In what will doubtless be the first of several posts, DLB tries to hone in on what exactly we mean when we say "design".
The first item on my list of open questions from Monday is an absolute whopper: "What is design?"
The term design encompasses so many aspects of our culture that it seems nigh impossible to come up with a definition that is neither so general as to be meaningless nor so specific as to exclude too much. But we've got to try. Why, exactly? Because when we say design ethics we mean more than merely, say, graphic design ethics, but less than ethics in general.
Many famous designers have subscribed to very broad notions of design. Among the most broad, Paul Rand claimed that "Everything is design. Everything!" But of course, even if that were true, it's not very helpful.
Read More...
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Paul — Feb 18, 2009
Fellow lefty Adrian Johnson is an Illustrator from the UK. Love his style: simple, geometric, and witty.
I see shades of Paul Rand's advertising work in Johnson's portfolio.
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Nick — Dec 3, 2008
The 2003 UPS identity redesign is a good example of a bad trend: Identity design that cuts back on signal in favor of the safety of the noise.
In April of 2003, UPS released what has since become a very hotly debated brand update. Summarily, UPS retired Paul Rand's iconic 1961 package-and-shield logo and replaced it with "a two-tone, 3-D-look shield topped with a quasi-swoosh [and a wordmark] set in a customized version of [the common logo font] FF Dax..." (Source*)
* As evidence of how positively engaging this identity redesign was, the discussion on this article received its first comment April 7, 2003 and got its last one on November 9, 2007!
The great UPS logo debacle of 2003
The responses to this re-branding varied from declaiming FutureBrand, the New York-based designers of the new logo as glorified Paul Gaskills to flat-out declamation that "the new logo is better," and subsequently that, "you typography/graphic/illustrator bullies need to relax." (Ibid).
Read More...
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Paul — Dec 21, 2007
Thibaut Sailly does not like the Amazon Kindle. Not the whole ebook-DRM thing (which is also broken), but the form factor itself. For example:
I don't have anything against asymmetrical designs... the volume itself is ok to me. But having symmetric elements (the keyboard and the screen) that give the most visual weight to an un-centered (left aligned) element in an asymmetric shape can only result as a mess. If you choose asymmetry, stick with it. For example, don't make a symmetric keyboard when you can do an asymmetric one. But first, don't choose it when the purpose of the object is to display a book page that looks like it has a center line (apparently they acknowledged this fact by placing the logo centered under the screen).
(Note: Edited a few words-- his English is not perfect.)
I’m inclined to agree with the guy, not only because of the clear arguments he makes with his visuals, but also because he follows a posting about the gorgeous video game Bioshock with a video about Paul Rand (“hero” tag, indeed!).
Read More...
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Nick — Dec 8, 2007
