For those who are interested in postmodern typography this video is a brief interview of David Carson and the history of Raygun magazine.
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This is really interesting.
ReplyDeleteI never really liked David Carson, mainly because I never really understood what he was doing. His work looks very masculine and gritty, and aesthetically does not speak to me. I also did not like the fact it was mostly illegible!
Watching this clip I am starting to understand where he was coming from a bit better. I guess I never really gave his work chance before as I found it ugly (which is subjective). It is very interesting when he talks about the starting point for a project not being beyond it. Not thinking I don't want this piece to be ugly or hard to read, I want it to be beautiful and award winning..because this is about the end result. He believes the starting point of a project should be trying to interpret it in a way that is true to that piece not to something else.
Maybe this is a problem we are all having at the moment, I know I want the end result of what I do to be beautiful and new and push bounderies etc. But this is the end and not the process and who knows where our work will take us and what the end result will be. I am beginning to think the end result is almost irrelevant and it is the process that is important, after all these are not commercial projects we have no client and no budget and I really should be enjoying this freedom more than worrying if my hand-in will fulfil all these other superficial criteria!
(OMG sorry...having a saturday morning rant here!!)
ReplyDeleteGoing back to the idea of subjectivity. If you think something is ugly, you are less likely to give it time to understand it, decode it. Postmodernist stuff obviously takes a bit of time and effort to understand/read (talking readability here – check me out with my new found glossary!!) So even if what you are designing is a 'true interpretation' if it is ugly as shit and no one pays it any attention, is it doing a good job??
Is this what Carson was doing with the Brian Ferry interview? He was saying this is a heap of shit so I don't want anyone to spend anytime trying to read it??
I am very interesting in the notion of the designer creating something that they feel good about, that rewards them on a personal level. This maybe political or maybe aesthetic or might even be commercial – my design for baked bean packaging has upped sales by 50% kind of thing!
ReplyDeleteTo get fulfillment I guess we need to understand what it is about us that makes us personally feel rewarded.I have absolutely no idea what that is for me at the moment but I intend to find out this year!
I'm gonna quote Carson now as I find what he says interesting, I am not sure if I agree or not and I am interested in what you guys think??
"Self indulgent was the big negative term. I think it is a very positive term, I wouldn't want anyone working for me that wasn't doing very self indulgent work – totally absorbed in it! So as we get more computerised I think it gets more important than ever that work actually gets more subjective, more personal, and that you let your personality come through in the work. So it becomes more important that you pull from who you are as a person and put that into the work!"
So what do you have to say about that??
Becky
ReplyDeleteEverything you mentioned I ask myself as well, and I believe most of us will continue doing so.
I also think the journey is the most important bit, and if the final piece is successful, great! But if not, failure can teach us even more.
In my opinion, we all have to work with stuff we are not that passionate, this is reality and maybe it would be helpful to look at the bright side of the backed bean packaging - upped sales by 50% is a hell of a victory, girl! Seriously.
About Carson, I respect his point of view but this is where self indulgent graphic design stay on the way of the message. After all dont you think we should have the right to decide if the message was useful by our own means and not by the graphic designer?
Becks,
ReplyDeleteIf your interested on David Carson's work, have a look this lecture:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFpANOqSdi8&feature=channel
X
This is a very interesting point Marina. The graphic designer should not be telling us what to think, we should be able to make our own mind up. But unfortunately I think it is impossible to communicate anything without having an opinion and even if it is not the designers personal opinion the client will have an opinion or the brand will stand for something. Nothing is completely neutral.
ReplyDeleteEven in Tony's Indymedia, although the medium is free of spin the content will be massively opinionated.Indeed if you don't have an opinion then you have nothing to say at all!
Ahhhhh deeeeeep! Think I have confused myself there!!!
From the Rhetoric texts:
ReplyDeleteKind of says what I'm on about a bit better..
"The champions of rhetoric argue that the systematic ambiguity of linguistic signs is an inevitable consequence of the power of language, and is an in dispensable part of the means of human communication. In thrashing out the theoretical question whether there can or cannot be any communication without rhetoric, the arguments seem to favor the latter alternative... If they were not, communication would die of sheer inanition.
“Pure“ information exists for the designer only in arid abstraction. As soon as he begins to give it concrete shape, the process of rhetorical infiltration begins."
Gui Bonsiepe
Visual/VerbalRhetoric
LookingCloser3
And another one
ReplyDelete"....often this stuff comes with its own meaning, its own identity. One does not have to be invented for it. All designers need to do is make sure that their presentation of it doesn't fix the interpretation of it (if its meant to remain open that is). If you're thinking "where's the graphic design in that?" then I'm sympathetic with you because like a lot of things, when it works, we don't notice it – it becomes invisible. well designed signage for instance. This is why I will always celebrate first the important things design does that everyone takes for granted before I congratulate those pieces that steal the limelight with a clever gag."
Ideas are overrated
Graphic design does not need ideas to be thoughtful.
D&AD Nick Bell
"When typography dominates in identity, like it does on the posters at the Barbican and the Whitechapel art galleries, does communication become more about projecting a mood and less about delivering messages?"
ReplyDeleteNick Bell
The Steam Roller of Branding
Eye Magazine 53 Autumn 2004