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.

Comments

[Michael Bernstein Browne]

Science has one ally, design. Science can create a space ship that can travel to the mars. This only creates problems for designers to solve. How can 6 people live, eat, sleep, and work in 700sqft space for 8 months in otter space? Science might be able to create the spaceship but designer will creates a functional living environment. Design as a functional entity. For so long we have viewed design as taking a phone and “streamling” it to sell for hire prices, but it will remain a phone with no further function. Apple applied design to a portable database of music, and design made it functional to the user, by making it easier to interact with. Anyone can create a mp3 player but the one that won has the most functional design. Functional design is what the future is depending on. Science will create new things in a very raw DOS like system. Designers will create the bridge allowing the not scientist use these the new creations.
The internet was create for scientist to share information. It was a very rough system that could not be used by anyone. Many advances came along to allow the users code knowledge only to know www. And .com. Now we have web developers and web designers. Web developers code, designers create user environments. Designers have been so successful with the Internet, they have created a parallel social environments. Science have create spaces, such as the internet, but designers translated them into environments. The puzzle of living in otter space or a family of 4 living in 700sqft apartment will be solved by the functional designers of the future.