Theory I S08

Final Paper for Grads and Others

NOTE: This assignment is for all grad students and those who have had excessive absences. It is due, Thursday, May 15 and should be sent to me as a PDF via e-mail.

Throughout the semester, we’ve read various essays that argue proper form. These readings have taken various positions that either support a particular type of form/form-making, tried to straighten out the misguided away from bad form, or have described a cultural, social, or technological condition that should shape ideas about form-making.

Here’s some examples:

Supports a particular type of form/form-making:
Jan Tschichold, “New Life in Print” outlines the new typography describing its aims as practical, aesthetically akin to modern painting, and embracing industrial process.
Dieter Rams, “Omit the Unimportant” equates good design with simple objects that communicate their function

Tried to sort out the misguided:
Adolf Loos, in “Ornament and Crime,” equates ornament with social (and political) regression. Ornament = Bad Form.
Harold van Doren, in “Streamlining” describes the wide range of improper applications of streamlining. Streamlining, unless is serves some specific purpose, is just styling.

Described a larger social or cultural condition that will affect how designers think about and understand what they are doing:
Marshall McCluhan, in "The Medium is the Massage” argues that the media has changed the way we perceive the world and thus how we understand and address that world.
Otl Aicher, describe in “Design and Philosophy,” that there are no more indisputable truths from which design can operate, thus design judgments should be based in real, lived experience of everyday use.
Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller in “Low and High” describes a condition where there is no distinction between low and high, therefore designer can no longer speak from “on high” and need to see themselves from within the culture.

THE ASSIGNMENT:

Imagine that you are going to be giving a talk at a graphic design conference, called “Graphic Design Now”
Write an approximately 300-word abstract of what your talk would be about.

It must be considered, edited, and proofread.

ABSTRACT GUIDELINES
Include a title.
Include both general and specific keywords common within the discipline.
Be brief, summarize. Think bare bones. Abstracts can be no more than 300 words.
Focus on your main claims and argument.
Place your content within a time frame and location (one studio, three years of projects, etc.).
Think of the target reader, in this case design educators.
Abstracts are necessarily dry. No need to entertain.
Use a clear, “no frills,” direct writing style. Avoid bureaucratic prose and passive constructions.

A good summary on writing abstracts can be found here.

EXAMPLE OF AN ABSTRACT:

Discourse This: an investigation into alternative forms of writing on design

I will present design writing as a “literary activity,” a type of writing that falls somewhere between fiction and fact, fantasy and research. Such work implies that the definition of design criticism might expand to include hybrid forms—strategies that draw as much from creative scholarship (the experiential, the speculative, sheer imagination) as from more traditional models of scholarship. I will examine examples of open-ended and unfamiliar approaches to writing about the designed world. Considering work from William Morris to W. A. Dwiggins to Putch Tu, as well as my own work, I will venture that the form of the writing is as important to design thinking as the messages they carry. Just as traditional critical, journalistic or research voices foretell and shape “information,” so alternative approaches set the stage for editorial positions useful to a maturing design discourse.
Dominant criticism and history in (graphic) design is written from a relatively small range of perspectives and values. The examples I will cite—variations, or oppositions as is often the case—are signs of a generative, expanding exchange. These contributions not only extend the range of writing but bring a full spectrum of design practice options into view.
I will define the goals of alternative writing as well as its value to the discourse.

Final Readings May 12: Simply Complex

Remember: There will be no class meeting on Monday, May 5 because of Graphic Design Program reviews next week.
Reading due and your final assignment.

READINGS:
> Andrew Blauvelt, 2000, "Towards a Complex Simplicity," Eye Magazine vol. 9, No. 35.
> Virginia Postrel, 2003, "Surface and Substance," The Substance of Style, HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

Low, High and Deconstruction Notes

Here's my notes from today's discussion. Everyone is encouraged is chime in with responses, questions, thoughts, arguments...

NOTES ON "DECONSTRUCTION AND GRAPHIC DESIGN"

Summary: Examines the term and use of “deconstruction” in graphic design in 80s/early 90s and discusses “the place of typography in the work of Jacque Derrida who initiated the theory of deconstruction.”

SECTION 1:DECONSTRUCTION IN RECENT DESIGN CULTURE

What did it look like in graphic design?
“Chopped up, layered, fragmented, ambiguous futuristic overtones

What is deconstruction?
It’s a mode of questioning everything about having to do with representation – all the technologies, formal devices, social institutions, and metaphors.
“It is a strategy of critical-formaking”

Who’s using it?
It’s now completely part of academic and visual culture. But “became vanguard” in U.S. in 70s and 80s.

When did it start?
Started with Derrida’s book, Of Grammatology, published in France in ‘67 and in U.S. in ’76.

What was Deconstruction’s about?
Instead of criticizing content, Deconstruction focused on all the systems BEHIND the making of the piece.
“HOW REPRESENTATION INHABITS REALITY”

Huh?
Most of Western culture is based in Platonic notion that there’s reality and then there’s representations.
But Derrida shows the falsehood of this opposition. That things aren’t so simple – so “black and white” or “either/or”

Derrida had a shtick about writing vs. speech. What was that about?
In western culture since Plato, I believe, writing has been seen as the denigrated representation of speech. Derrida looks at writing (and the design of writing) as part of the thoughts previously thought to belong exclusively to spoken ideas.
Derrida showed that even speech was a form of representation because it was not thought itself, but the expression of thought.

So, what’s grammatology?
Study of writing as a form of representation –including the typography and graphic design.
Grammatology was the “field of inquiry”/deconstruction was the mode.

What’s the relationship between deconstruction and post-structuralism? What’s post-structuralism anyway?
Deconstruction was part of post-structuralism, which was a movement that looked at modes of representation. (Foucault, Baudrillard, Barthes). Deconstruction picked apart signs that made cultural forms seem natural/truthful – race, gender, and sexuality – and showed how and why these signs were constructions.
This had a big effect on artists in the 70s and 80s.

What about how post-modernism fits in this picture?
At the time, post-modernism was looking at pre-modernist representation – classic architecture and figurative painting. Post-structuralism gave PM a critical stance.

So how and when did deconstruction get introduced to graphic design?
Introduced by other visual arts – photography, architecture, performance and installation art. Daniel Libeskind, the architect and then head of Cranbrook’s Architecture Program in the 70s, introduced Kathy McCoy and GD students to literary criticism. The students then created a special issue of Visible Language, a peer-reviewed design journal from MIT, for summer 1978 issue, where they “progressively expanded the spaces between line and works and pushing the footnotes into the space normally reserved for the main text.”

Expands in 80s when Jeff Keedy introduced Barthes. (Although there were other ideas afloat and post-structuralism wasn’t the exclusive methodology.

How did post-structuralism play out at Cranbrook?
It became an attitude for making “visual and verbal experiments” that played with reading – the reader playing an active role in the creation of meaning. Post-structuralism was both a mode of expression and a subject of research, but it lacked the political critique associated with PS, they preferred theories that embraced vernaculars and popular that Venturi and Scott Brown introduced.
At Cranbrook PS was about a poetics not criticism.

So, what did post-structuralism become in design?
It became “a romantic theory of self-expression” based on a “cheerful” response to “death of the author” which in literary criticism was concerned with how the author works within “a grid” of possible strategies (i.e. Fiction, history, interview, essay). Post-structuralism worked against this grid.

How did “Deconstructivism” get introduced and what’s it about?
Architectural show as MoMA.

SECTION 2: DESIGN WITHIN THE THEORY OF DECONSTRUCTION

Where did Derrida’s theories come from?
His readings of Sassure about structural linguistics, semiotics, and anthropology (structuralism). He was especially interested in the arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified as part of a system – structures that generate meaning rather than meaning in the thing itself in a vacuum. THOUGHTS TAKE SHAPE OUT OF THE MATERIAL BODY OF LANGUAGE.

So then what was Derrida’s argument in Of Grammatology with Sassure?
Sassure saw writing (phonetic and ideographic) as corrupted speech.
Derrida pointed out the speech/language was a representation itself and showed that there were signifiers in writing that were neither phonetic nor ideographic like punctuation, roman/italic, upper/lower case and spacing.
THERE IS NO OUTSIDE to speech. Everything is part of the system of signifiers and signifieds.

So what does typography and graphic design have to do with this?
They materialize writing! All the conventions of typography are part of Derrida’s idea of grammatology (writing as form of representation). This way of seeing things allows us to look at the history of typography as the history of relationships between content and form. Grammatology would produce a catalog of forms.

DERRIDA SAW DESIGN AND TYPOGRAPHY AS DISTINCT MODES OF REPRESENTATION AND SAW THEIR FUTURE AS AN ONGOING DEVELOPMENT.

What did Richard Eckersley demonstrate about typography in Glas? (point out examples)

That was how Derrida saw Deconstruction, but what did deconstruction become in schools and other social contexts?
It became a form of criticism, but also a style.

What was Lupton and Miller’s final analysis of the significance of deconstruction for graphic design?
“Design can critically engage the mechanics of representation, exposing and revising its ideological biases; design also can remake the grammar of communication by discovering structure and patterns within the material media of visual and verbal writing.”

NOTES ON "LOW AND HIGH"

Summary: Lupton and Miller deconstruct how "low" and "high" have been co-opted by artists and designers, argues that there is not longer any distinction, and insists that designer should take critical positions from within the culture rather than above.

• 1990 show at MoMA, High and Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture showcase low/pop cultures influence/inclusion in modern art – low becomes high
• Graphic designers also interested in low into high through their inclusion of vernaculars in their work.
• In the conceptual shell of high vs. low, vernacular becomes the other, not part of design – the sophisticated designer pitted against the naïve other.
• This critical positioning began with William Morris – design as critic from above
• While Learning from Las Vegas seems to reject this sort of high-mindedness, actually treats Las Vegas ethnographically – from above
• Survey of designers who turned low into high: Milton Glaser/pushpin, Charles Anderson, M&Co, Stephen Doyle
• Cranbrook’s deconstruction of ketchup label actually an odd contradiction since this label was part of a pioneering sophisticated branding strategy from the late 19th c.
• There is no inside and outside any longer. Mass culture has infiltrated everything.
• Dividing high from low was fundamental to Modernism.
• On the other hand, there are some use of vernacular styles acknowledge the design as spectator inside their own culture. View from street exemplified by remaking national trademarks “into emblems for alternative ideas” Examples: Spy magazine and Jeff Keedy’s typeface Manuscript.
• Designer are taught Visual style over social function cause designer to overlook “relation of design to institutions of power.” Style is not free of the politics of everyday life.
• Avant guard was about design in everyday life. Modernism tried to occupy outside while transforming the inside. We must critique from within NOT above.

April 28: Low, High and Deconstruction

Love those manifestos!

Easy reads this week. Bring your annotations nicely typeset in larger type. We'll pin them up and discuss.

• Ellen Lupton, J Abbott Miller, 1996, “Deconstruction and Graphic Design.”
Design, Writing, Research, Princeton Architectural Press.

• Ellen Lupton, J Abbott Miller, 1996, “Low and High.” Writing, Design, Writing,
Research, Princeton Architectural Press.

an incomplete manifesto for finishing a film by your friend vince mckelvie

detach yourself from reality
live in a place where there is nothing to do
create a couple alternate personalities
listen to electronic music
put caffeine in your body
find something worth being excited over
be content with working all day everyday
take cold showers
shave with a dull razor
wash your hair with bar soap
and most importantly floss with shoelaces

nick steinhardt: an incomplete manifesto for calarts design

it's hard to get in that tiny place between painstaking and overworked.

just push it a little further.

spend a day completely changing what you made. if that doesn't work, at least you've got what you started with.

make your own decisions. but you will still be art directed.

there is good boring & bad boring.

don't use metaphors that are even remotely tangental or "metaphorical."

nothing will ever be finished. so anticipate revisions. and reworkings. and criticism. but

don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

& go apeshit bonkers

Jennifer Rider: An Incomplete Manifesto for Process

1. The number one most important rule is MAKE.
2. Do a little thinking and then a little making and then some thinking again.
3. Set up parameters for your experiments. This will help you begin (shout out to mr. k).
4. Begin somewhere.
5. Begin anywhere.
6. Try working additively.
7. Try working reductively.
8. Isolate moves: scale shifts, number of objects, contrast, etc.
9. Start simply.
10. Compose powerfully.
11. Green tea with mint seems to help.
12. Hybridize results.

Devin Dailey: An incomplete manifesto for contentment in graphic design (life).

1.    Spend time with others that matter to you.

2.    Spend time with yourself, get to know you.

3.    Be happy with you who you are. There is no one else like you in the world, embrace you.

4.    Embrace others, and respect their differences.

5.    Allow others to respect you through personal contentment. They will want to be around you.

6.    Graphic design isn’t everything, there is more to life. Go see it.

7.    Watch out for “naysayers”, “I told you so(s)”, “just you waiter(s)”, they’ll cramp your style.

8.    Surround yourself with others who are passionate about anything other than design.

9.    Surround yourself with others who are passionate about everything design.

10.   Don’t take everything to heart, design is personal, but it shouldn’t allow you to loose sleep.

11.   Strive for clients that want to affect the world, and affect it with them.

An Incomplete Manny-festo for Getting By

First, do nothing (seriously).
Second, read the brief (briefly).
Third, let it sink in (go to sleep).
Fourth, research (Google it).
Fifth, make a list for work ahead (ideas are better on paper).
Sixth, play Duty (DUUUUU!).
Next, begin a series of misinformed sketches (again, ideas are better on paper).
Then, start a long and strenuous process of making and revising, making and revising, making and revising, don't sleep (sleep is for the weak), eat some of the time (when applicable), get comfortable with your chair (even if its uncomfortable, at least it looks good), be ready for anything (late night dance parties are mildly enjoyable), get close (the people around you will possibly never leave), put in 110% (someone will notice,right?), but above all, don't get attached (your best idea could be someone's worst comment), then back to first, but don't get stressed out (it's not like you put time and effort into your project), just go back to first, don't get stressed out.
After, file it away (out of sight, out of mind).
Finally, in case of emergency dial 9-1-1 (seriously).

An Incomplete Manifesto for Surviving in the Studio, by Michelle Park

1. Snack well and snack often. Share your treats.
2. Contribute plenty of pop, 80's, 90's and hip hop music to spontaneous dance parties.
3. Show others your work and get opinions from more than one person.
4. Give honest and constructive criticism when others ask for your opinion.
5. Share your books, but never reveal too many of your sources.
6. Invest in the essentials: a comfy office chair and proper lighting (especially with ones that make a statement).
7. Privacy is not a privilege. Lock your computer, laptop, and monitors to your desk. Additional hardware and power tools are needed.
8. Work diligently. Peer respect is based on effort.
9. Put in as many work hours as possible. Even if your are in the studio all day, not much may get done. Therefore, work long and take breaks to eat with friends.
10. There are two trash cans for a reason. Take time to recycle.