網誌
2006年3月20日 下午12點49分15秒Design Sharing
After working about 1 year in Monopoly,
I spot out a lot of common problems
between many of us, we cant always blame
our clients, most of the time, designers,
even managers or directors, they have a
very big misunderstanding towards design.
After Viv and P, i will be the next one
leaving this place. Somehow I want to
mention to any of you, its not only about
design itself and not always about money,
what could it be then? its your duty to find
out, if you dare to call yourself a designer.
Cutural Awareness
"Graphic Design is a visual language uniting harmony and balance, colour
and light, scale and tension, form and content.But it is also an idiomatic
language, a language of cues and puns and symbols and allusions, of
cultural references and perceptual inferences that challenge both the
intellect and the eye."
Jessica Helfand
The second part of Jessica Helfand's definition provides the key to
producing meaningful and expressive graphic design. 'cues and puns and
symbols and allusions, of cultural references and perceptual inferences' are
the elements that give work authority and resonance. And if you want to
introduce these elements that give work, it means taking an interest in
everything that goes on around you, and having curiously about areas other
than graphic design, politics, entertainment, business, technology, art, ten
-pin bowling and mud wrestling.
This cultural awareness (you can call it research if you like, but it's really
something larger) ranks higher than technical ability and academic
qualifications in the designer's portfolio of attributes. When the British
writer Iain Sinclair was asked if he did research for his books, he replied
that his whole life was research. I can't think of a better design adage for
the modern graphic designer. Without constantly scanning, scrutinizing,
and absorbing what goes on around you, you cannot become a successful
designer. This was brought home to me a few years ago at a design
seminar in Hong Kong that I took part in. After presentation by a number of
British designers, there was a lively Q&A session. Someone in the
audience asked me if I'd like to work for clients in Hong Kong, I said yes-
mainly out of politeness, but also because I thought it was the answer the
audience expected to hear. Then I thought about it; I was kidding myself.
I've only been in Hong Kong for twenty-four hours, I don't speak the
language, my knowledge of the place's history and customs is slight, to
say the least, and yet here I am presuming to think that I can create
meaningful design. But most chastening of all was the realization that I'd
spent the previous hour demonstrating to the audience how my company's
design work was stuffed with subtle cultural allusions - things that you had
to be culturally sawy to spot, How could achieve the same in Hong Kong
without study, research and knowledge of the culture?
Cultural awareness is vital for the modern designer and most designers are
culturally aware people. It's why designers are often witty with a
sophisticated sense of humor (we shouldn't be surprise at this; designers
are observers, and the best humour comes from microscopic observation).
Take Peter Saville's CD cover design for the band Gay Dad. Saville is not
generally thought of as a graphic humorist, but his clever appropriation of
sihouette of the 'little green man' from the walk sign, for the cover of a CD
by a louche rock band, is unexpected and amusing. Everyone knows this
symbol. In fact, it's so familiar we barely notice it. Yet it takes a graphic
designer's sly wit to extract it from the mundane environment and place it
in this unlikely setting. Witty, you might say.
Adrian Shaughnessy
extract from the book
"How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul"
2006年3月19日 上午10點09分17秒Erik Satie
"nothing but an icy loneliness that fills
the head with emptiness and the heart
with sadness"
Suzanne Valadon
2006年3月11日 下午4點55分32秒Bilbliotheque Design Site Launched
http://www.bibliothequedesign.com/
If you had a book called "How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul" on your bookshelf,
then u will know about Bibliotheque Design, keep yr eyes opened, they were just like mod-boys, cool!
