Week 7

Art and Design

This week's readings include Rick Poyer's "Art's Little Brother," M/M's (Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak) Royal College of Art discussion with David Blamey, and Kees Dorst's "But is it Art?"

Art's Little Brother
In this article, Poyer's discusses design's relationship with art.  In most examples and instances he cites, art seems to have a higher status than design.  This was true even in instances where design and art seemed to mix, like a design gallery or magazine featuring artists, not graphic designers.  The article also goes into how different people confronted the differences between art and design, with some people like Judd keeping them completely separate, and some people like Arad who tried to combine art and design.  Poyer also mentions how art doesn't necessarily have to beautiful but design usually is.  Personally for me, I feel that design is a sort of functional art.  While I guess I do prefer beautiful art and hence beautiful or good design, there are many ways to go about designing something, and all of these possibilities could be beautiful.  Different designs will come from different people, just like art.   I know there is some distinction between art and design, but I feel it is similar to how painting would be different from illustration.

• design was seen lower than art
• however the line between design and art are getting more and more vague
• There are instances in media where art draws from design but art still seems dominant
• design is for practicality and function while art is for the artist's own vision
• Greenberg: "closer to furniture than art"
• Examples of artists/designers
• Donald Judd: kept art and design seperate
• Ron Arad: art in design
• Hella Jongerius: blur art and design
• Tord Boontje: decorative motifs in design
• Stephen Bayley: art can elevate design
• Dunne & Raby: flexible
• Art may resist beauty but Design embraces it

Royal College of Art discussion with David Blamey
In this interview, Blamey interviews M/M about their positions as graphic designers in the art world. M/M don't mind mixing in with the art world, in fact they embrace art and find they it just happens that they are designing in the art world.  They state that art and design should respect each other, and recount a story about how their names were erased from a gallery invitation that they designed. M/M discuss some examples where designers would claim they are still doing design even though it looks like they could be artists. They also talk about how the division between art and design is recent and mention Michelangelo. Michelangelo was a designer and artist for the Sistine Chapel, though M/M also say he would be called an artisan during that time.  Blamey sums up the interview, declaring some art is as bad as design and some design as good as art.  While reading this article, I felt that both parties made sure to make it clear that neither design nor art was better than the other. However, I felt that Blamey did slip up a little, claiming art is as bad as design and some design is as good as art. Why couldn't it be "as bad as art" or "as good as design"?  In the last statement he makes he seems to inadvertently favor art.

• Always graphic designers, but in a different setting
• relational aesthetics could be a definition for design
• art and design should respect each other
• design relates more to reality, art can relate or create their own reality
• some designers won't admit they are artists
• division between art and design is recent
• some art is as bad as design and some design is as good as art

But, is it Art?

This article by Dorst quickly mentions design existing in the artist's process and art existing in the designer's process.  Once as artist decides what he or she wants to do, their self challenges are like a design problem, while over a period of time a designer can look back and remember their thought process and can see how now to make it better, similar to an artist. I agree with what Dorst has to say, and that design and art must always exist in each other.  They are more intertwined than science and math.  While their goals may be different, the process towards that goal is still extremely similar.  

• art education in the west is focused on personal development
• artist must find his or her own goals
• but once goal is found very similar to a design process
• border between art and design is permeable
• designer can develop his or her goals like an artist
• just a different medium

Week 6

Sustainability Exercises

Ten Ways Graphic Designers can use paper responsibly

1. Not use paper at all: a graphic designer could just do web design or design relating to things on the computer.  This way paper wouldn't even be used.
2. Research types of printer ink or toner. Find printer ink or toner that is most environmentally friendly.
3. Research types of paper.  Find the paper that is most environmentally friendly.  Find out how the paper is manufactured and if it is recyclable.
4. Set a budget. Limit how much paper you use in general.
5. Reuse scrap pieces of paper.  Print again on the back of used paper to make the most of it.
6. Use up all the space on a paper. Design things that take advantage of the space on the paper in an effort to use as much of the paper as possible.
7. Start a campaign about using paper responsibly. A poster, for example, would say where and how it was made and why it is sustainable.
8. Design a project in a way that it can be used more than once.  A poster, for example, can be perforated and distributed as business cards.
9. Calculate how many "trees" you've used and plant new trees to replace them and incorporate it in a sustainability project.
10. Before printing something, mix your own inks to match the project's colors as to not waste default colors that you don't intend to use.

Sustainable Graphic Design

Something that I see everyday that has been thrown away is gum.  There are always black spots of gum stuck on the sidewalk.  This problem could be solved a variety of ways.  The hardest way would to make gum decomposable, since that would entirely change how gum is made.  Other efforts that could be made is to direct the user to throw the gum away properly, either in the wrapper or in the trash.  This problem of litter may still persist however, but it would be easier to remove than if the gum was actually stuck on the wrapper instead of on the ground.  

Some sketch ideas:

Week 5 Response

Vernacular Design

This week's readings include We're Here to be Bad, by Tibor Kalman and Karrie Jacobs, and Professionalism, Amateurism and the Boundaries of Design, by Gerry Beegan and Paul Atkinson.

We're Here to be Bad
The authors in this article comment on the majority of advertising design and denounce it, ranting on how designers have lost focus on design as an art and have sold out to big companies.  Kalman and Jacobs claim that design has reached a point where designers can choose a safe design that appeals to everyone, instead of choosing to design something that questions the company and and viewers.  Big corporations also support "safe design" because they would prefer not to take risks with their advertising campaigns where money is involved.  The authors also mention that designers have become cogs in a machine, that design sometimes fades out into business.  They turn their focus on vernacular design, telling us that good design is design that isn't noticed on a daily basis.  I feel that this point is a bit contradictory since everyday design could be affected by today's culture anyway.  Just because big corporations or a marketing department isn't involved doesn't mean that recent trends in design don't affect local design. However, overall I generally agree with the authors.  A good design (or bad in this case) isn't design that follows the guidelines of what is good or imitates another professional's work, but design that works to solve the problem or communicate an idea.  This design could challenge a client, but I feel that it doesn't necessarily have to either.

• all good design isn't good
• make an effort to be bad, to challenge the conventional
• Designers have been sucked into the process and are cogs in the machine
• Designers have sold themselves out, using their skills for money instead of art
• Images that corporations churn out fools consumers, whether rich or poor
• Best design takes place outside of the profession: vernacular design
• Need to forget what we learned in design school and need to inject art into commerce

Professionalism, Amateurism and the Boundaries of Design
In this article by Gerry Beegan and Paul Atkinson, the changing positions of design are examined.  One of these changing trends are the relationship between the amateur and professional and how various people reacted to the DIY (do it yourself) movement.  Steven Heller, for example, argues that by making design easier, it closes the gap, and professionals lose their elite status that give them credibility.  However Ellen Lupton counters with the point that credibility should come from the design's relevance to everyday life, and that everyone can design something for themselves whether big or small. The point is made that not only do professionals influence amateurs, but amateurs can also influence professionals because of their ability to work outside the closed system and provide new ideas.  Architecture is also referenced in terms of design, where an essay by Edward Prior, he states that architecture started focusing on architecture itself instead of the people inside the buildings. The "ghosts" of the profession were the workers that worked with the master architect since only the master architect is credited. In this case this could also be seen as amateur designers, who can silently influence a professional's work. Some of these influences can include vernacular design and dilettante design.  For example, while vernacular design can be seen as good or bad, these judgments clearly dictate that there is a decision on what is good or bad design and thus what can be used for good design.  Dilettante design can also bring new ideas from other disciplines despite people's opinions that dilettantes spread themselves out too thinly over many activities.  Overall I think this essay is a good examination of how non-professional design can affect professional design and that design is evident everywhere. We can always draw our ideas from many sources because design exists in so many forms and places.

• Perhaps amateurs also affect professionals
• Similarities between architecture as a profession and design as a profession
• ghosts could be seen as amateurs
• Vernacular design
• Various names of Italian vernacular architecture suggest ways the vernacular relates back to the culture
• Dilettante design
• The Miriskusniki's approach - knowledgeable about theatre, ballet, and opera
• both viewer's and creators
• Amateurs
• various examples - self-building, web design, etc
• Vernacular modernism - generative principles of the modern condition
• The designer is connected to the user