Modernism vs. Hyperbole

It isn’t a mystery to anyone who has had my History of Graphic Design class that my biggest design influence is the Modernists. One of the facets of modernism that I am really drawn to is the feeling of inevitability in the solutions. Part of the inevitability of those solutions is that the text and the images not only work together, but that the text itself is straight forward and descriptive. The work is presented, “...through objective and impersonal presentation, communicating to the audience without the interference of the designer’s subjective feelings or propagandistic techniques of persuasion.¹”

What made me think of this is that I ran across a page of really silly images called, “If you add drunk people to fitness quotes.” Depending on your sense of humor, the images are incredibly funny, or generally horrifying, but what I thought was that the fact that they could be made at all represents a huge design failure for the fitness companies who are being parodied. Hyperbole, emotional pleas, motivational phrases, and even mission statements are, at their core, manipulative and not tied to specific images or content. They are generic, unmemorable, and ripe for parody. And they are bad design.

Words that are objective, audience focused, and free of hyperbole are inseparable from their context and that is the lasting power of modernist design.

¹Meggs, Philip B., and Alston W. Purvis. “Chapter 18: The International Typographic Style.” In Meggs’ History of Graphic Design. 5th ed. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2012.

Being Who You Really Are

This is all awfully uplifting for a Monday morning, but since I managed to run across the same theme in a couple different places, I thought I would go ahead and share.

First off, I read an essay on a biography of E.E. Cummings on Brain Pickings, with the wonderful pull quote:

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”

If you don't read Brain Pickings, you really should. Maria Popova runs the site and she consistently finds work and words that make you think.

http://www.casselliot.com/index.htm 

Then, not fifteen minutes later, Slacker Radio rotates in Mama Cass singing Make Your Own Kind of Music.



Mama Cass Elliot - Make Your Own Kind Of Music by Far_q


So,  go out and be you this week. Even on Monday.

The Importance of Capturing Movement in Design

Tony Zhou from Every Frame a Painting has a great post on how Akira Kurosawa used movement as a tool for story telling.


I think the idea of using movement to tell a story is one of the hardest to convey to graphic design students. Part of the problem of course is that so much of what we do as designers doesn't really move, but knowing where the elements on the page were before they got there, and where they are going when you look away, is key to creating tension and movement on a page or interface screen.

Another great video essay by Zhou is on the use of the Quadrant System.


More of Zhou's work can be found at his youtube page, and you can support his work and get extra commentary on his Patreon page.

Dance of the Quadcopters

An amazing interactive performance piece using quadcopters. Who needs CGI when you have Cirque du Soleil on your side?

Seven Seconds to Attack

William Morris: The Wood Beyond the World
Photo by Naoko Takano 

A couple links I kept from last week, both from the always thoughtful and readable Craig Mod.

The first is a great article on how online reviews could be made better, particularly on Amazon. What really struck me though was reading it on the same day that Apple announced their new products. Social media, and especially Twitter, were filled with snark and bile, almost all of it completely content free. Just hate for the joy of being a hater.

The reason we are upset by Amazon trolls is that their actions truly damage — both psychologically and economically. And yet these damaging acts themselves are devoid of rigor: Seven seconds to attack that which took 700 days to produce. 

With little effort the attackers attach their bile to something greater than that of which they are capable. This dissonance — venom effortlessly and thoughtlessly spat upon the diligence or precision of a work of art — is from where the tension is born. It’s what enrages us. Especially those of us who create. And so, the factor dividing the “good” reviews from the “bad” is very often, simply, the presence of rigor. Of being thoughtful.

Emphasis mine. The thing that struck me on Twitter, and made me stay away for the rest of the day, is that many of the people gleefully spewing bile, especially in light of their occupations and skill sets, could have made thoughtful contributions and critiques. But they didn't. Sneering for social points has come to take the place of talking about craft.

Which leads me to the next article. Lets Talk About Margins.

Thoughtful decisions concerned with details marginal or marginalized conspire to affect greatness. 

The whole article is a wonderful meditation on having craft matter. Matter a lot. Something I repeat over and over again as I am teaching, is that “The front of a label or piece of packaging will get you an interview. The back will get you the job.” Every mark we make effects every other mark (though, sometimes, the marks we don't make matter the most) and each requires our full attention. Everything, even the bar code (maybe even especially the bar code) and ingredients list, deserve the full attention of our craft.

One of the first lessons I truly absorbed at Methodologie (then TeamDesign) was about the importance of detail, and it came from a conversation about page numbers. The senior designer I was assigned to, Paula Richards, was putting what seemed to me in my inexperience, a huge amount of time into figuring out where the page numbers should go on an annual report. She walked me through the big considerations about where they should go, (the biggest being, don't put them under the readers thumb) and about making sure they were right there when you look for them, but not when you weren't, and then said what has stuck with me all these years. “Every element on the page should be polished like a jewel.”

What would our profession, and by profession I mean all of the disciplines that fall under the large umbrella of visual communications, be like if we all concentrated more on craftsmanship—on polishing each part of a page or screen or level or interaction or installation—than on polishing our snark to score points with our peers?

Why Blacksmiths are Better at Startups than You

Mastercrafts

A great post on Unicorn Free. Watching the transformation she talks about is what has kept me teaching all these years. Getting over yourself—and getting out of your own way—is the hardest lesson to teach (and learn.)

The Emotional Engineering of the Handspring Puppet Company.

"Puppets have to struggle to live."  A TED talk showing the amazing craftsmanship behind the horses in the stage play, Warhorse. I was amazed at how quickly I accepted the horse as real even though the whole discussion was about it being a puppet. Really gorgeous work and performances.

The Queen of Creepy Cookies

Christine McConnel

From The Daily Beast, a great profile of photographer Christine McConnel: The Wonderful Weirdness of Christine McConnell, Queen of Creepy Cookies

I was impressed not only by how hard she works to create her images, but by the fact that Instagram was the vehicle that lifted her into wider recognition. Just like all social media, the key to success there is quality plus consistency, which means she must always be in process on any number of shoots at a time to keep her feed filled.

Owen Gildersleeve's Cut Paper Illustrations

We recently received Owen Gildersleeve's book Paper Cut in the library here at school, but I hadn't checked out his portfolio until I saw some of his latest work in a post on the Brown Paper Bag blog.

His clean, modernist style is super popular right now, and I am really impressed with his hand skills. For me, computer driven cutting machines allow me to do cut paper work the same way that the computer let me throw away my perpetually clogged rapidograph pens. I actually have pretty good handskills at this point in my career, but I don't sit still well enough to develop them to the level that Gildersleeve has.

Something that is often overlooked with cut paper illustration is the importance of lighting. Like so many things with graphic design and illustration, if it is done right, you see the piece, not the technique, but where many cut paper illustrators play up the lighting and use shadow as another player on the stage, Gildersleeve uses super even, directional lighting. I want to see his lighting set up to see how he is getting such even light across his work. I'm guessing he is using a softbox, but I would love to see some behind the scenes shots.

A Plethora of Paper Papilionoidea (and 30,000 Moths)

The must be something in the air, I keep running across scores of paper butterflies. A couple weeks ago I came across this window display at Anthropologie in downtown Seattle.

Designer Carlos Amorales has outdone the window display artists though with his gallery installations of 30,000 paper moths for an installation piece called Black Cloud.

Have you run across large groups of paper butterflies recently, or is it just me?