penultimata

(penultimate means, next to last day. antepenultimate means, the day before the next-to-last day.)

Read Gesche Joost and Arne Scheuermann, their Design as Rhetoric: Basic Principles for Design Rhetoric (Paper, Symposium of Swiss Design Network, 2007). The laser printer didn't cooperate when I sought to print a larger size, so you'll have to squint.
The paper is available through Joost's website, here — scroll down, right side — or directly here.

I will supply pages from Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric, and (maybe) of Plato's dialogue Phaedrus, and go through them with you. We may also consider — as our final read? — Gui Bonsiepe, his "visual-verbal rhetoric."
 

cover

Cute

What Is Cute?



Why are things cute? (Vsauce)

Reminds me of subject in reading.

Serif.

I changed the type to a serif thinking maybe this would be a middle ground between the clean thin sans serif I started with and the monospaced courier I went to second. What does everyone think? Better solution?

Catalog

Page Size 11.7" x 16.5" A3

Collection.

changing the type face, size, alignment and shape of the text helped a lot - the text matches the images much better now i think. an index would be nice at the end but do i have enough objects for that? this is ready to print soon. i'll print on cardstock and glue bind it.

Catalogue beginnings - musical equipment

Here's a few pictures of my catalogue design, showing the instruments and musical equipment I have with brief descriptions/back stories. I'm not happy with the layout so far, so you can expect it to change in the near future.

Liv Varney: Catalogue sample - Collection of hats

So I have been working on a few collages, so far I have done two. I don't think they're finished yet but I figured I would stop with them and go back to them if need be. I am showing an image because I'm pretty sure that the paint on it will not be dry enough to carry to class tomorrow. I started off by cutting 7 sheets of paper down to 8.5in x 8in. All of the pages will be the same size that way it will be easier to scan them in without having to adjust their size digitally. I have a lot of scrap paper that I've been using and I printed out some images of my hats in black and white.

Design Types - Ulrich Response

When reading through Ulrich's writing I was kind of surprised. As he was describing the different ways that designers work, I found out that I use more than one type. In my own design process I combine hierarchical, casual relationships, parallel exploration, and existing artifacts. It makes me wonder if anyone else uses more than one type of exploration in their work, or do they limit themselves to one type? I think they must combine things, as I'm not really sure how one could possible only use one exploration method.

Ulrich Response

I found this text different than many of the readings I've done about design while in school. This article took a much different approach than I was use to be describing design in a more industrial and engineering context rather than straight graphic design. I think that design has such a broad spectrum that using any niche in the design field as an example to explain the process of getting from problem to solution through exploration would have sufficed. However, I appreciate that in this case it was not in the context in graphic design, maybe it held my attention a little better to read about familiar concepts in a light that I don't usually see them in. I agree that this is a valuable text to read as a practicing designer because without the process - there is generally no solution. It's almost impossible to come up with the 'right' solution without any background understanding or trial and error. I believe that's just the nature of the field. I appreciated the way that Ulrich talked about drawing abstractly to get across the point of view for the purpose of exploring through representation and abstraction. It solidified for me that as a designer trying to come up with a solution - this type of drawing is all that is proficient for the process. 'Good abstractions suppress details that have little relevance for the central design decisions at hand.' p 41

weds 10 april

Monday, we discussed
Steve Baker's "To Go About Noisily: Clutter, Writing, and Design" (Emigre 35, Summer 1995), here, and read (aloud) through Jane Graves, "What Is the Object's Secret," in her posthumous collection The Secret Lives of Objects (2010).

"Every object contains the history of its own making," Graves writes, "but there is another secret; what the 'other' sees in the object. These two secrets reflect and reverberate upon each other as a pair of revolving mirrors."

While we are developing our catalogues (of "things" in our lives), we're giving some thought to the design of things.

We'll be looking at a Bryan Lawson's discussion of the iterative nature of the “craft-based” design process — particularly the account of the design of the cartwheel, its downtilt (pitch) and forward-angle (foreway). The role of language comes particularly — and literally — into “play” in chapter 15 (Design as conversation and perception), in Lawson's How Designers Think : The Design Process Demystified (Fourth edition, Oxford: Elsevier / Architectural Press, 2006).

We will also look at chapter (4) on "exploration" in Karl T. Ulrich. Design: Creation of artifacts in society (2011), available as a pdf here.

Different Readings

For this assignment I read the chapter on the digital future of graphic design, entitled Printing with Pixels in Cramsie's The story of Graphic design and The Digital Revolution and Beyond in Megg's History of Graphic design. Both books I feel had a good amount of information about the subject, however there are a few key differences that I noticed. In Cramsie the history was more focused on a brief history about the mac computer and how they revolutionized the way graphic design is today. Also in his text he focuses in on a few key designers such as Greiman, Brody, LanderLans and Carson. Which to me are very important people to know during tis time period. Aslo Cramsie's text was for me easier to read and not so overwhelming with information that Megg's seemed to be.
While reading Megg's history on the subject I found the text included a lot of little things that weren't necessary but very interesting. Things such as why a mouse on a computer is called a mouse. You don't really need to know but it's always fun to have some weird trivial knowledge on the subject. Also Megg's text had pictures of what the first icons looked like on the mac and to see that evolve so much is amazing to me. Another thing that I thought was weird during both books with the name "LanderLans" was spelt two different ways Cramsie put "LanderLands" and Meggs put "Landerlans".
Megg's book had a few different artist that did not show up in Cramsie that were good to have but I also think it started to make the chapter drag out a little too long.
Lastly I Megg's book had a section of MTV in the text and how the logo had changed so much. I think both books should have a section of MTV not because it's one of my favorite channels on tv but because of how it started to revolutionize how people made ads and how people designed.