Lizzie Wa Design

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Lizzie W-A

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Week Three – Fields of Practice | Designers, Design, New Languages, Theory and the New Aesthetic

This week we looked at the ideas of globalisation and design terminology and categorisation. Globalisation Globalisation is the process by which the world is becoming increasingly interconnected as a result of massively increased trade and cultural exchange. Dictionary.com From the lectures and resources provided this week it became clear that globalisation has massively effected design…

This week we looked at the ideas of globalisation and design terminology and categorisation.

Globalisation

Globalisation is the process by which the world is becoming increasingly interconnected as a result of massively increased trade and cultural exchange.

Dictionary.com

From the lectures and resources provided this week it became clear that globalisation has massively effected design and how design studios work. It has increased collaboration and allowed designers to work easily with people outside their studio, outside their city or even outside of their country. The increase of technology and globalisation seem to be two things that are closely linked.

Technology and globalisation have meant that visual culture has become more uniform across the world, and its much harder to see where has come from now.

A lot of designers seems to still value the benefits of face to face time with clients, but with the technology of video calling becoming such a big part of our lives (especially this year with the pandemic and lockdowns) it has become almost unnecessary to meet clients face to face.

This coming together of designers from across the world creates a great pool of talent, where designers can share knowledge and resources. The more designers come into contact with different cultures, different ways of creating art and even different cities their inspiration will only ever grow. With design from all over the world at our fingertips there should be no shortage of inspiration. However, the massive amount of information available can also be overwhelming and cause designers work to be samey and inauthentic.

Workshop Challenge One

What is the scope and what are the boundaries of graphic design today? Current and future?

Categorising design can be divisive, it can limit and set boundaries for a practise that is so inherently creative. Can you really set a boundary between what is art and what is design?

Fountain, Marcel Duchamp – (Pinterest)

Regular practise said when defining your work ‘Is it the things you work with or the place your work sits’. This reminded me of Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’. Duchamp bought a ‘Bedfordshire’ model urinal, signed it R. Mutt, titled it Fountain and submitted it to a gallery. This opened up an interesting question about what makes something, art.

“Duchamp would continuously explore the boundaries between original and copy, collapsing any hierarchical value distinctions between and expanding the notion of authorship.”

(Cros 2006)

Questioning the boundaries and categories of art and design is therefore not just a recent thing.

The D&AD Awards

Since 1962, D&AD has been inspiring a community of creative thinkers by celebrating and stimulating the finest in design and advertising. The D&AD Awards are recognised globally as the ultimate creative accolade, entered and attended by the best from around the world.

(D&AD Awards website)

The D&AD awards separate winners into 40 different categories. That in itself says so much. The two broad terms of ‘Design’ and ‘Art Direction’ have within them (at least) 40 different categories showing how hard to define and fluid design can be. Backing this idea up is the fact that most entries are in more than one section. They have clearly found it hard to categorise each design, as one design can contain so many different elements. Many of the entries could have, in my opinion, actually have been placed in even more sections than they currently are in. 

I think when the lines are blurred between different categories, that is when design seems to create the most impact and stand out from the crowd.  For example, the ‘World Cup – History Will Be Made’ animation. This animation is created with a tapestry, but the animation is also the tapestry being made. The combination of the modern art of animation with the traditional art of tapestry is a bold and attention grabbing contrast. It also fits well with a sport that is so important to the modern generation but also has such traditional roots. I think it is the coming together of these two very different mediums that creates the impact. (D&AD, 2019)

Reading the ‘Design Dictionary’ the writers admit the same issue.

“there can be no unambiguous and conclusive definition of terms like “design research,” for example— because, very much in keeping with the essence of design and by all means indebted to different approaches to explanation, they are constantly transforming— a dictionary of design can be no more, and no less, than the beginning of a process of understanding. […] We are expecting it to provoke contradiction— and indeed we desire that.”

(Erlhoff, Marshall and de Gruyter, 2007)

However, they still believe the categorisation and understanding of design terminology is important for both designers and clients alike. 

Other entrants into the competition that highlight the difficulty in categorising design are ‘Eat like Andy’ and ‘Let’s Talk’. Eat like Andy uses Andy Warhols art as advertising. They are turning his art on its head. He used everyday design for his art and here burger king takes that back to use his art to then advertise their company. The advert caused a lot of confusion, but this confusion caused the advert to stick in peoples memories. This shows again the power of design that doesn’t fit into boundaries. Lets Talk, uses typography but draws this directly onto peoples faces before photographing them. This blurs the categories typography with photography and art. (D&AD, 2019)

Design terminology is important for the client to understand what they want. It allows designers to specialise and delve deeply into a specific topic. This categorisation of design is important to keep the commercial side of design running smoothly. However, the blurring and fluidity between the design categories that have been set out allow creativity to flourish. It is as if the creation of boundaries is what’s needed to encourage designers to push them, to create something that is new and different that will capture peoples imagination.

Workshop Challenge Two

Ten different types of graphic design practice today
Choose a piece of design that breaks definitions of design practice and write a paragraph describing this practice.

Bushe – http://www.suprematika.ru/en/portfolio/bushe 

I think the branding of this cafe in Saint Petersburg is a piece of design that breaks traditional definitions of design practise. The advertising uses the textures of Saint Petersburg, the buildings, graffiti etc to bring life to simple cut out posters. Instead of taking inspiration from the world around them, Suprematika actually decided to make the textures of the city into food and drink on these posters. They then used these textures on the packaging of the items. The two give each other meaning.  They are using the physical world as part of their design. This really unites people with the brand as its drawing on a shared and very local narrative. It makes the brand feel genuine and as if they have a deep understanding of the location and the people who live there, which is such an important part of a cafe. The use of Saint Petersburg in their design also shows they are proud of the city they are based in and want to celebrate that in their design. 

Come up with a new term that describes this area of work.

What is it they are actually doing here? It’s not so much design as a different way of looking at their surroundings. Adapting the textures to fit their purpose. Finding beauty in the crumbling paintwork, messy walls and graffiti. 

Texture, Location, Physical, Window, Solid

Situational

Defined as: relating to or dependent on a set of circumstances or state of affairs.
or relating to the location and surroundings of a place

My new design term is: Situ-design

Editorial Layout

My Layout

I kept my text to a strict grid and then tried to push out of that a bit with the images and typography. I chose colours that I think complement the images to help it look unified.

Crit feedback

“Think the colours work well together in week 3, with the pictures etc. Think a couple of the images could be a bit larger, similar to the shell.”

“There’s definitely potential in your layout. Look to the references shared at the beginning of the course for typographic inspiration.”

“In the editorial there is a little bit of blank space that isn’t balanced off.” 

“You said you found Week 3 the hardest but your layout looks beautiful and effortless. Perhaps you could resize the first image on your left-hand page to make more use of the space?” 

I was a little unhappy with the simplicity of my design and wanted to take the opportunity to push the design a little further. After receiving feedback I took the comments into account and tried to create a design that was a little more free and pushed the boundaries more.

Extra Notes

Conclusion

The categorisation of graphic design is a complex issue. As a thing design is so fluid and ever-changing, the idea of categorising it seems at first thought like it would be pointless. However, categories allow the commercial side to work, it allows designers to specialist uncertain fields and it allows customers to gain an understanding of what they want and what a designer can create for them. It also seems to me like the creation of categories gives designers the desire to make something completely different and new to break these boundaries. The D&AD awards show a brilliant and wide ranging selection of design work, showing that design can pretty much be anything someone can imagine or dream up.

With my design this week, I wanted to show the structure of these categories by fitting my text into a strict structure. I then, after some feedback, tried to push the other elements of my layout further out of the structure to show the pushing of boundaries. I made sure to keep my colour palette consistent and complimented by my use of images in the hope that this unity would allow me to push the elements further, without sacrificing the overall look of the design.

References

Cros, Caroline. Marcel Duchamp, Reaktion Books, Limited, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/falmouth-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1582748.
Created from falmouth-ebooks on 2020-10-07 09:11:50.

Design Dictionary : Perspectives on Design Terminology, edited by Michael Erlhoff, and Timothy Marshall, Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/falmouth-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3063015. Created from falmouth-ebooks on 2020-10-06 13:13:08.

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