugliness” in art and design all started with a critical intention, either to subvert former rules — to serve as an opposition to the “dominant aesthetic ideology” (Modernism), or to pose a social/political critique. I suppose the shock value that comes with the “unacceptable” aesthetic choices were effective in provoking thought and change. So I think the attitudes behind past “ugly design” deserve to be adopted. I’m not too sure if the recent ones have any form of critical intention behind them… That being said, I could explore the “modernist style”, and draw comparisons between its conservatism (in later manifestations of the movement) and a more radical “ugly design” style, and maybe use it to support my case in encouraging alternate thinking and practice in design.

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Micheal Bierut’s thoughts on ugly design and post-internet aesthetics

Sent out an email to Mr Bierut hoping to seek some words of wisdom, (and his response was nothing short of it), first “interviewee” to reply too— ahh the brevity of Mr Bierut’s words. I did, however wish for a lengthier response… Still appreciate the very quick response despite his (I assume) very busy schedule, and the time-zone difference.

Creative Process Journal

Interview with Darius Ou

AUTOTYPOGRAPHY posters by Darius. Taken from his website: http;//dhesign.sg

When I knew I had to interview people for my project, Darius was one of the first few people I had in mind. Since seeing his work on the designobserver website (the green poster above), I knew I had to speak to him regarding this topic on ugly design. Coincidentally, Yusman knows him, so it wasn’t too difficult trying to contact him. After several email correspondences, I finally got to speak to him in person, and he was nice enough to show me some of his recent and past works. If I’m not mistaken, the works that “shot him to fame”, were his AUTOTYPOGRAPHY posters, which he dilligently produced one a day for a year. And it was also this project that got him into “ugly design”. In fact, I would say he is one of the pioneers of this aesthetic here in Singapore, and I’m glad I got to hear some of his opinions on it. While I had a prepared script for the interview, our chat was carried out in a very informal and spontaneous manner, so I decided to ditch the script, and played it by ear. What resulted was more than an hour’s worth of raw recorded audio content, which is great! But not so great when editing and transcribing. The final interview will be included in the publication for mandatory 2.

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Excerpt from Pretty Ugly or Plain Ugly? Patrick Burgoyne Skewed, stretched type, clashing colours, too little or too much spacing — across Europe a new generation of designers and art directors is breaking every rule. But is their work rebellion for rebellion’s sake or does it have wider implications for visual communications? The June issue of CR (out May 23) comes with a health warning. It contains content that readers of a nervous disposition and a love of classical typography may find disturbing. Things are going to get ugly. Back in 2007, I wrote a piece suggesting that something new and decidedly strange was happening in graphic design and art direction, based mainly upon the look of two magazines: Super Super (spread shown above) and 032c. In it I referred to an earlier Eye essay by Steven Heller on what he termed the ‘Cult of the Ugly’. Heller was writing about the work coming out of Cranbrook Academy of Art in the 90s, work that deliberately sought to subvert our ideas of ‘good design’. What I saw in Super Super and 032c could, I thought, herald a New Ugly aesthetic in response to changes in the way younger readers consumed information online and a desire to, once again, challenge the status quo. Five years later comes the publication of Pretty Ugly, a new book that brings together graphic design, imagemaking and product design which very much delivers on that promise. In the Pretty Ugly, type is skewed, stretched and set at unreadable angles; images are distorted with a will; colours clash resoundingly. Some of it is beautiful, some interesting, some just awful. Five years later comes the publication of Pretty Ugly, a new book that brings together graphic design, imagemaking and product design which very much delivers on that promise. In the Pretty Ugly, type is skewed, stretched and set at unreadable angles; images are distorted with a will; colours clash resoundingly. Some of it is beautiful, some interesting, some just awful. “It is a new kind of beauty that isn’t based upon pure visual pleasure, it is a beauty based upon context-driven design, being transparent with working methods, tools and materials,” claim the book’s editors, Martin Lorenz and Lupi Asensio of Barcelona design studio TwoPoints.Net, who came up with the Pretty Ugly term to describe the ‘movement’ and who are interviewed in the new issue of CR. “There are obvious aesthetic qualities connecting the work,” they say, “intentionally ‘bad’ typography; using system typefaces like

Creative Process Journal

Arial, Helvetica or Times; stretching them; having too much or too little letter or line spacing; deforming type on a scanner or a copier. The Pretty Ugly is a movement against the established criteria of what ‘good design’ is, in order to regain the attention of the audience and explore new territory. Entering the world of ‘wrong’ freed these designers and made any kind of experiment possible, without worrying about being thought unprofessional. Mistakes turned into virtuosity, a sign of authenticity and humanity. But it isn’t a movement that does wrong because it doesn’t know better. This is a highly educated generation of designers using their knowledge to break with what they were given as rules. They use intuition as much as intellect in order to enter new territory that is beyond so called ‘professionalism’.” Hmmm, so we are into the “if I do it, it’s meant to look bad, if you do it, it’s just bad” territory, always tricky ground to occupy. Are we, the humble viewers and readers, meant to know the difference? Is there one? Geographically, most of the work featured hails from Belgium, France, Germany and The Netherlands. The latter gives a clue as to the work’s intellectual origins too. Lorenz and Asensio say “We would guess that many of the seeds of the Pretty Ugly were sown in the Netherlands around 2000, when ‘Default Design’ was hot. At the time, the first issues of Jop van Bennekom’s Re-Magazine using Times and lo-res images taken from the internet, or the work by Maureen Mooren (at that time working with Daniel van der Velden, who is now at Metahaven) and her husband Armand Mevis (working with Linda van Deursen) were all very influential. Many of the the designers featured in our book studied at the design school Werkplaats Typografie, where Armand Mevis teaches.” … In the US and UK many young designers have turned toward a retro craft aesthetic and a celebration of archaic print techniques — think of the US gig poster scene, much of the work exhibited at Pick Me Up or the Hipster aesthetic satirised so acutely on this recent Tumblr. In comparison, the mostly Northern European approach of The Pretty Ugly feels much more daring and provocative. This is actually funny, because I think the local design scene is still quite stuck with the “retro craft aesthetic” and the “Hipster aesthetic”, I think we need to and should move on… Rather than retreating to the comfort of the past, this work seems calculated to upset as many purist notions as possible. It has great energy and verve, blowing away the cobwebs of the watereddown Modernism-as-style that has dominated our ideas of ‘good design’ for so long.

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But is there anything more to it than empty rebellion? In Heller’s original piece, he stated that “Ugliness as its own virtue diminishes all design” but that it is justified if it is as a result of form follows function. If the ‘function’ here is to kick over the traces and make us re-examine what ‘good design’ is then maybe it’s working. We live in an age where everything around us is (to an extent) competently designed: groceries, restaurants, magazines, medicines, all researched and marketed to the nth degree. A professional patina applied. Design as service industry. Compared to the buffed and primped identities of most major organisations, the Stedelijk identity feels refreshingly authentic and honest. But here’s the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ rub with the Pretty Ugly — if it wasn’t by a famous Dutch design studio and for a major institution, would we give it serious consideration? If we saw it on the side of a builder’s van would it transform from Pretty Ugly to just plain ugly? There’s something undeniably decadent in a group of highly and expensively educated Western designers producing knowingly ‘bad’ work. Are young designers, seeing their older peers’ work becoming more and more devalued, reacting by saying ‘these rules you taught us are not going to earn us a living anyway so let’s see what happens when we break them all’? Increasingly we are hearing mumblings about a ‘post-design world’. Is The Pretty Ugly a refreshing reinvigoration of a visual communications industry that has become too flabby and comfortable, or the outward sign of a profession in crisis?

Text taken from: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/ cr-blog/2012/may/pretty-ugly-or-plain-ugly

I remember when I first noticed this Pretty ugly phenomenon happening in graphic design, it was 2 years ago, and I was still an intern (I think it hasn’t reached Singapore yet at that time, it was still pretty contained within the western and european countries, but it definitely has reached us now). At that time, I didn’t know much about this “new ugly aesthetic”, but I knew I was seeing a lot of visual styles that I wasn’t too fond of (who would have known two years later I would be investigating this topic). I also remember not liking the new Stedelijk Museum logo at all when it was revealed. I thought it was such an awkward arrangement of type, and overall, it looked like a very weak logo for such an established museum. I felt that the previous identity by Wim Crouwel was so much better. In fact, I thought the temporary identity for SMCS done by Experimental Jetset was even better too. But then I saw a video with Mevis van Deursen explaining the rationale behind the identity, and its systems, and I was actually convinced, because I thought that as a system, it was a pretty well put-together. The identity grew on me, and I actually really like it now. Maybe the appreciation of ugly design can only be brought about with time and the patience to learn and understand.

Creative Process Journal

Excerpt from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Rick Poynor Five years ago, the British magazine Creative Review published an article written by its editor, Patrick Burgoyne, with the arresting title “The New Ugly.” The possibility that ugliness in graphic design had once again become a burning issue grabbed my attention, but I wasn’t convinced that his examples—the 2012 Olympics logo and a couple of magazines, Super Super and 032c— amounted to a significant or compelling trend. (We’ll pass over the enduring mystery of why the Games’ organizers felt it useful to saddle an event supercharged with international goodwill with a graphic device of such grotesquely unlovable ineptness.) Something curious and misshapen was stirring in the undergrowth, though, and the publication this year of Pretty Ugly: Visual Rebellion in Design (Gestalten; $55) confirms that a tendency that would once have caused dismayed design industry leaders to throw around epithets like “garbage” is now well entrenched in parts of Europe. The book has a sprinkling of Anglo-American designs, but most of the evidence comes from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Bulgaria, and most of the work was created in the last few years by studios founded as recently as 2007 and 2008. Few of the names—Helmo, Antoine + Manuel, Jurgen Maelfeyt, Cox & Grusenmeyer, Bureau Mirko Borsche, Anymade Studio, Noviki, Poststudio—are widely known. Although they are not featured in the book, the Finnish designers Kokoro & Moi, who designed Print’s oddball “Surprise” issue last year, are part of the same trend. For anyone who remembers the last great splurge of “ugly” design in the 1980s and early 1990s, none of the work in Pretty Ugly will come as much of a surprise; nor is it likely to cause the same kind of controversy. There will be no Randian outpourings of scorn this time, no paroxysms of head shaking, finger wagging, and sighs of “What are we coming to?” in response to this collection. Whichever way you read the title—as “fairly ugly” or “attractively ugly”—the wording freely admits that this is a more tractable and agreeable kind of unsightliness, while the subtitle’s claim that this work is a “visual rebellion” is sweetly disingenuous. The real rebellion of the contemporary era happened a long time ago—in graphic design inspired by the 1960s counterculture, by 1970s punk and politics, by 1980s deconstruction, by 1990s grunge. Today’s graphic design culture, an enlightened play space in which a book like Pretty Ugly is not remotely disquieting, is the beneficiary and product of all of these rebellious influences, and aesthetic pluralism has been our “condition” for years. Whether designers choose to exploit this openness is up to them—many don’t, and from the mid-1990s, plenty retreated into

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neomodernist visual certainties. But even so, anything is now theoretically possible, on a stylistic level, in graphic design. In 1993, when Steven Heller wrote his notorious essay “Cult of the Ugly” for Eye, we had not come so far. Many of the big challenges to design-business sobriety, from psychedelia to punk and the new wave, had happened in areas of musical subculture that were marginal to mainstream design. A shared sense of what decorous professional graphic design should be still existed, and Heller was determined to defend it. As then-editor of Eye, I was happy to run his piece in the interest of provoking debate, though I admired and had published a lot of the design under attack. Heller’s argument required something of a balancing act. He knew that dissonant forms could be powerful devices—from futurism and Dada to 1960s newsstand magazines and Swiss punk. “When Art Chantry uses naive or ugly design elements he transforms them into viable tools,” Heller wrote. What Heller objected to was what he saw as visual chaos born of selfindulgent excess, and he feared that this hip “style” would be applied without discrimination. … Heller misread some designers he later came to appreciate (notably Ed Fella), and his essay ignited a firestorm of complaints. There was truth in his predictions, though, and a vast amount of poorly conceived ugly design ensued. Recently, I went through a box of samples in my attic that designers around the world sent me at the time. I threw almost all of them away because I knew I could never do anything with them, and they weren’t worth keeping anymore. Clearly, as Heller maintained, there is a vital difference between “good ugly” and “bad ugly,” and that difference must lie in qualities of formal resolution—the presence of an underlying order, even within work that might appear “confused” to the uninitiated—as well as in a design’s integrity of conception and purpose. One of the most interesting issues Heller raises in “Cult of the Ugly” is just as relevant to the design in Pretty Ugly: Do the social and cultural conditions of our time involve the kind of upheaval that can often lead to “critical ugliness”? In the case of 1990s design, Heller felt that the work lacked sufficient justification. This conclusion was inevitable if one applied the yardstick of historical crisis, such as war. But 1990s ugly design was still a response to its time. It first anticipated, and then gained added impetus from, new technology that gave designers much greater control of production and, with it, the possibility of experimenting more easily with form. It also reflected wider trends in postmodern culture under late capitalism: an everincreasing emphasis on the visual realm, a relentless questioning of old ideas and assumptions, and a defiant assertion of new forms of identity.

Creative Process Journal

The compilers of Pretty Ugly—the book is weirdly attributed to their website, TwoPoints.net, in a tiny credit line inside—make no reference to the history of ugly design or to postmodernism in their ultraminimal text. But it’s hard not to see the work as bearing many of the same characteristics. Just consider the section titles: Deviant, Mundane, De-constructed, Impure, Mishmash, Deformed, and Neo-artisanal. If we take the most obviously secondhand of these, “De-constructed,” the editors explain this as “de-constructing our cultural heritage: breaking it down to its basic elements until it can be constructed as something new.” This kind of knowing appropriation and repurposing is the essence of the postmodern design method applied and critically elucidated 20 years ago. The same could be said of the impurity that comes through mixing disparate sources, or of the “mishmash” effect of allowing several narratives to exist simultaneously in a design.

However ungainly the examples in Pretty Ugly might look to some eyes, this is a perfectly standard and unimpeachable rationale for communication design. I can imagine that there are still plenty of Swiss-loving gridniks who would find this work not to their taste, and it will probably be a bit too retinal for conceptual minimalists, although the uglies share the same background and influences—people like Mevis and van Deursen, Experimental Jetset, Julia Born, and Jop van Bennekom. I would lay money that this is one of those exercises in catchy naming where the participants don’t especially like their designation and don’t see themselves as being engaged in “ugly design” at all. I enjoy a lot of the work and embrace its visual energy and willingness to use graphic form. At this point, though, “ugly” is just a red herring. That was yesterday’s battle, and it doesn’t need to be fought again. Unsurprisingly, having written a book titled “No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism”, Rick Poynor is pretty receptive of this movement.

Text taken from: http://www.printmag.com/article/ the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

The complexity and awkwardness of form is a means of projecting the authentic human element in design work, and though this might seem too mild an aim (when compared to full-blown activism) to deserve the word “rebellion,” it is certainly a vital gesture of defiance against the curbed ambitions and conformity of so much market-led design. “For us it’s clear that we don’t use these kind of elements to shock people,” the Belgian designers Ines Cox and Lauren Grusenmeyer say in the book. “In most cases it’s rather a natural visual outcome of an idea. We use certain aesthetics because they communicate an idea in a certain way. It is intentional, yes, but we don’t measure according to ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ ”

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Norman Orro

Bureau Mirko Borsche

Examples of contempory graphic design works that fall under the ugly/post-internet aesthetic

Alain Vonck

HORT

The Rodina

Creative Process Journal

Michael Willis

Giles DeBrock

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Creative Process Journal

A recent (I believe it came to be sometime in 2012) phenomenon, post-internet aesthetics is really catching on. While the definition of “post-internet” is still pretty undefined, it’s one of those “you know it when you see it” things, which also makes it annoying because—how did this whole aesthetic even come about in the first place! It seems so detached from any historical development or context. Maybe because this aesthetic was born out of new technology—from the internet—a “web 2.0 aesthetic” (or are we already at web 3.0?). Or is it a result of “internet nostalgia” that stems from the fast advancement of technology?

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Excerpt from DesignWrong:Why Getting It Wrong Is the Future of Design Scott Dadich In the late 1870s, Edgar Degas began work on what would become one of his most radical paintings, Jockeys Before the Race. Degas had been schooled in techniques of the neoclassicist and romanticist masters but had begun exploring subject matter beyond the portraits and historical events that were traditionally considered suitable for fine art, training his eye on café culture, common laborers, and—most famously—ballet dancers. But with Jockeys, Degas pushed past mild provocation. He broke some of the most established formulas of composition. The painting is technically exquisite, the horses vividly sculpted with confident brushstrokes, their musculature perfectly rendered. But while composing this beautifully balanced, impressionistically rendered image, Degas added a crucial, jarring element: a pole running vertically—and asymmetrically—in the immediate foreground, right through the head of one of the horses. Degas wasn’t just “thinking outside of the box,” as the innovation cliché would have it. He wasn’t trying to overturn convention to find a more perfect solution. He was purposely creating something that wasn’t pleasing, intentionally doing the wrong thing. Naturally viewers were horrified. Jockeys was lampooned in the magazine Punch, derided as a “mistaken impression.” But over time, Degas’ transgression provided inspiration for other artists eager to find new ways to inject vitality and dramatic tension into work mired in convention. You can see its influence across art history, from Frederic Remington’s flouting of traditional compositional technique to the crackling photojournalism of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Degas was engaged in a strategy that has shown up periodically for centuries across every artistic and creative field. Think of it as one step in a cycle: In the early stages, practitioners dedicate themselves to inventing and improving the rules—how to craft the most pleasing chord progression, the perfectly proportioned building, the most precisely rendered amalgamation of rhyme and meter. Over time, those rules become laws, and artists and designers dedicate themselves to excelling within these agreedupon parameters, creating work of unparalleled refinement and sophistication—the Pantheon, the Sistine Chapel, the Goldberg Variations. But once a certain maturity has been reached, someone comes along who decides to take a different route. Instead of trying to create an ever more polished and perfect artifact, this rebel actively seeks out imperfection—sticking a pole in the middle of his painting, intentionally adding grungy feedback to a guitar solo, deliberately photographing unpleasant subjects. Eventually some of these creative breakthroughs end up becoming the foundation of a new set of aesthetic rules, and the cycle begins again.

Creative Process Journal

For the past 30 years, the field of technology design has been working its way through the first two stages of this cycle, an industry-wide march toward more seamless experiences, more delightful products, more leverage over the world around us. Look at our computers: beige and boxy desktop machines gave way to bright and colorful iMacs, which gave way to sleek and sexy laptops, which gave way to addictively touchable smartphones. It’s hard not to look back at this timeline and see it as a great story of human progress, a joint effort to experiment and learn and figure out the path toward a more refined and universally pleasing design. All of this has resulted in a world where beautifully constructed tech is more powerful and more accessible than ever before. It is also more consistent. That’s why all smartphones now look basically the same—gleaming black glass with handsomely cambered edges. Google, Apple, and Microsoft all use clean, sans-serif typefaces in their respective software. After years of experimentation, we have figured out what people like and settled on some rules. But there’s a downside to all this consensus—it can get boring. From smartphones to operating systems to web page design, it can start to feel like the truly transformational moments have come and gone, replaced by incremental updates that make our devices and interactions faster and better. This brings us to an important and exciting moment in the design of our technologies. We have figured out the rules of creating sleek sophistication. We know, more or less, how to get it right. Now, we need a shift in perspective that allows us to move forward. We need a pole right through a horse’s head. We need to enter the third stage of this cycle. It’s time to stop figuring out how to do things the right way, and start getting it wrong. In late 2006, when I was creative director here at WIRED, I was working on the design of a cover featuring John Hodgman. We were far along in the process—Hodgman was styled and photographed, the cover lines written, our fonts selected, the layout firmed up. I had been aiming for a timeless design with a handsome monochromatic color palette, a cover that evoked a 1960s jet-set vibe. When I presented my finished design, WIRED’s editor at the time, Chris Anderson, complained that the cover was too drab. He uttered the prescriptive phrase all graphic designers hate hearing: “Can’t you just add more colors?” I demurred. I felt the cover was absolutely perfect. But Chris did not, and so, in a spasm of designerly “fuck you,” I drew a small rectangle into my design, a little stripe coming off from the left side of the page, rudely breaking my pristine geometries. As if that weren’t enough, I filled it with the ugliest hue I could find: neon orange—Pantone 811, to be precise. My perfect cover was now ruined!

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By the time I came to my senses a couple of weeks later, it was too late. The cover had already been sent to the printer. My anger morphed into regret. To the untrained eye, that little box might not seem so offensive, but I felt that I had betrayed one of the most crucial lessons I learned in design school—that every graphic element should serve a recognizable function. This stray dash of color was careless at best, a postmodernist deviation with no real purpose or value. It confused my colleagues and detracted from the cover’s clarity, unnecessarily making the reader more conscious of the design. But you know what? I actually came to like that crass little neon orange bar. I ended up including a version of it on the next month’s cover, and again the month after that. It added something, even though I couldn’t explain what it was. I began referring to this idea—intentionally making “bad” design choices—as Wrong Theory, and I started applying it in little ways to all of WIRED’s pages. Pictures that were supposed to run large, I made small. Where type was supposed to run around graphics, I overlapped the two. Headlines are supposed to come at the beginning of stories? I put them at the end. I would even force our designers to ruin each other’s “perfect” layouts. At the time, this represented a major creative breakthrough for me—the idea that intentional wrongness could yield strangely pleasing results. Of course I was familiar with the idea of rulebreaking innovation—that each generation reacts against the one that came before it, starting revolutions, turning its back on tired conventions. But this was different. I wasn’t just throwing out the rulebook and starting from scratch. I was following the rules, then selectively breaking one or two for maximum impact. Once I realized what I’d stumbled on, I started to see it everywhere, a strategy used by trained artists who make the decision to do something deliberately wrong. Whether it’s a small detail, like David Fincher swapping a letter for a number in the title of the movie Se7en, or a seismic shift, like Miles Davis intentionally seeking out the “wrong notes” and then trying to work his way back, none of these artists simply ignored the rules or refused to take the time to learn them in the first place. No, you need to know the rules, really master their nuance and application, before you can break them. That’s why Hunter Thompson could be a great gonzo journalist while so many of his followers and imitators— who never mastered the art of traditional reporting and writing that underlay Thompson’s radical style—suffer in comparison. … Why does the Wrong Theory work? After all, symmetry is naturally pleasing. Put two faces in front of a 1-year-old and she will immediately pick the more symmetrical one. But what if we’re after something deeper than simple pleasure? It turns out

Creative Process Journal

that, while we might initially prefer the symmetrical and seamless, we are more challenged and invested in the imperfect. Think of Cindy Crawford’s mole or Joaquin Phoenix’s scar. Both people are stunning, but they stand out for their so-called imperfections. A better thought experiment might be to put that child in a room with 99 symmetrical faces and one asymmetrical one. Which one do you think she’ll be drawn to? A 2001 study conducted by Baylor College of Medicine and Emory University might begin to answer that question. In it, neuroscientists conducted fMRI scans on 25 adults who received squirts of fruit juice or water into their mouths in either predictable or unpredictable patterns. The scans showed that the subjects who got the unpredictable sequence registered noticeably more activity in the nucleus accumbens—an area of the brain that processes pleasure. Yes, our minds learn to prefer activities that we repeatedly enjoy, because we recognize those patterns and come to expect a payoff. But the study suggests that when our predictions are wrong—when we walk into a surprise party instead of a planned dinner, for instance—that’s when our pleasure centers really light up. We may find comfort in what we know we like, but it’s the aberrations that bring us to attention.

Bold statement to make, although it’s not a new “theory” (as mentioned in the article too), but I think most people are just too afraid to be wrong. It’s so much easier to create designs that people like than to create something not commonly accepted and risk being criticized. But it’s true—how would design progress if everyone’s just being “safe” and likable? However, that being said, I’m just as afraid and uncertain embarking on this project. While I understand the “wrong theory”, and the importance of opposing rules and traditions when they have “matured”, I’m also averse to conflicts and opposition. That’s kind of a catch 22 isn’t it…

Text taken from: http://www.printmag.com/article/ the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

All of these examples point the way toward the next challenge for technology design. What happens after you’ve learned how to make technology that is supremely appealing and functional? A whole new range of opportunities opens up. By breaking those rules, we can create technology that is more than merely useful or beautiful or natural. We can imagine technology that is complicated and personal—nostalgic, funny, self-deprecating, abrasive. Yes, there will be missteps. For every Kind of Blue there were about a million Metal Machine Musics—unlistenable exercises in self-indulgence. But only by courting failure can we find new ways forward. It’s time for us to create the next wave of technology. It’s time for us to be wrong.

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Mandatory 2 outcome Essentially, the “art direction” for this publication was really to make it look as ugly as possible. Of course it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I was struggling inside while trying to design (or “undesign”) this book. The struggle to break free from learned rules was torturous. Unfortunately, I was still holding back with this one. And it definitely showed in the layout and design— the “want to be ugly but don’t want to be ugly” tendencies.

Creative Process Journal

Peer to peer review Eugeneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kind words:

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An unexpected surprise (and motivation) I received an unexpected text on Instagram (the occasional wonders of social network) by a student from GSA, expressing his interest in my research topic. And I thought it was great that there is at least one other design student interested in this design issue. Firstly, because this project is targeted at graphic designers. Secondly, his text definitely came at the right time, just when I was doubting my project, it served as motivation, reinforcing the need to question the state of graphic design, aesthetic-wise. Turns out, he is one of Darrylâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s student (his name is Wen Da), and he saw my publication through Darryl because I lent it to him. So I was very excited when Wen Da contacted me and requested for a copy of the publication. Of course I had to produce a good one for him!

Creative Process Journal

Moving on after WIP (week 12)

Mandatory 3 ideas and Mandatory 1 format sketches

Other than having to work on Mandatory 3, I decided to do some rework on Mandatories 1 and 2 as well, because I felt that they looked visually “detached” from each other, so I thought that I should at least make them look like they belonged in a set. Also, I feel like at this point, my project deliverables are still very literal. I want to try to come up with something (for Mandatory 3) that encompasses the project’s main idea— something a little more abstract or conceptual perhaps…?

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Mandatory 3

Discover/Verify/Falsify An avenue to establish and state an argument/ stand on the chosen issue, and as a direction for the project’s trajectory. Plans for mandatory 3 A branding proposal for a hypothetical retail company. Initial idea conception: There have been many projects on the stripping down of logos and brands—a less is more approach—to stand out, but what if we went the complete opposite? As Mike Mieré says: “If every magazine or every building or every brand or everybody tries to look appealing somehow in the same idea of being modern, it becomes interesting to go the opposite. Because life has different kinds of beauty to present.”

Creative Process Journal

Logo minimalism? I remember these â&#x20AC;&#x153;exercisesâ&#x20AC;? being very popular about 2 to 3 years ago, and I would think that there are still designers in favour of these logo reductions. However, are these really effective? I find that the reduced identities have lost its charm and brand equity (sounds like a dirty word, but it is what it is). They probably only appeal to designers, which again makes one wonder if these are done by designers for designers.

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Exerpt from essay Slippery design Manuel Bürger Manuel Bürger is a designer introduced to me by Darius. His portfolio consists of some very interesting "ugly design" works as well as conventionally "nice" ones. While looking through his website, I came across an essay Bürger wrote, which includes some of his "theories" and his proposal for graphic design to be more "controversial", something he calls "Slippery design". Slippery Design defies balance and order, leads into the void1 and2 shows3 us4 worlds. Slippery Design creates fields of meaning, mimeses in relationship, building lines to oppositions. Slppry Dsgn masters the game of semiotic scraps; it speaks in syllables not sentences. Slippery Design relies on dissemination through irritation, mutation, failure ~ causes discourses to falter. Slippery Design is the true soul of the meme5, the virtuosity of any amateur. This essay6—a mind game with visual sketches— seeks a new approach to visual communication, one appropriate to an era that negotiates itself through and with interdependent ambiguities. Slippery Design is not a style, but a state of mind, a practice, a way of dealing with cultural values and references, a form of writing and reading, a creator and at the same time destroyer of myths. It lives in and through differences— always with the goal of pushing towards controversial design. In the second part of his essay, Bürger talks about the irrelevance of the design tenet "form follows funtion", and instead argues for a less "one-direntional", and more open approach to graphic design. His chapter subtitle reads: This chapter will pave the way for a design that no longer seeks to fulfill its aesthetic-functional purpose, but instead explicitly provokes failure and demands balance in the communicative act. This design thrives on misalignment, on the pulling and pushing forces that can catapult the viewer far beyond the antiquated idea of the “intended purpose” of a design object.

1 2 :-) 3 Slippery Design strives for knowledge and requires confidence— it questions the hegemony of control, 4 breaks with usual patterns. 5 Wikipedia: “The term Internet phenomenon (also Internet hype or meme) refers to a concept in the form of a link or an image, sound or video file that spreads quickly over the Internet.” 6 (a) On the search: this essay lies somewhere at point WXYZ of my past and future design research and considerations. I say this not to defuse its message, but to invite its readers to participate in the process of its becoming – hence “beta” version. (b) In contrast to typical cultural theoretical observations, this essay introduces a design concept that must painstakingly gather its own phenomena, if not outright create them. It follows both my taste and trends in contemporary design. I thus conceive of Slippery Design as something highly subjective in accordance with my spirit: confused, equivocal, ambiguous.

Creative Process Journal

It’s the tiresome topic about which every designer loves to babble: “form follows function.” For decades, the equation has kept design in a one-dimensional discourse—an often hypocritical one at that. Though the principle of functionality continues to dominate, the global culture industry has been developing in the opposite direction for decades: consumption, expenditure, disposal. The dogma’s growing a long nose, and design cannot deny its complicity. As a result, its social impact and responsibility have been increasingly discussed. But wellknown design manifestos like “First Things First 1964/2000,” which seeks to give the profession back its conscience, read as though written in a forgotten time. Slippery Design eludes both known discourses by playing design’s use value off its sign value. It decisively tears apart the FFF myth and draws its value from identity-establishing qualities that encourage the author/recipient in his intellectual process and refuse to take him under their wing. … Nonetheless, the ranks of functionalism hardliners continue to swell. Dieter “a return to simplicity is our only hope” Rams and company speak of a “reduction of accidents.” Peter Sloterdijk sees the designer as “perpetrator of the verb ‘to function,’ apostle of the belief, sent all over the world, in the primacy of function over structure and essence.” Maximum functionality in conjunction with aesthetics remains the decisive quality criterion and guiding ideal of design. The insistence on a functionality-oriented design maxim, which necessarily leaves open few options, leads inevitably to conservatism, to a regurgitation of paradigms in fear of alternatives, emancipation and evolution. “The limits of functionalism to date have been the limits of the bourgeoisie in its practical sense.” (Theodor W. Adorno, Funktionalismus heute, 1965, our translation) Based on a critique of a symbolic loss, of a symbolic crisis after World War II, Theodor Adorno laments the constraints that

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functionalism produces. He thereby criticizes Loos’ conception of a modernity that renounces all ideologies, which he views as simply obscuring a lack of readiness to deal with contradictions. Ornamentation in its symbolic value is legitimized. Adorno advises: “The future of sachlichkeit can be liberating only if it sheds its barbaric traits, displaces the sadistic blows of sharp edges, bare calculated rooms, stairways and the like.”

Bürger's design "equation" charts

Liberation from functional thinking is achieved by playing contradictions off against one another. Slippery Design thus privileges references in order to nurture their power in fields of meaning—and then to openly discuss them and thereby allow irrationalities. It speaks in differences, urges dialogues and resists the monologue of a ruling doctrine. Visions are generated out of interpretations. Functionalism here = absorption in the game of references. The use value is generated by playing off against the sign value, which, in turn, through its own intellectual value, is essential for our one… “Beauty today can have no other measure than the depth to which a work resolves contradictions. A work must cut through the contradictions and overcome them, not by covering them up, but by pursuing them.” (Theodor W. Adorno, Funktionalismus heute, 1965, our translation) How can “Slippery Design material” be deliberately provoked? Two possible approaches: (a) failure, which prompts thinking in oppositions, and (b) risk-taking, the prerequisite for daring a controversial design, which, in

Creative Process Journal

all its fragility, contains within it friction and discussion. This is somewhat reminiscent of Dadich's "wrong theory", encouraging designers to make mistakes and break rules. … There is thus no fixed, finalized form in Slippery Design; the “final” design remains to be determined by the derivation process. The recipient, in other words, is presented with perpetual failure, with endless possibilities for interpretation and further development. The design and communications process is thus stretched beyond the fixed form of an object. Participatory design in the true sense; everyone can contribute to the discussion. Receiving a Slippery Design object is thus complicated. It’s rarely possible to understand at first glance. The failure of understanding is literally preprogrammed; the form, after all, is somehow unknown, unfinished, fragile… This encourages an open interpretation—but is not, of course, in the spirit of a design that seeks to synchronize sender and receiver. … Deadlocked form and thought patterns can be broken open with a multifaceted, challenging reception; premature consensus should hardly be possible with Slippery Design, which demands oppositional thinking. The decryption process engrosses our cognition via the constant confrontation with failure. Laborious but fruitful. The outcome remains open. Though the information may not be new to a majority of the readership, it is worth mentioning that one contemporary pop cultural concept in which slippery moments can be discovered/in which failures of comprehension are common practice can be found on the Internet platform DIS Magazine, which has made its prefix into a style: “DIS is a multi-culti platform for creative solutions. Promoting unsafe style is a lifestyle.”

Theo van Doesburg, Poster Dada Matinée, 1923

DIS Magazine: Failure as opportunity (curiosity, doubt, relocalization, criticism)

2015

In the third segment of Bürger's essay, Lost in connotation—Between fields of meaning and building lines, great narratives and intertwined ambiguities, Bürger writes about the importance of mythologies, meanings and symbolism in design. The power of culturally charged signs is consistently striking; their significance moves people both internally and spatially. Mythology —surely one of the most important pillars of human identity—determines the articulation of common hopes and dreams, creates a sense of shared history, present and future. “Mythology probably is the most important and unconsciously embracing governing structure in an ecology of artifacts. A culture can hardly be conceived without myths, and its vitality derives directly from them.” (Klaus Krippendorf, On the Essential Contexts of Artifacts or on the Proposition that ‘Design is Making Sense (of Things)’, 1989) While travelling in India, I was impressed by how sensitively the local culture of signs is handled. In the words of Indian designer Singanapalli Balaram: “Symbols and meanings are so important that realism sometimes seems to be deliberately discarded.” Balaram makes a case for the rhetoric of “product symbolism,” a design practice that uses mythological signs in order to provoke identification with the product. To prove his theory, Balaram cites several examples of designs that while “functioning”— that is, meeting certain aesthetic and ecological requirements—fail in a cultural regard because they use a different vocabulary and don’t take account of the mythology of the particular culture: “The improved bullock cart with pneumatic tires is still not accepted by Indian farmers.” The cyberneticist/designer/communications researcher Klaus Krippendorf takes a similar view. He criticizes the lack of meaning for the user in modern design and offers a remedy in the formula Form Follows Meaning: “Form may not follow function but meaning, which brings the user back into the picture and strongly suggests that designers need to discuss not only the context in which their forms are used, but

“The wheel is loaded with deep rooted meanings: the universal law of motion, the cycle of life, death and rebirth, the universe as seen with the inner light of illumination, the concept of continuous change, the Buddhist Wheel of Law, and so on.” Cf. Balaram, Singanapalli. 1989. “Product Symbolism of Gandhi and Its Connection with Indian Mythology,” In: Victor Margolin and Richard Buchanan (Eds.). The Idea of Design - A Design Issues Reader. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Creative Process Journal

also how these forms are made sense of or what they mean to someone other than themselves. [...] In practice, different models may call for a layered semantics that enables users to penetrate through the simplest and, literally, surface appearance to deeper and deeper levels of understanding.” … For all its turmoil, this game of guiding and gliding allows territories to be traversed, multilayered levels to be roamed, and contributes to a reflected production of knowledge. “Mythologies give coherence to cultural complexes beyond individual understanding by legitimizing its components, assigning them to perform meaningful roles and directing them to interact with each other.”55

“Mind Fractals” flyers by Michael Ozone ~ “deeper and deeper levels of understanding”

55 Krippendorf, Klaus. 1989. “On the Essential Contexts of Artifacts or on the Proposition that ‘Design Is Making Sense (of Things)’”. In: Victor Margolin and Richard Buchanan (Eds.) The Idea of Design – A Design Issues Reader. Cambridge: MIT Press. P. 183

2015

The ornamental character of Slippery Design must again be addressed in light of these mythological aspects. The question remains open as to whether an abstract design element that initially fulfilled a decorative purpose cannot also possess an important symbolic and successively discursive value56 that guides the recipient on his journey towards understanding. Discussion about “empty ornamentalism” must thus be conducted with a high degree of sensitivity. The charge may, in some circumstances, be justified vis-à-vis Slippery Design objects (though probably even more so vis-à-vis typical contemporary visual Tumblr works57 ), but as long as contradictions in the use of various symbols/references persist, it is rather the absence of ornament that must be indicted as affirmative. Of course no discussion of ornamentation can exclude the mention of Robert Venturi and his book Learning from Las Vegas: The forgotten symbolism in architecture. In “Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism in Architecture,” Venturi examines architecture from the perspective of its ornamentalism. He thereby establishes two concepts/categories: The “duck” (primarily modern architecture): “Where the architectural system of space, structure, and program are submerged and distorted by an overall symbolic form. This kind of building-becoming-sculpture we call the duck in honor of the duck shaped drive-in, ‘The Long Island Duckling,’ illustrated in God’s Own Junkyard by Peter Blake.” The “decorated shed” (primarily postmodern architecture): “Where systems of space and structure are directly at the service of program, and ornament is applied independently of them. This we call the decorated shed.” Though Venturi considers both architectural styles legitimate, he advocates strongly for the postmodern “decorated shed” with its focus on symbolism, historical referentiality, social message and merging of high and low art.

56 and thus also functional value (use value) in Slippery Design 57 I hereby again assert that Slippery Design is not necessarily equivalent to “post-Internet,” “pretty ugly” or “the new ugly” design. 58 Where facades remain sober, (open) interpretation is always dependent on the freethinking interpretation of the author or the cultural background of the recipient – a generally sad game that rarely finds a common denominator and avoids all discussion from the outset.

Creative Process Journal

This essay definitely presents some interesting viewpoints on graphic design practice, almost falling into "critical" or "speculative" design methods. But lets not loosely toss around terminologies. BĂźrger specifically states that "Slippery design" is not concerned with style or aesthetics, rather it is a state of mind. This reminds me of what Darius also said about practicing "anti-aesthetics", it is about the attitude, the visual output is just a consequence of this "attitude". I guess then, in order to fully appreciate or grasp "difficult" designs, one has to be very open to differences and oppositions. In relation to decoration and ornamentation providing possible symbolism in design, that's a little bit trickier. Again, because many designers are still "shackled" by Modernist design tenets (myself included), it is difficult to accept ornamentive designs without feeling the need to criticize the pointlessness or tackiness of it. When Robert Venturi and his wife, Denise Scott Brown published their controversial book Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism in Architecture in 1972, calling for architects to be more receptive to the tastes and values of "common" people and less immodest in their erections of "heroic", self-aggrandizing monumentsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;such a daring argument naturally received many criticisms from fellow architects. However, the book has now become an important learning resource for every architecture student now. Relating it back to graphic design, I realize we also have a very unhealthy mindset of "us" (designers) being higher than "them" (common people). Many designers seem to think that we know better, and that our job is to "cultivate" the minds and tastes of the layperson. Sounds pretty pompous and elitist to me.

2015

Vernacular design

This will be an ongoing documentation of vernacular design (design done by untrained designers). I have to say, I am beginning to develop a genuine appreciation of these visual forms. I still find most of them funny, but I think there's a certain charm to them.

Creative Process Journal

Mandatory 3 progress These are some initial exploration on the design of the logo for "M&C", the hypothetical retail company. The name "M&C" is actually a parody of the abbreviation of "Marks & Spencer"(M&S). I thought Marks & Spencer would be a good brand/industry type to work on because of its diverse product range. Also, "M&C", phonetically sounds like "MNC" (multinational corporation), so it's kind of a dig at sleek corporate design.

M&C

2015

An ingratiating "YOUR M&S".

M&C

Creative Process Journal

Mandatory 3 progress Second thoughts: I thought working on a retail company was a good idea, but I realized the vast range of products made it an endless endeavour. I had to stop myself at some point, not to mention it was starting to feel like a pointless, mindless exercise on "uglifying" package design. I'm not entirely sure if this is "correct" nowâ&#x20AC;Ś

2015

In-class presentation

13 January 2015

A progress check of sorts, a short 5 minute presentation was done in class to recap on our projects and to present our plans moving ahead.

As of now, the plans I have for the final deliverables are still quite tentative and uncertain. Need to finalize them soon because I can tell things are going to start picking up really fast.

Creative Process Journal

Plans for final mandatory The final mandatory will be a three-part publication documenting my thoughts and reflections of ugly design. I am hoping for it to be a rather extensive coverage of the topic across its various "sub-categories".

2015

Conversations on Post-Internet/anti-aesthetics

Received a christmas wrapping paper from Charmaine. Apparently, her internship bosses gave it to her because they thought it was very ugly (lol). To both our surprise, we found out it was done by Foreign Policyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;surprising because it's the first time I've seen work done by a local design studio that took on this kind of "idiosyncratic" internet aesthetic. My first thought was if they actually did it because they were jumping on the "post-internet" bandwagonÂ. However, after trying to look for a documentation of it online (and on Instagram), and not being able to find one, I'm of the opinion that this was done for fun, almost in a satirical way, and only circulated within themselves and friends perhaps.

Creative Process Journal

Conversations on Post-Internet/anti-aesthetics I've been keeping in contact with Darius, updating him on my project, and things regarding to ugly design and post-internet aesthetics. So I emailed him after I received the wrapping paper designed by Foreign Policy, and asked for his thoughts about it. He too felt that it could have been done as a parody. He also speculated it could have been done by the interns for fun, and shared that his friend used to do these (ugly) posters for Somewhere Else and Bravo for fun.

I find this hillarious.

2015

Continuing the email thread, I updated Darius about my project's progress from the previous semester where I looked into vernacular design (hypothetical M&C branding) and questioned the legitimacy of "intentionally" ugly design done by trained designers and those "genuinely" ugly ones done by untrained designersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;sometimes you can't tell the difference between the two, and just because it was done by a trained designer, it justifies its output? (It's ok if it's ugly, the designer knows what he/she is doing) Darius' response to this was that he thinks that designers who set out to do ugly design, have, most of the time, already mastered the rules before breaking them. He added:

"Pasar malam parody" tee

"But yes I cannot deny, if a designer deliberately sets out to do full "happy go lucky" then there is really no way of differentiating them. Perhaps then we need to look at intended audience? But this is not a good method, considering more mainstream clients are taking them on in other places. One thing I note is that something similar has been happening in the fashion industry, like the brand parody ,"shanzai" culture. There are genuinely parodied tshirts that are just meant for fun, humour, selling at bugis streets and pasar malams. And there are real fashion labels playing with brand parodies, (E.g Comme des fuckdown, Supreme, Youth Machine, etc...) and these are considered "high"fashion, fashionable, designer-brands. Both tshirts are intended to parody the original brand, puma and nike, both sports brand. But one is riding it high and selling at hundreds of bucks, one is being sold at pasar malam at 10 bucks. Price aside (because it might be a problem of manufacturing/distribution/brand piracy), what is happening here is that the same graphic design treatment, can have different kinds of reaction from the audience, one is considered "high-class" and one is not. I find this similar to what is happening to ugly design. Is this a matter of brand? If so, is it possible that instead of looking at intention, we should be basing it on who is the one behind it? And is it the brand of the designer that makes it legit?" I think it's an interesting observation regarding fashion brands riding on the "normcore" wave too. I have a feeling its one of those circumstances where subcultures are absorbed and appropriated by the mainstream, and being elevated to a status of "hip and cool", attracting luxury brands to jump in on it.

High street fashion label Naps parody tee

Another "no-brand" parody. I particularly like this one

Creative Process Journal

Conversations on Post-Internet/anti-aesthetics (continued) Regarding Shanzai culture, Darius also shared with me the work of artist, Badak Radboy, for the Shanzai Biennal, where he used the Shanzai vernacular to communicate the issues of capitalism and the grandiose of the fashion industry. "Shanzaism" seems to be gaining traction, especially in the west, in the past few years. I meanÂâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;even to the point of having a Biennal dedicated purely to the culture indicates its growing allure within not just the fashion industry, but also the art and design scene. I'm not particularly sure why, but I think "high-culture" appropriating "low-culture" always seems to draw attention because of its irony, and ridiculousness, almost like "elite kitsch" (read: Jeff Koons).

Badak Radboy's works for the Shanzai Biennal

2015

BA Level 2 peer to peer meeting Finally got to meet the juniors, and it was a very pleasant meeting, Chatted with some of them and had some insights into their projects. Very interesting topics, although I have to admit, that the day felt very long (it was really long), and by the time the session was over, my brain was friedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and I realized how tough a job teaching is :< Anyways, I felt like I didn't fully utilize the session to help them because I found myself explaining more about my project than them talking about theirs, so I decided to get their emails/ or give them mine, so we could continue the exchange. I am, however, glad that those whom I spoke with seem genuinely interested in the research topic I'm negotiating, because it confirms the importance of it, or if not very important, then at least I know the project isn't just for myself. (But this also adds pressureâ&#x20AC;Śeverybody is looking forward to seeing the final outcome) Regardless, it was nice to meet the juniors. I think as much as we (level 3 students) are encouraged to give them advice, they too should be encouraged to provide feedback for our works. I think some of them may know more than us. And I find always having to give advice an unhealthy behaviour which may become a bad habit. I mean just in general, I understand the reason behind getting us to give the juniors advice because we've gone through the same route.

Creative Process Journal

Moving onâ&#x20AC;Ś Or not really moving? I hate being stuck. And I hate admitting being stuck :< And I hate being sidetracked by unimportant shit. Because then I don't have time to think about the important shit. What did I just write? I think I just wrote a poem. Anyway, moving onâ&#x20AC;Ś

2015

Exploratory "ugly" typeface There was already an intention to create a typeface during last semester. However, due to time and software accesibility constraints, I wasn't able to accomplish it. I was also unsure of how it would fit conceptually with my project's "theme". But I realized that not knowing how to design a typeface would probably contribute to the "ugliness" of the it (Heller's email: "â&#x20AC;Śless about stylistic pursuit but more aesthetic misstepsâ&#x20AC;Ś"), so in a way that would fit the objective of my project.

This typeface design exercise will eventually be used as content for the final publication.

Creative Process Journal

Initial drafts for typeface

Initially, I had the idea of adapting the design of the typeface from found vernacular typography on the streets.

2015

However, while the intention was to keep the design of the typeface inconsistent and dysfuntional, I felt that the individual letters when put together as a whole looked very haphazard.

Creative Process Journal

Typeface design So I decided to look at existing typefaces that were considered "ugly" when it was first released.

The first obvious inspiration would be Keedy Sans, and Keedy had an interesting rationale behind his design too: "I designed Keedy Sans as a "user," simply based on a vague idea of a typeface that I had not yet seen but wanted to use in my graphic design. Most typefaces are logically systematic; if you see a few letters you can pretty much guess what the rest of the font will look like. I wanted a typeface that would willfully contradict those expectations. It was a typically postmodern strategy for a work to call attention to the flaws and artifice of its own construction. But I never thought of it as being illegible, or even difficult to read. I have never been very interested in pushing the limits of legibility for its own sake. Absolute clarity, or extreme distortion, is too simplistic a goal, and it is ground that has already been well covered. I wanted to explore the complex possibilities that lie somewhere in between and attempt to do something original or at least unique.

In 1993, Keedy Sans was still able to cause a bit of controversy among graphic designers, and it was starting to be a popular typeface for music and youthoriented audiences. Its popularity slowly but consistently grew; by 1995 it was starting to look pretty legible and tame compared to other new typefaces on the market. Eventually even the big boys in the corporate world were no longer put off by my typographic antics, and Keedy Sans made its way into the mainstream world of corporate commercialism by 1997. Eight years later, it is no longer considered an illegible, weird, deconstructed, or confrontational design. Now it's just another decorative type style, one among many. Its willful contradictions are only what is expected in design today. I still think it is an interesting typeface; that's why it's a shame that now it signifies little more than the banality of novelty. Nowadays that seems to be all a designer can expect from their work."

Text taken from: http://www.emigre.com/ EFfeature.php?di=100

â&#x20AC;ŚOverall I wanted a typeface that was similar to Cooper Black, extremely bold with a strong idiosyncratic personality. I think it is a very postmodern typeface in that it included "high" and "low" vernacular quotation, and it is self-consciously crude and anti-aesthetic in reaction to the slickness of Modernism. The initial reaction to Keedy Sans was that it was too idiosyncratic, it was "ugly," hard to read, and too weird to be very useful. It's hard to imagine that kind of reaction to a type design today. I guess nobody really cares any more.

2015

The other typeface designs I was "studying" were Neville Brody's typefaces.

Neville Brody's FF Meta Boiled Regular

Neville Brody's Dirty Faces 1 These typefaces here are reminiscent of scanned type traced in Illustrator. Dirty faces 1 still seem to have a certain stylistic quality to it. The rawness of Meta Boiled Regular makes it look less of a planned and finished typeface. A reinterpretation of Erik Spikermann's Meta, Neville Brody states: "This new remix extends the Meta+ family into the area of crunchy typography and allows the original aim of functionality to be complemented with disfunctionality."

Creative Process Journal

Development

So loosely basing it off both Keedy Sans and Neville Brody's typefaces, I designed my typeface using raw digital brushstrokes as well as appropriating parts of actual typefaces, and then distorting it.

2015

The initial intention to use free font editing software, FontForge, had to be scrapped because the programme is so ancient, it kept crashing. Importing drawn letters from Illustrator was virtually impossible. So, I decided to use a trial version of Glyphs instead, and it turned out to be a great font editing tool. It's fairly idiot-proof too, other than setting kerning pairs, which will have to be mastered at a later time. But that's not the main purpose of this typeface anyway. It's not supposed to look "professional", thus the nameâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Layman Sans.

Creative Process Journal

Week 5

Peer to peer review

2015

Creative Process Journal

Layman sans outcome

Am I very pleased with this outcome? Not really. But I did have fun drawing them and adjusting them in Glyphs. I guess the next step is to see how I can apply this.

2015

Week 7 work check Stanley's feedback So work check on week 7 wasn't too positiveâ&#x20AC;Ś general feedback was that everyone was moving too slowly, and I think everyone knew that too. Feedback I got for Layman Sans was that it felt out of context, and the intention of it wasn't clear. It was really a bummer hearing that, even though I semi-expected the non-positive comments, but I think I wasn't very clear in explaining the objectives of it as well. Still feeling quite stuck with the progressing stages, what can and should I do next?

Creative Process Journal

Young Ones brief The brief given was a call to either be supportive of or against kids and technology. Our group unanimously agreed that technology for kids isn't a bad thing, it's just that it has to be properly managed. We all felt that technology, especially the Internet is great because it has untapped potential in providing knowledge and education for kids. So, we wanted to emphasize that positive aspect of the Internet and decided to create a safe-search engine for kids, but incorporating play so that it would be compelling for kids to use it on their own without feeling like it's being imposed on them, thereby encouraging independent learning.

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