Goodness, I feel I’m finally getting used to the whole portfolio website thing. VIRB is a great site and I think in a couple of weeks I’ll have a solid site.
Just ordered a portfolio book online, too. 11”x14” with hidden posts and a slipcase. Can’t wait to get it!
Response to Print Design Death Articles
Question: Is the technology age that’s supposedly ruining the print industry going to take over as soon as we think? We always talk about music and television progressing as fast as it is, but those are still examples. If the death of the print industry dying were really a problem, we would be talking about specific problems within graphic design instead of those other examples. Most all design work is web-based now? Okay, that’s a more direct problem, but it’s self-centered. We talk about the world succumbing to technology, and the demand for web designers over print designers is discouraging, but the world still needs print design. The economy is unable to sustain the ambition of all kids in school being supplied with e-readers. Not every school and street corner can afford a huge plasma screen, so posters and mailers will still be needed to advertise products and services. People still watch television, but with fast-forward capabilities and Hulu, television commercials are becoming less frequent. Also, I feel like “guerilla advertising” is becoming the norm as people try to stand out from the rest of the advertising barrage and delineating from electronic media is the most obvious way to go.
Question: Are we the only ones freaking out about this? I feel so much of the reverence of print is in the design community – is the conversation held within this one group alone? Is that enough to sustain the print industry? It may sound a like a jaded, apathetic jerk, but the advocacy of print design within one community won’t be enough to change to change the direction of the medium. If print designed becomes devalued and the designers strive to keep it alive, we can – but it’ll only be present in our specific group. I feel like print design in a future devoid of print will be made by designers, for designers. However, since I am a part of the design community, I cannot afford to be so detached. If it’s the design community that’s so attached to print design and we’re the ones produce the design, perhaps there will be some collective sprit of print advocacy and we can steadily steer society away from an overabundance of electronic media together. It may cancel the impending doom of print, but it will for sure slow it down.
Also, isn’t it ironic that we’re all getting so worked up about the death of print, and now we’re posting our response on a blog?
After reading a couple articles on the affects of technology on today’s society, we attempted to ask ourselves questions to further explore the issue through thought and discussion.
How has technology changed the nature of our relationships, both formal and informal?
We all talk about how Facebook being referred to as “social networking” is ironic, in that it discourages any substantial communication. Consider the emphasis on “substantial” when looking at difference between quality and quantity. Facebook keep us loosely connected to people we wouldn’t normally talk to, so we have more potential communication, but less meaningful communication. But why? What’s so wrong about a guy talking to his girlfriend over skype and holding a conversation without being distracted by wanting to get physical? Can conversations be less messy without the pressure to blurt something out and the having the ability to think something through before we press “send?” People yell at each other to “think before they speak” in numerous occasions. In our group discussion, we threw the idea of gaining information over the internet as fast food – quick, cheap, and low-quality. Internet dating can be a little sketch, but the concept of meeting someone based solely on conversation instead of relying on a movie or concert be some sort of go-between interaction is not a bad idea… in my opinion. Honestly, if you’re really meant to establish a substantial personal relationship with someone, you’ll end up connecting and maintaining that relationship, with or without the internet.
I wouldn’t use this conversation for formal relationships, however, which brings me to the next question: how do changes in technology affect finding a job?
It’s so common for employers to ask people to send their portfolios online or provide some sort of link to their portfolio site. I can foresee this putting more emphasis on the quality of their work, rather than the personality of the applicant and how well they will fit into the work environment. My fiancé has seen numerous cases where his company hires intelligent people, but they don’t last more than a couple months on the job because the work environment is so distinct in its work ethic. If this happens in the design world, employers may be left with a handful of designers who may produce good work to begin with, but never reach their full potential in the work place because they are who they are and they work where they work; applicants who may be discarded because of their lacking portfolio may start off slow, but can learn and thrive and become one of the most skilled designers in the right work environment.
It seems face-to-face interviews for initial hiring opportunities are rare. I got my first job by walking into a store and having a somewhat casual conversation with the hiring manager, and he my easy-going socialization and confidence and decided I would be perfect for a position as a sales associate. My parents mentioned that socialization was prime means of finding a job in their time, but it seems technology has grown us to be accustomed to having a quick fix at our fingertips.
Fashion and culture: The Origins of Style and the Balance of Influence
Zoot suits and statements of race:
http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/whole_cloth/u7sf/u7materials/cosgrove.html
Short article on fashion branding:
Full curriculum lesson plan featuring the relation of fashion to political trends:
http://www.tip.sas.upenn.edu/curriculum/units/2009/02/09.02.04.pdf
The effect of culture on fashion in 18th century France:
http://www.lagrange.edu/resources/pdf/citations/2009/18History_Jones.pdf
As strong as McLuhan may be through articulation, it’s easy to spot the outlandish nature of his condemnation of the phonetic alphabet being the complete corruption of mental stimulus and ability to create community. I usually pass off these types of interviews as crotchety old men who have nothing better to do but rant about this and that, but I found him to be interesting, non-threatening, and his voice translates to a pleasant read. One of my favorite sections is where he’s explaining the concept of “acoustic space:”
I mean space that has no center and no margin, unlike strictly visual space, which is an extension and intensification of the eye. Acoustic space is organic and integral, perceived through the simultaneous interplay of all the senses; whereas “rational” or pictorial space is uniform, sequential and continuous and creates a closed world with none of the rich resonance of the tribal echoland… By their dependence on the spoken word for information, people were drawn together into a tribal mesh; and since the spoken word is more emotionally laden than the written—conveying by intonation such rich emotions as anger, joy, sorrow, fear—tribal man was more spontaneous and passionately volatile. Audile-tactile tribal man partook of the collective unconscious, lived in a magical integral world patterned by myth and ritual, its values divine and unchallenged…
I know everyone is talking about how this amazing it is that he just about predicted the future by saying speech will cease to exist, seeing how this interview was commenced in 1961; I relate this notion to previous quote about how the “the spoken word is more emotionally laden than the written” in that society has gotten so comfortable with informal mean of communication. I believe texting and the internet have fed our fear of honest communication by allowing easy outs, and the disintegration of speech is tied to a deeper, more spiritual disintegration. By the end of the article, I can totally understand McLuhan’s stance on the strength of the tribal man. Agree completely? Hardly… there was a stifling multitude of ideas to sift through, but I’ll give him far more credit than the next street-preacher telling me that technology is going to take over my brain and subject me to the dictatorship plots (this actually happened in downtown Eugene, so yeah.)
10 Design related projects I would be interested in…
Package Design – I love tactile and experiential qualities and package design is the most accessible form that contains these qualities.
Branding – I thoroughly enjoyed the process of researching a brand and their mission and then applying that knowledge to the development of graphics, patterns, and textures into a finely tuned, interconnected visual system.
Apparel Design – Clothes shopping is a weakness of mine and I often waste hours looking at beautiful and unique dresses on clothing websites. I see clothing as an artistic composition that employs the various elements of design, such as line, shape, color, variation, etc.
Fashion Branding – I enjoy observing the connections between a clothing label and lifestyle: what type of person would shop where, and people who wear these clothes like to do this… it’s intriguing to see how clothing brands define themselves if people shop at that store because they relate to the lifestyle represented by the brand, or if they wear the clothes because they want to become that type of person.
Event Coordination – Like branding, an event is a set of components (décor, lighting, activities, food) that are intricately woven together to create one unique experience. I’m also interested in the coordination of space, like “put this next to this so people will spend more money” – designing schematics in order to control thinking and action.
Restaurant Design – Restaurants have the unique component of incorporating taste and flavor in an experience, which makes the branding and experiential component of design more complex and moving. Also, food prep and presentation has also been appealing to me.
Interior/Atmospheric Design – I seldom forget stores, restaurants, or hotels that evoke a strong mood – a place where I feel like a different person by simply stepping into the space. Like branding, it would be interesting to explore the strong visual cues used in well-designed public establishments.
Post-Purchase Packaging – This may seem weird, but I have a shopping bag full of shopping bags stuffed in my closet. I love saving bags with unique form and materials and am interested in exploring more deliberate marketing concepts behind designing post-purchase components.
Book Cover Design – I mentioned this before in another post, but I definitely am one to literally judge a book by its cover. I like the concept of exemplifying an entire story though a single composition that is the cover. Or, do they only represent one aspect of the story though the cover? How do people choose that single aspect? It’s very similar to point-of-purchase concepts with packaging design, but you’re “packaging” a story, rather than a concept.
Perfume Bottles – Kind of random, but it goes along with packaging design – how can you design perfume bottle to represent a scent? Often a simple liquid with no other visible cue as to how it smells, perfume can be a challenge to package with their crazy descriptions on the back of the box. Seriously, I would love to see someone’s process for designing a bottle for “a blend taps into the power of frosted radiance to promote overall well-being with artemisia leaves, ambrette, and white pepper add to the soothing scent.”
Being able to stand out in the crowd in order to find a job is nothing new. Of course, the recession has further emphasized this need, but a good economic climate doesn’t mean there is no competition. Yes, there may be less competition, but that should be no excuse to be lazy and not make the effort to make yourself the most appealing designer on the block because it’s easier to get a job.
I believe the DIY movement is about half economic response and half trend. In my opinion, every trend in culture is a reaction against another trend, and emergence of DIY was inevitable. Low budget crafts are good for the everyday creative mind, but carving type out of wood for a poster can be more expensive than rendering it with a computer program – but we do this because more often than not because it’s more aesthetically valuable than a stale photoshop effect, which has no relation to budget. This is not true for all instances, but I feel designers need to stop thinking about the health of the economy and do the best with that they have at their disposal. Of course, low budgets have effected the type of work being produced, such as urban farming, but it takes just as much creativity to think of those ideas as it would to come up with a successful multi-million dollar campaign.
There just as much competition in the financially poor DIY crowd as the large firms with substantial finances at their disposal – it just depends on where you find yourself when looking for a job, and it’s the creative strength behind your work that employers will notice, whether you had a hand in a dumpster pool or the famous Old Spice “Smell like a Man” campaign. Really, stop worrying, look at what’s in reach, get it, and do your absolute best to make it the best.
Mutt Industries
Mutt Industries is a design studio with a quirky personality. The founders include a the former executive creative director of Wieden+Kenndey, Steve Lucker, another former W+K creative director in Mike McCommon, and W+K’s former Director of Planning, Scott Cromer. All three have numerous multi-million dollar advertising campaigns in their resume, but prefer a more casual and interactive environment to inspire them – in their company profile, they describe the studio as “accomplished as any purebred. World-class creative minus the world-class bureaucracy.” The entire studio is comprised of eleven to twelve employees, but they focus on hiring multi-disciplined designers to meet the demands of big-name companies like Nike, Coca-Cola, ESPN, Target, HP, Heineken and Discovery, among others.
“In selecting an agency we were looking for real thought leaders who were comfortable pushing the envelope and redefining the relationship between a brand and its consumers,” said Corey Maynard, Director of Marketing for Gerber.
IDEO
After viewing a television special in Pre-Press last spring term, may of us are familiar with IDEO in their innovative design process; a high emphasis on collaboration and hiring a wide range of disciplines. The work environment is designed as a hybrid of personal workspace and collaborative work space, for the studio sees interaction as an essential factor to the design process. More importantly, however, is that their design process focuses so acutely on the target audience to the point where they employ “Human Factor Specialists” to infuse a high dose of empathy, passion, and effective communication into every aspect of a design.
When describing what it would be like to work as a designer at IDEO, their website mentions that one will “work collaboratively, creatively, and flexibly within interdisciplinary teams and with our clients. IDEO’s human-centered design process involves careful observations of people; gathering insights from those observations and other creative perspectives; exploring and defining design opportunities; helping to define strategy; creating tangible design expressions; and communicating the essence of these ideas. Being a designer at IDEO means you do a lot of listening, observing, brainstorming and iterating with a group of people with backgrounds very different than yours. This diversity of thought and approach results in breakthrough ideas that lead to innovative outcomes.”
David Carson
David Carson is known for bringing about a new style in graphic design; the visual grunge style of his work and play between imagery and type brought to the forefront the idea of typographic legibility not being equivalent to effective communication.
In an interview with Vibe Magazine, Carson gives this insight into the relationship of one’s personal life to the design process: “My environment always influences me. I’m always taking photos and I believe things I see and experience influence the work. Not directly, but indirectly in some shape or color or something that registers. The ocean has always played a big part in my life, but it’s hard to say exactly what that influence is in regards to the work. But I’m always scanning the environment I’m in, and I’m sure it ends up in the work. I think it’s really important that designers put themselves into the work. No one else has your background, upbringing, life experiences, and if you can put a bit of that into your work, two things will happen: you’ll enjoy the work more, and you’ll do your best work. Otherwise, we don’t really need designers—anyone can buy the same programs and learn to do “reasonable, safe” design.”
In a less formal published interview, more details about Carson’s personal work environment are revealed: “Instead, in true West Coast style he concentrates on the vibe, having a studio with a view to inspire: “I look out the window and see palm trees.” Looking around the inside he notes with pride: “It’s messy. Lots of colour, surfboards, photos, pictures of kids and past loves, stuff from all the travels.” It seems the work may simply be an extension of the person. There’s one more essential ingredient before anything can get done: “I can’t work without music.” But even this lacks orgainisation, something music lovers everywhere will find hard to deal with: “I’m looking at hundreds of CDs, all hopelessly separated from their cases, never to be reunited.” Extending the messing-up then sifting-and searching process he’s famous for into his CD collection, David’s last word of advice is totally practical: “You’ll do your best work if you work to music you like.”
http://www.markpenfold.net/writing/david_carson.pdf
