Four “I”s

What process do you use to accomplish your design projects?

What steps do you take to complete the assignment efficiently and effectively?

Do you have a repeatable method that guides you from brief to solution that takes many options into consideration?

If you don’t, you should. It keeps you focused and productive in the face of the pressures that naturally accompany graphic design (or most any other creative) projects.

May I suggest the following Four “I”s.

Inspiration: There is inspiration for projects everywhere. You may have heard it called your “visual vocabulary.” Designers need to be students of design and it shows up in just about every place you look. Another term you may have heard is “swipe file.” The truth is just about anything will inspire just about anything if you’re sensitive to it.

Investigation: Applying the inspiration to the project at hand while asking “What if?” is a crucial part of arriving at a solution. Experiment! Discover! Attempt many possibilities! Your best solution is seldom your first one. The more possibilities you design, the more you have to consider. And refining a bad idea results in a refined bad idea. Commit to the search.

Iteration: When you’ve arrived at a workable solution, even it can be revised toward a better solution. Consideration of the many nuances of the design may indicate better ways of completing it. This also gives the chance for sizes, arrangements, colors, typefaces to show up as elements of the best possible solution.

Implementation: Put the design to work. Put all of the previous research into play in the environment for which it was designed. Think through all possible needs and collect the files that will be needed. Prepare the final files for delivery or production as necessary and pass them along to the responsible parties. Even at this point assess the success or lack thereof of your work. Is there something you overlooked? Fix it and remember it for the next project.

This is just one of many methods that result in designs that are appropriate to the brief given. If you choose not to use this one, find one that works for you and use it well. Your designs will be evidence of your thoughtful process.

Happy designing!

Everything’s Cumulative

I’ve reached the end of another semester of university level teaching of various graphic design subjects. I always come to these times wondering how well I really did passing along the knowledge to rising designers. Did they understand the principles put before them as the time-honored guidelines that will strengthen their work going forward? Did they believe the anecdotal lessons about quality, reputation and hard work? Did they internalize the advice of professionals offered to encourage and inspire them to discipline after the grades are posted? These and other questions haunt me at the end of the term.

But I’ve come away this term more solidly convinced or two things in formal design education.

1. If you (the student) are more concerned with developing your design talent, the good grades will come. If you (the student) are more concerned with your grade, neither (good design or good grades) will come.

2. (More to the point of this post) Every project – EVERY PROJECT – is cumulative.

The students are wondering if there is a big final project that will be comprehensive or cumulative in its scope for the sake of the final grade. They are concerned with the result of a semester’s work and the final requirement before completing the term. So they ask about that possibility.

I remind them that in graphic design as well as a number of other life skills, everything uses what has been learned before. The principles learned in yesterday’s exercise will be used in today’s project and those same principles honed in today’s project will be used in tomorrow’s project and so on down the line. These are tools in the toolbox to be used when the solution requires it. These various skills are solutions looking for a problem and when the problem arises one must remember the skills that are needed to solve it.

Isn’t this obvious? Musicians know their scales. Athletes know their drills. Lawyers know their cases. Business people know their plans.

So now that you have left my lab dear student (now that you have your grade posted), please remember the lessons given for your improvement because tomorrow – definitely next semester – those same lessons will be needed in your next projects. Do your best to employ them because I assure you everything is cumulative and forgetting them will affect your grade or your success in the workplace.

Loss of a giant I’ve only recently met.

Milton Glaser died last week (June 26, 2020). I never personally met the man. I only know him through his writings and documentaries about him found online. But when a person at the top of your profession passes away the void left is no less grievous.

When I was working on my masters degree, I enrolled in a research class ostensibly to learn how to perform proper academic investigation to arrive at a supported conclusion. Since the degree was to be in graphic design, I felt strongly that the subject should coincide with that topic in some way. There were to be two such research courses. One was to deal with specific people while the second was to deal with specific periods of history. And to give further background, I am coming to this academic pursuit as a practitioner of graphic design with no formal education in it. In other words I had graduated from college with a degree in fine art not graphic design. All I had learned about graphic design, I had learned after graduation while employed in the field. My schooling had been on the job training.

Anyway back to the courses.

In the people course, I was to choose three or four well-known practitioners and research their careers and come to some relevant conclusion. I chose Joseph Mueller Brockmann, Paul Rand, Saul Bass and Milton Glaser. In my research the first conclusion at which I arrived was “Why don’t I know this stuff?” Remember, I had no formal graphic design education. I had never heard of Meggs History of Graphic Design and the hundreds of other designers on whose shoulders I was blindly operating. Much of the recent history (digital tools mainly) I had experienced while it was being made at my drafting table.

Anyway back to the research.

Three of the four designers I had chosen were dead. Glaser was the only one still alive at the time so there was much written by and about him. There were many videos available about him as well. It seemed less dry and dusty to research someone still alive. It seemed somehow more like getting to know someone rather than getting to know about someone since the man was alive and working in New York only one time zone to the east. I tried to learn what he would teach. I tried to understand his motives. I tried to determine his methods all to be able to pass them along to my students because as I said I had been ignorant of designers such as Milton Glaser and I was determined that my students would not share my ignorance. They too needed to know Glaser (as well as many others of course) and his motives and methods if they were to join the ranks of properly prepared professional graphic designers. They needed to know how a designer like Glaser approached a design problem to determine the best possible solution and having Glaser as a living, breathing example was always a better argument in the classroom. Now there are obviously others living among us now that produce designs that rise to the level of Glaser’s work but none can be alluded to as the one who fashioned the famous “I (heart) New York” drawn on a napkin in a cab in New York. Glaser’s place in the pantheon of graphic designers is high and strong.

I have never met Milton Glaser and now never will but I will diligently try to introduce him to my students as one of the major players in graphic design. I’m sorry for our profession’s loss.

Lessons learned not going to a conference

I am spending shelter in place time ‘not going’ to #CanceledCon and I am struck again by the unhindered desire of designers desiring to help designers – at least the group that Andrew Hochradel has assembled. I’ve been teaching quite a while now and I’ve tried to retain the position that I am training my replacements. The student designers in my charge need the knowledge I have gained through my own failures and successes to fertilize their dreams for their future. At the same time they need the inspiration and encouragement of the design community that gives them the environment to flourish. Back in the day, the buzzword was networking but with social media it’s about using the technology to extend out of whatever bubble in which you currently resider to explore those out there willing to share their skills and lessons learned. There is so much to learn and precious little time to learn it.

Take advantage of quarantine and sharpen your skills! This will pass and you should come out of it better for the time spent learning.

Who would you thank?

I was asked recently “if I could thank anyone alive or deceased, who would it be and why?”

I chose Johan Gutenberg. Until relatively recently just about everything that was using for advertising was printed in a method that has Gutenberg’s press as an ancestor. Typography has his genius as its forefather. Even paper making was part of his printing development. Yes, I know. Gutenberg did not invent printing. That belongs to the Chinese centuries earlier. Yes, I know Gutenberg did not invent paper making. That also belongs to the Chinese. But Gutenberg brought a number of related disciplines together under one roof and launched an industry that still affects people’s lives every day. And what did he receive for his labors? The Nobel Peace prize? No. That was many centuries later. A monument in the town square? Not really. Although there are traces of his presence in obscure German towns. No. His business partner essentially stole the process and left the inventor penniless and alone.

I’d like to thank him for his work. I’d like to thank him for the process that eventually became the platform that makes my work necessary. I’d like to tell the man that he did good work on his drop-dead gorgeous 42-line Bible which inspires me every time I see the Cooper Square facsimile that I show my students. I’d like to tell him that his work is appreciated and referenced often as new designers explore the heritage of their profession. I’d like to say thank you but I guess I’d have to learn German to do it.

Who would you thank in the graphic design world?

Book Recommendation

There’s color. There’s color theory. There’s color psychology. But where does color come from. Or really, where are color names derived? There’s a delightful book by Kassia St. Claire called The Secret Lives of Color which literally runs the spectrum of how colors and their names came to be. Each color’s history is told in anecdotal fashion that is short and memorable. For the instructor, the stories are interesting additions to the classroom full of students who accept color in a ho-hum manner ignorant of its background. It provides a historical foundation that gives graphic design and other disciplines using color a punch in the arm toward knowledgable color choosing. You should take a look!

“The ultimate t…

“The ultimate test, in considering the employment of rejection of an element of design or decoration would seem to be does it look as if it were inevitable, or would the page look as well or better for its omission?” Bruce Rogers, American typographer (1870-1975)

Among all the advice given to designers these days, this one is very helpful in the decision making process of finding the communication problem solution.

“The ultimate t…

“The ultimate test, in considering the employment or rejection of an element of design or decoration would seem to be does it look as if it were inevitable, or would the page look as well or better for its omission?” Bruce Rogers, American typographer (1870-1957)

This advice is very strong toward finding the proper solution for communication problems.