In the Fifties, I, together with just about every designer, was preoccupied with aesthetics and fashion. Design was the latest typeface in a modern layout looking like a Mondrian with lots of white space. That’s what I was taught in art school.
I don’t remember when I changed. Whether it happened all at once, or gradually. Eventually, inspired by designers Paul Rand, Lou Dorfsman and Helmut Krone, an art director at Doyle Dane Bernbach, along with the surrealist painter, René Magritte, I became less interested in design for its own sake and more interested in design as it communicates an opinion.
Interesting solutions begin with interesting problems. So reframe the problem.
That was sixty years ago. Today, it’s even more incumbent upon the graphic designer to shake things up, to surprise. Today, the audience for graphic design is the same audience who will have seen the latest alien film and the hottest music video with special effects that are dazzling. How can a designer compete with this magic in, say, a full-color full-page ad, or, even more unlikely, a modest, black and white, one column ad for boring products like toothpaste or cat food? We don’t have the technology, or the budgets, or the time to compete with Avatar today, or God knows what will come along tomorrow. If we want to attract attention to our work, we have to explore the other end of the visual spectrum. We have to go to reality. We must take a careful look at the real world and, in effect, say to our audience, “Look! have you ever noticed this before? Even though it was right under your nose.”
And there’s another thing about the situation today that designers must recognize. Before computers, the production of printed matter was in the hands of designers and printers. Most clients had only the vaguest idea how it was produced. And they were prepared to pay well for their logos, annual reports, and other business papers.
But that’s not the way it is now. Now, for $99.99, it’s possible to buy a program that allows anyone with desktop publishing facilities to produce much of the stuff of the average business. The mystique has finally gone out of ordinary design and print. These programs fit words and images into professional-looking formats. They even throw in some special effects. For low-end commercial needs, that’s fine.
So, if anyone who can type can do much of the work previously done by well-paid specialists, what’s left for the designer? They have to do things that a typist with a computer can’t do. This means that they have to be thinkers, problem-solvers, whether they like it or not. And, unfortunately, thinking is not the designer’s first love. They love choosing colors, pushing type and shapes around, drawing in a particular style, and imposing the latest graphic tricks on their next job, regardless of whether they are appropriate or not. They get these tricks from the Culture.
The 8 steps are:
1. Process
2. The problem is the problem
3. Stealing is good
4. There’s no such thing as a bad cliché
5. Interesting words
6. Boring words
7. Words into pictures
8. Everyone knows that less is more. But sometimes, more can also be more.
Source and read the full story here.
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BOB GILL
Bob Gill co-founded the design consultancy F/F/G with Alan Fletcher and Colin Forbes. It was later renamed Pentagram. He is the author of more than a dozen books. Read more
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Idea
Peter Arndt 0708-627020
Director of Marketing - Scalae AB
Kreativ, marknadsfokuserad och otålig produktutvecklare som sedan 2005 driver Sydsveriges mest framgångsrika produktutvecklingsföretag Scalae AB.
Jagar och vill se den optimala lösningen, både tekniskt och marknadsmässigt. Tyckte att traditionell produktutveckling hade fel fokus – all kraft gick åt att lösa de organisatoriska problemen och startade därför Scalae som utmanar traditionen och skapar framgångsrika produkter, och företag, via Marknadsinriktad teknikutveckling™.
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