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so er, just connected my blogger to my google+. will this appear on both now or.....?

Porno*Graphics Exhibition

Rumour has it that the exhibition a group of us 2^nd year graphic arts students recently held at the crypt in the Contemporary Urban Centre (aka CUC (lol)) wasn't originally meant to revolve around the theme of porn. This is, of course, before the name was decided on.
No, apparently that was down to a miscommunication between James Falkingham and Jo Wilson, whereby Jimmy expressed his desire to exhibit some 'sexy graphics'. (They are probably the two who did the most work in organising the whole thing. Thanks guys, sterling job!) Ah, serendipity :)

One of the things I'm most impressed with about the whole process of putting the show together is the use we made of facebook – good move! The porno*graphics event group page was alive with a disgusting torrent of inspirational imagery and film, appropriate (and inappropriate) songs, and many many works in progress. Along with the attention-grabbing theme and welcome distraction from uni work, I think the constant updates on fellow exhibitionists' work was a key factor in the amount of time and effort everybody put into the show. It was exciting to see everyone getting their teeth into a subject matter we all apparently have a wealth of knowledge on, with outcomes ranging through cringeworthy, unsettling, beautiful and downright hilarious.

Various adverts were used to get the word out. A few different options were created for a poster, the chosen design being Dave Maguire's. It was posted around uni, as well as in shops, bars and cafes around Liverpool. We also got a quarter-page advert in Bido Lito. After emails were sent out, we were given a mention in the blogs of Article Magazine http://articlemagazine.co.uk/2011/03/pornographics/ and JMU's Art and Design Academy;http://www.liverpool-ada.co.uk/2011/04/porno-graphics/.

The show itself proved to be a much bigger success than I think anyone was ready for. Far from it, the crypt was packed, and everyone was clearly having a laugh and enjoying all the visual treats on offer. I was amazed at what it turned out we're capable of organising, and there has been talk amongst the students of putting on more shows – watch this space!

The WOW process, and Teamwork

WOW. World Of Work. Not as much fun as the other WoW, but then again this one hasn't stolen a month of my life. A while back we had an introduction to this Dynamic new aspect of our lives (I tend to raise a sceptical eyebrow at anything Dynamic), which would teach us how to better present ourselves to the world. Of Work. Think of careers planning, but for people who kind of have the career bit decided on. For me, the main part of this has been the Virtual Interview, brought magically to life by an animated lady, who kindly reads out the questions written on screen with almost adequate clarity (presumably in case you fancy a challenge).

I actually have some things to thank this lady for. For a start, the procrastination her interview produced has cleaned my kitchen, restocked my food supplies after a winter back home, washed my clothes, and rekindled my love of Happy Wheels (www.totaljerkface.com/happy_wheels.php). On a more serious note, when I forced myself to sit down and think my way through the more challenging questions (I actually DO have personal values. Who knew?), I came up with a few answers which, I admit, may well be useful in a real interview with a real lady for a real job some day. Another thing made clear by this is that the six months I spent working at Pizza Hut don't add up to much of an experience. Go Figure.

This post itself is the second part of the WOW process, a reflective blog. And aside from the virtual interview with the fake lady, I'm going to reflect at you my experiences on the group project we were assigned as a class, and a module. And a Unit.

We were given the task of branding a conference taking place next year at FACT, Liverpool. The conference is called Rewire 2011, and is the fourth annual conference on the history of Media Art, Science and Technology. We were asked to produce a logo, type hierarchy and letterheads and things to get the image established before the call for papers. (A website has since been constructed, which you can peruse here.)

The group aspect of this consisted of two parts: A meeting held to finalise the chosen logo, and the distribution of tasks after this, such as ideas for website colour schemes, letterheads, the appearance of the logo on screen, etc. Throughout the process, several ideas occured to me, upon which I will now reflect...

#1 - Groups are slow.

A piece of work given to an indvidual will more or less get done. A piece of work given to a group will be discused, criticised, analysed, planned, and left for someone else to do. As a first attempt, I like to think of the start of this project as an important lesson, that groups of peiople need to be organised. I suppose this is how managers were invented. Maybe in future group endeavours, we should appoint team leaders, secretaries, managers, CEOs and other bureaucrats to ensure work gets done on time and by everyone.

#2 - Groups are unreliable.

A piece of work given to an individual will more or less get done. A piece of work given to an individual as part of a group may or may not get done. This is because, as part of a group, an individual may think that if they don't do their part, someone else will. Luckily in this instance, this was the case and a couple of people worked late to get the job done. Hoorah. I suppose this was kind of two thoughts - people might slack off, but at least there are others to pick up said slack.

#3 - Groups are more likely to find the right solution.

There were somewhere between 15 and 25 people involved in the project, each of which came up with their own ideas for branding at the beginning. This gave us a lot of ideas, from which the client chose their favourite. Then, we edited and expanded on this idea as a group, coming up with far more work than any one of us could have done alone. And over the Christmas period we've all been able to step back and take the credit for what we've done. Lovely.

So there you have it, some reflections on my employability being forced from its shell, and on my first project for a real client, as part of a collaborative effort.

Six degrees of separation.

Right, intro: This post is my response to another brief for uni. Everyone should be familiar with the concept of Six Degrees of Separation. The idea of this is to form links from designer to designer, starting with Antoine + Manuel and ending with Emigre.

Antoine + Manuel

Antoine Audiau and Manuel Warosz are two French designers, who have been working together since 1993. Antoine is the colourist, while Manuel designs the layouts. They are based in Paris. Together they create extremely illustrative work, often using vivid colours. They seem to fill the role of the designer-illustrator, by each specializing in one of these disciplines.

They use many different kinds of media and techniques, including ink blots, line drawings, paint, screen printing and paper sculpture. They seem eager to create juxtapositions within their work – colourful type over monochrome imagery, fluid illustrated areas surrounding geometric shapes, typefaces with hand-drawn type – all of which serve as a constant reminder that the work is created by two individuals. This duality ensures that their work is legible and looks professional enough for discerning clients, but without alienating the more trendy side of their audience.

These techniques are frequently used to create very unique typographical pieces, which end up on invitations, posters and brochures for various events, including the Christian Lacroix show (2009) and the Uzès Danse festival (2010).

Stefan Sagmeister

This guy links to Antoine and Manuel quite obviously through his use of creative typographic solutions, although Sagmeister’s work tends to be more tangible, large-scale sculpture, later documented and placed in context.

Stefan Sagmeister is one of the most famous, or infamous (see below) graphic designers around. He was born in Austria in 1962, and now lives and works in New York. He has long-standing professional relationships with the likes of musicians David Byrne and Lou Reed, and AIGA.

Sagmeister is a very experimental designer, who isn’t afraid of shocking his audience. In order to try to ‘visualise the pain that seems to accompany most of [his] design projects’ for an AIGA lecture he was giving, he had his intern cut the information needed into his skin with a knife, which was then photographed.

In 1987, Sagmeister won a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. It was here that his work began to show aspects of (quite dry) humour. When a friend visiting from Austria let slip that he was afraid that New York girls wouldn’t notice him, Sagmeister took it upon himself to create a poster containing a picture of his friend under the words "Dear Girls! Please be nice to Reini", and put it up around his neighbourhood. When asked to design business cards that would cost no more than $1 each, Sagmeister printed the cards on dollar bills - genius!

Paul Rand

Like Stefan Sagmeister, Paul Rand was educated at the Pratt Institute in New York, from 1929 to 1932, although it appears he was less than satisfied with his time spent there, later stating that he “had literally learned nothing at Pratt; or whatever little I learned, I learned by doing myself”).

After a successful start to his career in advertising, Rand turned to the creation of corporate identity.

“He almost singlehandedly convinced business that design was an effective tool. [. . .] Anyone designing in the 1950s and 1960s owed much to Rand, who largely made it possible for us to work. He, more than anyone else, made the profession reputable. We went from being commercial artists to being graphic designers largely on his merits.”

- Louis Danziger, 1996

Rand’s legacy continues not only in the way businesses use logos to build and maintain reputation and status, but also in the continued use of his own logo designs. These include IBM (which he created the current version of in 1972!), NeXT, ABC, and the only recently changed UPS logo.

In response to those who would call his work simplistic, he is famously quoted as having said; “Ideas do not need to be esoteric to be original or exciting”, a statement that I wholeheartedly agree with.

John Maeda

John Maeda was a software engineering student when the work of Paul Rand turned his attention to the design world. He’s someone I’ve been interested in for a while now, as a designer and a kind of technological .. spiritual .. guide? A priest of sorts for the digital media flock, trying to remind us that no matter how fast and efficient we make our tools, we are still human - and can only move at human pace. Maeda strives to bring us the idea of Simplicity in the digital age.

Not only is he is a successful graphic designer and visual artist, but also a computer genius, who was around in the very early stages of digital art. He was a scientist at the MIT Media Lab, who then became President of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2008. A selection of Maeda’s simple but charming interactive devices can be found at http://www.maedastudio.com/index.php, my favourites being the ‘lifecounter’, the ‘orbit calendar’ and the ‘illustrandom’ program – an early insight by Maeda into the ability digital media has to be dynamic, rather than sitting static on the screen, as if it were a printed object. I find it exciting that he designed this program himself, rather than using an existing piece of software – creating your own creative tools is a concept I’m very interested in.

Han Hoogerbrugge

Han Hoogerbrugge is best known for his animated shorts, most of which feature a black and white image of himself as the main character (or characters). The thing that strikes me about the vast majority of his work is its simplicity (excluding the interactive music clip ‘Flow’, although this is largely made up of simple animations seen elsewhere on his website).

His work is presented in online collections, namely ‘Modern Living / Neurotica’, ‘Spin’, ‘Hotel’ and ‘Nails’. Each collection features a number of interactive elements, found by hovering over areas of the screen, clicking, or combinations of the two. Generally there is creepy ambient noise reminiscent of industrial or barren environments. Themes occur throughout the pieces, including explosions, distortions of the characters’ heads, and religious symbols such as crosses and angels’ wings.

My favourite animations are ‘number 22 – Parade’ from Nails:

http://nails.hoogerbrugge.com/

and ‘number 69 – Headache’ from Modern Living / Neurotica:

http://ml.hoogerbrugge.com/.

An important aspect of Hoogerbrugge’s work is that most of it is available online, allowing the viewer to browse the collections at their leisure (especially the 89-strong collection of shorts in Modern Living / Neurotica), but also interact and play with the pieces. This online access links me (rather tenuously) to my final subject…

Emigre

Emigre is a type foundry based in Northern California. It was set up by Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko in 1984, and was one of the first type foundries to focus on digital type, and to sell their typefaces online (there’s that link to Hoogerbrugge, for those who didn’t see it, shining out like a flannel). Emigre experimented heavily at the beginning of digital typography, creating many typefaces with digital printing in mind. It now holds license to more than 300 original typeface designs.

For 21 years (1984 to 2005), Emigre also published a magazine. The magazine focused on many genres over its lifetime, but centred on graphic design and typography, while showing off Emigre's fonts brilliantly. The magazine appeared in a variety of formats, including a tabloid sized fanzine, pocket books filled with design criticism, and cardboard folders featuring music CDs.

Emigre are credited in Paul Felton’s Type Heresy as ‘fallen angels’ of typography – those who know the rules of typography, and how to break them in a way that works. Their most popular typefaces are currently Mrs Eaves (and the sans version) - Licko’s take on Baskerville, and Vista Sans.

Sources

http://blog.eyemagazine.com/?p=135

http://www.antoineetmanuel.com/LAFAYETTE/dd.htm

http://designmuseum.org/design/stefan-sagmeister

http://www.iconofgraphics.com/Paul-Rand/

http://plw.media.mit.edu/people/maeda/bio.html

http://www.emigre.com/EmigreNews.php

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1661918/type-master-an-interview-with-emigres-rudy-vanderlans

How are Digital Technologies affecting the practice of Graphic Design?

Since the 1980s, digital methods have played an increasingly influential role in graphic design. Increasingly advanced versions of design software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and InDesign have made available creative and manipulatory techniques which would be near impossible to achieve through any other medium. Also, as David Crow states in his 2008 article Magic box: craft and the computer, ‘the computer can very effectively introduce play; digital media, with their instant reversibility and ability to simulate, can withstand sustained experimentation where other formats would disintegrate.’ This opportunity to experiment without risk of wasting resources enables infinite room for error, removing a potentially crippling creative obstacle from the design process.

Aside from the advances in specifically design-based software, other digital advances play their part in the design process. The speed of communication achieved by email means that designer and client can exchange drafts and ideas instantaneously, ensuring the client gets the desired work in minimal time.
However, concerns have been raised over the way digital technologies themselves are advancing. Crow says that when it comes to digital design, ‘some educators worry that students will do what predetermined tools make easy’ – settling for the use of creative techniques programmed into the software for a specific purpose, rather than seeking the ideal visual response themselves. Perhaps the ideal digital designer should also be able to design the software they use to create imagery – to create their own tools.

One often overlooked, but crucial element of digital media, is the use of the “import” and “export” commands. In his 2008 essay Import/Export, Lev Manovich claims that ‘“import” and “export” commands of graphics, animation, video editing, compositing, and modeling software are historically more important than the individual operations these programs offer’ – that the compatibility between programs suited for different purposes is a greater advance than any process a given program can achieve on its own. Manovich says that ‘the whole field of motion graphics as it exists today came into existence to a large extent because of the integration between vector-drawing software, specifically Illustrator, and animation/compositing software such as After Effects.’ He also claims that this compatibility ‘plays the key role in shaping visual and spatial forms of the software age.’
Whereas before, filmmakers, graphic designers, and animators created visually separate and identifiable pieces of work, ‘contemporary designers use the same set of software tools to design everything.’ This means that contemporary digital design of any format can share the same kinds of appearance, and that if viewing images of design, ‘in most cases it’s impossible to identify the origins of the images unless you read the captions. Only then do you find that this image is a poster, that one is a still from a music video, and this one is magazine editorial.’

Still from the Cyanide and Happiness animation, Doctor's Visit: http://www.explosm.net/comics/1714/

Cyanide and Happiness web comic: http://www.explosm.net/comics/155/

Perhaps controversially, some people take the position that design software may be developing and accumulating too fast to properly evolve. Kenya Hara suggests in his 2007 book Designing Design, that ‘technology ought to evolve more slowly and steadily. It would be best if it took the time to mature, through trial and error’, in order for us to extract the greatest assets of each development, while replacing or removing the aspects which don’t work.

In his entry to the blog Design Observer in 2006, entitled Designing our own Graves, Dmitri Siegel presents the sinister idea that the sheer amount of customization options presented to the general public in many aspects of life – social networking sites, mobile phones and t-shirt designs, to name but a few – is severely affecting the demand for designers of all kinds. Siegel calls this phenomenon ‘prosumerism – simultaneous production and consumption.’ He suggests that prosumerism has given rise to ‘the templated mind’, which ‘searches for text fields, metatags, and rankings like the handles on a suitcase. Data entry and customization options are the way prosumers grip this new generation of products. The templated mind hungers for customization and the opportunity to add their input’.
Siegel identifies two of the hardest-hit areas of design as book and music album cover art. Websites such as Amazon.com – with user-created feedback and ranking systems – undermine the selling power that a striking book cover would have given in the past. As a result, ‘the budget that once went into design fees is already being redirected to manipulating search criteria and influencing Google rankings.’ Similarly, music downloading software such as iTunes renders album artwork almost obsolete – ‘the MP3 format and the ubiquity of downloading has shrunk the album art canvas to a 200 x 200-pixel JPEG.’
Seigel observes that through prosumerism, the public ‘ are actually consuming [their] own labour’, leaving little need for professional designers. This presents the worrying concept that ‘unless designers come up with more answers, they may end up designing-it-themselves...and little else.’

Screen grab from music downloading site http://www.napster.co.uk/ showing album art.

Perhaps, in her call for a new, digital avante-garde movement, Jessica Helfand provides designers with a new direction to take their skills. Her 2001 essay Dematerialisation of Screen Space explains that ‘the world of the internet has its own peculiar galaxy, with its own constellations of information, its own orbits of content. And it is by no means flat.’ This draws attention to a major limitation of current design software products, namely that they ‘remain essentially rooted in the finite world of printed matter: most are based on editing and publishing models and, not surprisingly, have a page-oriented display system’. Helfand seeks to expose the possibilities of the practically infinite canvas that is the internet, boldly claiming that, ‘as designers, we might begin to tackle the enormous opportunities to be had in staking claim to and shaping a new and unprecedented universe. There, if anywhere, lies the new avant-garde.’


References.

David Crow ~ Magic Box: Craft and the Computer, Eye no. 70 vol. 18 Winter 2008

Kenya Hara - Desiging Design, Translated by Maggie Kinser Hohle and Yukiko Naito. Baden: Lars Müller, 2007

Jessica Helfand and John Maeda - Dematerialization of Screen Space, in Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001, 35 - 39

Lev Manovich - Import/Export, or Design Workflow and Contemporary Aesthetics, March 2008, http://www.manovich.net

Dmitri Siegel - Designing Our Own Graves, Design Observer blog, June 27, 2006. http://www.designobserver.com