Design Issues

9.26.06 Graphic Design: It's Special!

Here’s are categories of specializations within Graphic Design.
Check out EACH site!
To see a bit of everything go to the AIGA archives

Type
Lettering (A unique hand-drawn word or alphabet)
• Ed Fella
• Check out books on the work of Doyald Young, Ed Benguiat, Herb Lubalin. You won’t be sorry.
Type Design
• Émigré
• House Industries
• Hoefler & Frere-Jones
Letterpress (Printing done from individual metal letters composed to form texts; ink is applied and then impressed onto paper.)
• Archetype press: Some wonderful work being done by students at Art Center College of Design’s letterpress facility. Watch the fab video (upper right corner of the page): http://www2.artcenter.edu/archetype/
• Egg Press
• Briar Press: A website all about letterpress.

Information Design
• Nigel Holmes: Very fun and charming information graphics.
• Edward Tufte: Check out his many books on types of Information Design. His books are all in the library

Environmental Design
This term is a catch-all for lots of different types of design: Interior design, signage systems, spaces for events, etc.
Various examples

Broadcast Design
Titles for TV shows and station identities
• Twin Art

Motion Graphics
Titles for films and graphics for ads
• Brand New School: Owner, Jon Notaro is a CalArts alum. There are many CalArts grads working there as well. They are increasingly doing more directing for commercials and videos.
• Stardust
• Hunter Gatherer
• Bureau: Keep clicking through to Movies section.
• 2x4: This is a general design studio, but check out their reel (which shows their motion work).
• Shilo: They did the recent fab Gap ads.
• Shinola: "The" hot studio in London.

Print
Magazines and Newspapers (otherwise known as Publication Design)
• Haven't found any great sites yet for these designers. Maybe you'll find some!
Books
• Green Dragon Office: This is the site for CalArts faculty, Lorraine Wild. Check out the Portfolio section to see the work.
• COMA
• McSweeney’s: Best to go check it out at a hip newsstand or bookstore
Annual reports
• Cahan Associates : Check out Annual Reports section.

Experience Design
This might be another term for Environmental Design, but usual involving media.
• Imaginary Forces: They also do Broadcast and motion design. These are the big guys in the industry.

Branding
• Seigel & Gale: Very conservative hard core branding organization, but check it out!
• Adams Morioka: CalArts alums. Peruse the archives and you'll find lots of branding as well as other stuff.

Exhibition Design
Both these exhibition designers work in teams with architects.
• Pentragram : This is a reknowned studio that does many many types of design.
• http://lsd-studio.net/design/exhibition.html: This is my studio.

Miscellaneous
Websites that we discussed on Tuesday in class:
Droog
Victor Moscoso

Assignment
Graphic Design Specializations Treasure Hunt Due: 10.3.06
Check out ALL the websites posted above.
Find 2 additional designer’s websites who specialize in one of the categories above whose work you think is ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS!
Post a comment including those URLs, including which specialization they represent.
DO NOT GOOGLE THE SPECIALIZATION (like “motion graphics”) AND EXPECT TO FIND ANYTHING INTERESTING. Ask other design students. Check out sites that feature groovy design like Design is Kinky.
When you find sites of interest look for links.

What is a definition?

Many of you had difficulty with the first assignment – to find a definition of Graphic Design. It seems like there was lots of confusion over what "define" mean.

Let me clarify:
Definitions give words meaning. For example, let's suppose someone from another planet asks you "what's a 'cat?' You wouldn't just say it's a small animal because that could be lots of things. You have to get more specific and describe the characteristic it has that no other thing or animal possess. Here's an example: Cat: A small (6-15 lbs.) domesticated feline mammal that has fur, pointed ears, wiskers, and claws. It purrs when contented and in contemporary Western cultures is general considered a house pet.

A definition needs to IDENTIFY specific, essential qualities that will distinguish from something similar.

You don't need to be hard on yourself for this assignment. Go to a dicitonary for the defintion!

09.19.06 How to do design research

Assignment: Design factoid treasure hunt Due: 9.26.06

Each of you is assigned one of the following questions.
Using 3 different resources: the web, a book, and a resource that you find from an online periodical, index, or database. List each of your resources!
Put your question AND answer on the blog. Include a pictorial example (or several).
(See handout for instructions on how to post image.)
You must post by class time on Tuesday.

Topics:
Sheli: Who designed the new pharmaceutical packing for Target and why?
Monica: When did Milton Glaser design his famous Bob Dylan poster?
Lorin: What design shows are going on in New York today?
Ben: What/who is Didot?
Aaron: Who where the European design émigrés that came to the U.S. in the 30s?
Sam: Who were the 3 directors of the Bauhaus?
Ben: What was the first typeface designed for the computer?
Luke: What is a diphthong?
Yeon Jae: Whose designed the titles for the movie, Dr. Stangelove?
Golden: What year was the first Apple computer sold publicly and who designed it?
Katherine: Who is Victor Moscoso?
Barney: Who designed the Mathematica exhibition?
Hall: When was the AIGA founded and why?
Garyson: Who coined the term “Graphic Design”?
Kate: What’s a serif and how many different kinds of serifs are there?
Caelin: How many design curators are there in American Museums?
Monia Y: Who was Sheila de Bretteville and what did she have to do with CalArts?

To view the answers go to: http://lulu101.typepad.com/photos/design_factoids

Design Definition further Defined

An interesting definition of Graphic Design
I just found this interesting definition on the website for Graphic Design MFA at MICA [Maryland Institute Colleg of Art]: " Design is: A concrete, physical process that occupies real space and time. A cultural form and a professional practice. Social, commerical, political and public. Physical, digital, environmental, and editorial. A service that real people need: Clients, consumers, users, readers, pedestrians. Students, citizens, kids, old people, etc."
— http://digital.mica.edu/mfagd/

Our group definition of Graphic Design
To visually articulate, communicate, give form to something [a message] for public audiences.

What is good graphic design?
Here's what we discussed in class:
- Aesthetics: pleasing to look at
- Has some substance
- Original and distinctive. A particular solution.
- Really engaging
- Effective focus
- Synthesis of diverse visual practices that take make forms
- Trendsetting and stylish
- Conveys dedication and passion. (Craftsmanship. Labour of Love.)
- Is simple: Making the complex and unweildy accessible.
- Personal
- Takes the usual and makes something new.

You guys are really smart!

09.12.06 · What is this thing called Graphic Design?

In Class:
· Review definition of Graphic Design by Jessica Helfand:
"Graphic design is the most ubiquitous of all the arts. It responds to needs at once personal and public, embraces concerns both economic and ergonomic, and is informed by many disciplines, including art and architecture, philosophy and ethics, literature and language, science and politics and performance.
Graphic design is everywhere, touching everything we do, everything we see, everything we buy: we see it on billboards and in Bibles, on taxi receipts and on websites, on birth certificates and on gift certificates, on the folded circulars inside jars of aspirin and on the thick pages of children's chubby board books.
Graphic design is the boldly directional arrows on street signs and the blurred, frenetic typography on the title sequence to E.R. It is the bright green logo for the New York Jets and the monochromatic front page of the Wall Street Journal. It is hang-tags in clothing stores, postage stamps and food packaging, fascist propaganda posters and brainless junk mail.
Graphic design is complex combinations of words and pictures, numbers and charts, photographs and illustrations that, in order to succeed, demands the clear thinking of a particularly thoughtful individual who can orchestrate these elements so they all add up to something distinctive, or useful, or playful, or surprising, or subversive or somehow memorable.
Graphic design is a popular art and a practical art, an applied art and an ancient art. Simply put, it is the art of visualizing ideas.

· Graphic Design Treasure Hunt: 1 hour to find 60 examples of graphic design. You can
photograph or take it if it’s free, but don’t steal!
· Discuss: Craft and skills and techniques; Style and taste; Design is speaking in symbols;
High design/low design; What’s not graphic design?

Assignment:
Below are instructions on how to post your definition of graphic design on the class blog. I haven’t figured out a way for you to post your design example so just bring it to class.

1. Graphic Design Definition. Here’s what to post and how:
Find a published definition for Graphic Design on the web in a book.
Go to the class webblog .
Add your definition as a comment on the first posting: 09.12.06 · What is this thing called Graphic Design? To do this, select “comment” in white beneath the entry. [Note: for your first entry to probably will need to set up your account.]
Retype the definition or copy and paste it. BE SURE TO INCLUDE THE NAME OF THE SITE AND URL OF YOUR SOURCE OR AUTHOR, TITLE, PUBLISHER, PLACE AND DATE OF PUBLICAITON.
Add a general comment and then then argue the pros and cons of the this definition in comparison to Jessica Helfand’s. Make 3 points. No more; no less.
Be sure to include your full name at the end.

I’ve put an example entry up on the site.
You must post by Monday night!! (midnight)

2. Graphic Design Sample
Find example of graphic design that you really like.
Bring the actual example or a good photograph to class on Tuesday.