wferre20's blog

Challenger by Doug Pedersen (http://www.wired.com/design/2012/09/nasa-space-icon-mashups/)

There is a group of computer scientists who claim to have written a program that understands art as well as most critics. This program correctly correlated and organized 34 different painters by styles. While examining the artists, this program utilized over a 1000 paintings that computers used as evidence to categorize these artists (http://phys.org/news/2012-09-humans-art.html.)

Color me not impressed. Or wait my sensors are not at maximum appreciation capacity? The problem I have with articles like this is that these are non-aesthetically trained people trying to make aesthetic assessments. The real reason I am not impressed is that I teach video game design in the afternoon to my students. All the coding software would have to do is categorize pre- programmed variables and sort through the distinctions in the images. Then it would simply tally up a score and place the artists in the appropiate categories. Recognizing styles can be tricky because of how people think, but this is more a memorization issue. Styles are grouped and indentified because the artists chose to be identified with those styles in the first place. I am not impressed.

The real problem with articles and research like this is the trivialization of design thinking and aesthetics. If you asked a computer to build a challenger that would go to outer space based upon existing imagery…you could very likely get an image like the one above. Why, because computers do not think. They are information retention tools. What is offensive is that designers are thinkers, and while it may not seem a big deal on the surface this is kind of though processes that devalue what we do on a larger scale.

Look at Dan Brown’s mistakes in the Da Vinci’s Code. He is a fun writer, and his novel makes for an action packed read. However, his art criticism accuracy left alot to be desired. The reason being is that he lacks judgment in aesthetics.

The point is designers should not be testing pharmaceutical products on amebeas and scientists should not be building Paul Rand bots. I would pay to see a giant Milton Glazer robot fight King Kong any day. I imagine the movie tag line being,” I love NY.” The script writes itself, but I digress. Scientists are free to explore what they like, but respect the discipline. Designers should explore science too, but respect the discipline. Most importantly designers need to defend their discipline. Scientists defend theirs.

My mother is going to be getting a guide dog. Since she was born she has had very low vision that has progressively worsened over the years. I remember as a child getting special treatment with my mother at the airport because of her sight. For example, I got to ride in an elevator with James Brown in the Atlanta airport as a child just because my mother couldn’t read the signs to get to each terminal.

It was my son’s birthday this past weekend. He is now 3 years old. His grandmother travelled from Palm Beach to come see him. She had to ask a close family friend to drive her as she has never been allowed to drive her whole life. When she arrived she told me she was getting an iphone.

“What?” I know this is awful, but my first reaction was to say, “But Mom you are blind.” I’m an almost apple convert, I haven’t fully drank the Kool-Aid just yet. I love PC’s familiarity, but my Ipad is never more than a few feet from me at all times. My wife just got a phone, and I’m jealous. My mom getting a phone leaves me confused and stunned.

Mom smiled. Her teeth gleamed as if she told the best punch line to the greatest joke ever told. She was waiting for the full effect to hit me.

“No seriously…,” I questioned. She pulled her Iphone 4s out and begins to hit a button built into the OS that assists the sight challenged. It literally reads the screen as you rub your finger across it. She was seeing through her finger tips and sound.

Maybe this was a gimmick I thought, but no. I watched her adeptly go from screen to screen finding the necessary apps to assist her. For example, there is another app that reads the designs on print money to differentiate between a 50 dollar and 10 dollar bill. That may not seem like a big deal to you, but if your eyesight has repeatedly allowed strangers to take advantage of your poor sight for years this is magic.

This situation made me think about all our discussions on responsibilities as designers. Iphones are acclaimed for their visual capabilities, yet here the designers were creating a entry point for someone who is visually impaired. Apple has really impressed me this weekend. Apple does not have to create what it did. I mean my droid phone is not touting those features. My mother isn’t using Siri. She is using the actual built in OS features so that she can appreciate the apps she chooses to download.

I know we are a visual profession, but maybe our responsibilities are also at times to help the blind see. We do this already by educating people on concepts. Design gives direction, meaning and purpose. So mentally we help people who are blind to a concept to see. I would like to thank the designers at Apple who are helping my Mom see well enough on her new phone that she can call me when she gets her new guide dog.

Ok I admit it. I am a gamer. I love video games. It is rare I get to play any games these days with work, school and being a father for a very active 3 year old, but games are a fantastic quick escape.

Game design intrigues me. Especially, now that as a medium game design is maturing, the audience demographics are expanding. As a form of entertainment it artistic boundaries are being pushed in new directions.

The game Bioshock is a thought provoking, Ayn Rand inspired, dystopian horror game. However, through it I rediscovered my love deco. Where I grew up in Palm Beach, Florida the architecture, the accents, and much of the typography is deco. As a child I travelled to New York several times a year, and one is surrounded by Deco in Manhattan. So is there a familiar connection to the visual style in the game.

There is great care and attention on how the designers of the game use the styles effectively. The environments are stunning, and even though the game is in video game years is nearing its AARP status, the game has aged well because of its aesthetic choices.

It is because of this game I began researching fonts like Andes, Market Deco, and Powerstation. I opened books to reexamine Frank Lloyd Wright and his connection to South Florida.  I explored his and others use of deco style. The architecture of the game made me appreciate the Chrysler building more and photograph the elevator doors of the Empire State building.

So my guilty pleasure sparked inspiration in me. What are your artistic and design guilty pleasures and what have they done for you?

Pssst….wait till I tell you what Star Wars did to me.

 Running Giganotosaurus by James Gurney

I guess as also an illustrator I have an axe to grind. Illustrators are always lamenting the golden era where they were worshiped like rock stars. Norman Rockwell’s work help define American culture. Joseph Christian Leyendecker made magazine covers wall art worthy, and Charles Dana Gibson helped redefine gender roles and empowered American women.

Today there is this sense of gloom and retreat in the illustration world as the old guard finds itself unable to find work traditionally. Magazines circulations are competing with the web. Newspapers have the appearance of future museum relics, and have resorted to advertising on television to sell. I could have sworn I heard a Sarah McLachlan song playing the last time I saw a New York Times commercial.

Designers who made their bread and butter working editorial are not much happier than my traditional illustrator friends. I’ve got words for them. Be Fearless.

We are living in opportunity. Right now we are seeing seismic shifts in technology that is more design dependent on us than ever before. We have a choice to be the mammals looking to take advantage of this new era or join the dinosaurs. The key to evolution is adaptability. All of us are hybrids of the unicellular organisms of our ancestry, should we not adapt now to our ever evolving environment too?

In order to be leaders in this new era we have to redefine how we see ourselves. For too long we have been independent operators, lone wolf freelancers, or part of a tiny staff who worked in the corners that pintrest is a cheap mimic of today. In competing against ourselves we forgot that the rest of the world sees what we market ourselves as, but unlike other industries we have done a poor job of marketing our industry.

We are not accountants, rocket scientists, and lawyers. Yet, all of these professions need us. The argument has been those are important professions because they operate the world. That is a fine argument. However, you can do all the operations you want, but what good is what you do if no one sees it? We define how the world sees. It’s designers who make data come to life.

Though the roles we once lived in have changed. Maybe specializing right now is not the best mode for survivability. Perhaps fluidity and hybridization is the key is this changing environment. If mammals could find a way to flourish in an environment that dinosaurs could no longer survive, is there a lesson for designers? It will take leadership to make changes, the fittest and brightest must lead by example. The survival of our species could depend upon it.

Efficient spending is more critical in a downward spiraling economy. This is especially true on how advertisers spend their money.  One of the major issues facing future designers is the variety of outlets to design for. So effective design choices will be flexible design choices that adapt to their viewed enviroment. Flexibile designs minmize cost for the clients in the long term because their is less individual work they are actually paying for. One issue that is immediately raised though is how old pricing models do not fit this new design world. Also how does one determine publishing rights on so many potential distribution points? Another question that should be raised is that in designing flexible designs is what is the cost effectiveness ratio for the designer? How much time and flexibility should a designer give or spend before it comes back to harm the said designer?

Graphic design is a creative process that combines art and technology to communicate ideas. The designer works with a variety of communication tools in order to convey a message from a client to a particular audience. The main tools are image and typography.- AIGA

http://www.aiga.org/guide-whatisgraphicdesign/

When discussing Graphic Design with my students I begin with Wassily Kandinsky. The reason is that he played around with the concept that shapes can have sound. His abstraction though had its roots not only in the music, but in a fundamental understanding that the very letters we use on a daily bases are abstract representations of sound too. One can look at his compositions and almost hear the music that he is designing for. Brilliantly, Kandinsky figured out rounded shapes sounded more like percussions while he was more brazenly representational with string instruments. I start with Kandinsky because nearly everyone appreciates music, and if shapes have sound so eventually will line. Line and shapes form typography, so naturally I teach my students that fonts have sound. Kandinsky is a good starting to point to discuss the rules of shape and form. Students begin to understand that tangents are not only fixated discussions, a geometry problem or the Titanic colliding against an iceberg, but design principles that influence how we see. Illustration is story telling. Illustration has its place in communication, but I view graphic design as more pure and refined. The complexity of design is often as much as what does not appear compared to what is actually seen. Illustration is elaborative, graphic design is more direct.

Graphic design is powerful. Certain shapes and ideas have become nearly universal. I joke with my students that they should be grateful that when visiting a foreign country that people there want you to be able to find a bathroom too. Humanities visual communicative skills have evolved with the technology from the bone and stone banging from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 Space Odyssey to the I-pad finger mashing of today. As technology becomes more advanced the demands on visual literacy have increased. Though I am amazed at how at the same time the more advance technology becomes the more likely the interfaces are becoming visual as are the directions. Design has not only aided in the visualization of dreams that manifest themselves into the wonderful new technologies, but also humans interact with that technology.

Graphic Design is a collection of visual systems to transport ideas. In comparison to other art forms, Design is a highway. It is an art form that prides itself on getting an audience quickly to a destination. In this way, illustration is more like a vacation and fine art like space travel. Efficiency and refinement are words that associate with design. The ability of the designer to link effectively an audience to a mental destination based upon the needs of a client requires great skill and knowledge. It is this fact that makes design both an art form and a craft.

I love the quote from Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Since design has the power to get shape our understanding of how people think and interact, to not acknowledge the power design is a disservice. Our clients, our audiences and even we designers are dependent on the resources we use and how we apply them. Graphic designers by their very nature are problem solvers. If clients could figure out their own problems then why would they hire us in the first place? With this in mind, if we already are visually interpreting the five senses, then maybe we should add common and moral sense too. What we message and how is transforming daily with the opportunity of technology, but the question should be if we can should we?

Design is ever evolving to meet the demands of a transforming world. Traditional means of design are fading as opportunity manifests in new areas.  Systems are changing as delivery methods are rapidly expanding. Though underneath the new directions there still lies the careful craft. The bones of understanding do not change; good typography and composition will always be a matter of understanding of form and shape. Kandinsky may not recognize a smart phone, but he may appreciate its use of readable type. These are exciting and wild times as the future is uncertain in what wondrous directions it may go. Though if brazenly embraced, the future of design is what we visual interpreters of thought craft. Other people may directly affect the course of history, but we shape how people will interact with it.

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