Showing posts with label articles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label articles. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Thursday, March 04, 2010
What they don’t teach you about identity design in design schools… by contributor Paula Scher
Check out the article below by Paula Scher. Link also given. From the little experience I have had, all her words ring true!Identity design and branding works SOOOOOOO differently outside design school.
http://www.identityworks.com/forum/logo-design/what-they-dont-teach-you-about-identity-design-in-design-schools/
… And what you can’t learn from blogs.
One of the most often repeated refrains on design blogs, in the critique of a new logo, is “Any design student could do a better job.” This ubiquitous comment is especially amusing to me because, well, it’s mostly true. If you judge virtually every new logo designed today by classical design school standards, the kids in school are doing a better job. This is because of the way logo and identity design are taught in so many schools, and what that exercise is meant to accomplish.
In design school, identity design is all about the form of the logo. A student will be given the problem: “design a logo for such and such organization,” and then the student may spend the better part of the next six months refining the form of a mark (or a wordmark), and then they sometimes transfer that word mark to a piece of stationery, or a shopping bag, or some other item (often a truck, and regardless of what school they attend, they all seem to magically use the same generic truck drawing.) And after six months of criticism and refinement, a good student will usually produce a formalistically beautiful logo. There may be some discussion in class about the appropriateness of the logo for the business. But the main goal will be to make the logo recognizable, with strong aesthetic attributes that will enable the logo to “stand alone.”
The design school exercise is indeed a good way to develop craft skills, and hopefully when the student becomes a professional he/she will learn to get fast at it, and achieve that work in the course of a week as opposed to six months. And there, any similarity between real identity design and a design school exercise ends.
Identity design, for any organization containing more than three people, is the act of diplomatically negotiating personal egos, tastes, and aspirations of various invested individuals against their business needs, their pre-formed expectations, and the constraints of the market place. Making something formalistically beautiful, while desirable, is a more private part of the process, something that the designer needs to achieve incidentally, not something that can appear to be an overt motivating cause. (This is because form is subjective, and not an easily argued position when a designer is trying to get their client to feel comfortable assuming a new identity.)
When organizations are larger, their identities often need to be designed as systems (kits of parts) that allow for complicated organizational subsets to exist and therefore give organizations and corporations the ability to partially personalize departments or sub-brands. Systems often demand that logos become more neutral so they can more effectively accommodate all necessary secondary information. A complicated logo design, one that might “stand alone” in a design class may simply look too busy in this real-world kind of context.
Often the identity of an organization that has many subsets can best be brought to life by the use of its supportive materials within the systems (promotion pieces, packaging, websites, signs, merchandising materials). This is an especially effective methodology because it can allow for a logo or identity system to gain resonance and recognition over time in connection to materials that are capable of being far more expressive than logos. For example the Nike logo, which has evolved over time into its current form, became a powerful symbol to the masses because of its effective use in advertising campaigns. The “cool” of the logo happened in connection to some brilliant campaigns by Wieden & Kennedy, and the effective positioning of the mark on merchandising materials. As pure form, if the “swoosh” appeared alone in a design school critique (or on a design blog) it would most likely have been dismissed as too thin, weak, and pointy, looking like a checkmark and not really conveying motion.
Logos become iconic over time, through their use and in combination with an overall perception of a brand. They shouldn’t be judged purely as form and out of context, as they are on design blogs, because it takes a period of time for a logo to establish itself in the marketplace, just as it takes a magazine a year or so to establish its personality.
Another thing they don’t teach you in design school is what you get paid for. Right alongside the blog complaint that “any design student could do a better job” is the comment that the designer at hand got “hundreds of thousands of dollars to design that logo that could have been better designed by a design student.”
I never knew a designer that got hundreds of thousands of dollars to design a logo. Mostly, designers get paid to negotiate the difficult terrain of individual egos, expectations, tastes, and aspirations of various individuals in an organization or corporation, against business needs, and constraints of the marketplace. This is a process that can take a year or more. Getting a large, diverse group of people to agree on a single new methodology for all of their corporate communications means the designer has to be a strategist, psychiatrist, diplomat, showman, and even a Svengali. The complicated process is worth money. That’s what clients pay for. The process, usually a series of endless presentations and refinements, persuasions and proofs, results, hopefully, in an accepted identity design.
Some branding firms employ strategists and account executives to manage the process. I’m in favor of designers doubling as strategists, or at least working extensively with them. I think the designer needs to be involved every stage of the complicated negotiation between the clients, their expectations, tastes, aspirations, marketplace concerns etc. The designer needs to be ever present because, inevitably, at some side meeting, something will be suggested that will totally destroy the form of the logo. Something can be suggested innocently, with the best of intentions, that will scuttle all plans, compromise all standards, and destroy the integrity of the design. The only person who can know this and stop this is the designer. And the reason that the designer knows it is… well, they learned it in design school.
http://www.identityworks.com/forum/logo-design/what-they-dont-teach-you-about-identity-design-in-design-schools/
… And what you can’t learn from blogs.
One of the most often repeated refrains on design blogs, in the critique of a new logo, is “Any design student could do a better job.” This ubiquitous comment is especially amusing to me because, well, it’s mostly true. If you judge virtually every new logo designed today by classical design school standards, the kids in school are doing a better job. This is because of the way logo and identity design are taught in so many schools, and what that exercise is meant to accomplish.
In design school, identity design is all about the form of the logo. A student will be given the problem: “design a logo for such and such organization,” and then the student may spend the better part of the next six months refining the form of a mark (or a wordmark), and then they sometimes transfer that word mark to a piece of stationery, or a shopping bag, or some other item (often a truck, and regardless of what school they attend, they all seem to magically use the same generic truck drawing.) And after six months of criticism and refinement, a good student will usually produce a formalistically beautiful logo. There may be some discussion in class about the appropriateness of the logo for the business. But the main goal will be to make the logo recognizable, with strong aesthetic attributes that will enable the logo to “stand alone.”
The design school exercise is indeed a good way to develop craft skills, and hopefully when the student becomes a professional he/she will learn to get fast at it, and achieve that work in the course of a week as opposed to six months. And there, any similarity between real identity design and a design school exercise ends.
Identity design, for any organization containing more than three people, is the act of diplomatically negotiating personal egos, tastes, and aspirations of various invested individuals against their business needs, their pre-formed expectations, and the constraints of the market place. Making something formalistically beautiful, while desirable, is a more private part of the process, something that the designer needs to achieve incidentally, not something that can appear to be an overt motivating cause. (This is because form is subjective, and not an easily argued position when a designer is trying to get their client to feel comfortable assuming a new identity.)
When organizations are larger, their identities often need to be designed as systems (kits of parts) that allow for complicated organizational subsets to exist and therefore give organizations and corporations the ability to partially personalize departments or sub-brands. Systems often demand that logos become more neutral so they can more effectively accommodate all necessary secondary information. A complicated logo design, one that might “stand alone” in a design class may simply look too busy in this real-world kind of context.
Often the identity of an organization that has many subsets can best be brought to life by the use of its supportive materials within the systems (promotion pieces, packaging, websites, signs, merchandising materials). This is an especially effective methodology because it can allow for a logo or identity system to gain resonance and recognition over time in connection to materials that are capable of being far more expressive than logos. For example the Nike logo, which has evolved over time into its current form, became a powerful symbol to the masses because of its effective use in advertising campaigns. The “cool” of the logo happened in connection to some brilliant campaigns by Wieden & Kennedy, and the effective positioning of the mark on merchandising materials. As pure form, if the “swoosh” appeared alone in a design school critique (or on a design blog) it would most likely have been dismissed as too thin, weak, and pointy, looking like a checkmark and not really conveying motion.
Logos become iconic over time, through their use and in combination with an overall perception of a brand. They shouldn’t be judged purely as form and out of context, as they are on design blogs, because it takes a period of time for a logo to establish itself in the marketplace, just as it takes a magazine a year or so to establish its personality.
Another thing they don’t teach you in design school is what you get paid for. Right alongside the blog complaint that “any design student could do a better job” is the comment that the designer at hand got “hundreds of thousands of dollars to design that logo that could have been better designed by a design student.”
I never knew a designer that got hundreds of thousands of dollars to design a logo. Mostly, designers get paid to negotiate the difficult terrain of individual egos, expectations, tastes, and aspirations of various individuals in an organization or corporation, against business needs, and constraints of the marketplace. This is a process that can take a year or more. Getting a large, diverse group of people to agree on a single new methodology for all of their corporate communications means the designer has to be a strategist, psychiatrist, diplomat, showman, and even a Svengali. The complicated process is worth money. That’s what clients pay for. The process, usually a series of endless presentations and refinements, persuasions and proofs, results, hopefully, in an accepted identity design.
Some branding firms employ strategists and account executives to manage the process. I’m in favor of designers doubling as strategists, or at least working extensively with them. I think the designer needs to be involved every stage of the complicated negotiation between the clients, their expectations, tastes, aspirations, marketplace concerns etc. The designer needs to be ever present because, inevitably, at some side meeting, something will be suggested that will totally destroy the form of the logo. Something can be suggested innocently, with the best of intentions, that will scuttle all plans, compromise all standards, and destroy the integrity of the design. The only person who can know this and stop this is the designer. And the reason that the designer knows it is… well, they learned it in design school.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Design Less, Think More
Read this article some time back. Thought would be nice to share it. Though in some context it might just mean talk more, design less.
here is the link: www.aiga.org
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Citizen Journalism
This maybe a bit off-track, but lately, all of us have been really concerned about the way the Indian Media has been functioning.Meri News is a venture in citizen journalism. To quote from the website -
Citizen Journalism" or Participatory Journalism is an evolving form of journalism through user generated content. When any common man in his capacity as a citizen of a nation takes up the initiative to report things or express his views about happenings around him then the occurrence is popularly termed as citizen journalism or participatory journalism.
Citizen Journalists are not bound by the conventional term of a journalist. Citizen journalists take up an initiative to express ideas irrespective of their educational or professional background. In a way this emerging form of journalism is promising a scenario of breaking free from media bias as well as taking local news on a global platform.
Here's the link -
http://www.merinews.com/citizen_journalism.jsp
While the articles did not appear as eloquent or even well-researched to me, this seems a way that is worth pursuing, a sort of democratisation of the media.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
SLUMDOGS RISING: articles on design and economy
How UK plans to tackle economy growth of BRIC by using Design as it's key tool
http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/en/Live-Issues/How-does-design-hold-its-own-in-emerging-economies/
Article on BRIC economies
http://www.industryweek.com/articles/bric_crumbling_13256.aspx
and by the way design contributes 1% of GDP in India :( wonder what our politicians have to say about that.
both the articles are a bit old
DISCUSSIONS ENCOURAGED
http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/en/Live-Issues/How-does-design-hold-its-own-in-emerging-economies/
Article on BRIC economies
http://www.industryweek.com/articles/bric_crumbling_13256.aspx
and by the way design contributes 1% of GDP in India :( wonder what our politicians have to say about that.
both the articles are a bit old
DISCUSSIONS ENCOURAGED
Sunday, January 25, 2009
On writing.
I've been reading 'Design Culture' an anthology of design writing from AIGA journals. I came across this article in the NID mail, and also remembered this. I don't really know how relevant this post is, but I have always felt that as designers we need to be able to write more, something that we don't do (amongst many other such things).
Liz Losh is an English teacher. But put aside your image of a frumpy schoolmarm with faded gravy stains on her blazer. This hip, forty-something ex-punk rocker teaches at the University of California Irvine, where she oversees an introductory writing course that enrolls over 1,100 students. She also teaches advanced seminars on digital rhetoric, where projects include editing a blog, producing a YouTube video and crafting a virtual persona on Second Life.
Liz Losh is an English teacher. But put aside your image of a frumpy schoolmarm with faded gravy stains on her blazer. This hip, forty-something ex-punk rocker teaches at the University of California Irvine, where she oversees an introductory writing course that enrolls over 1,100 students. She also teaches advanced seminars on digital rhetoric, where projects include editing a blog, producing a YouTube video and crafting a virtual persona on Second Life.
Likewise, Cheryl E. Ball, assistant professor of new media at Illinois State University, teaches "multimodal" writing courses, in which students assemble images and texts using video, photography, web design and page layout. Ball says, “We are looking at the idea of ‘composition’ in the broadest sense, going way beyond the old model of grammar-based freshman comp courses.”
Prose painting by Ellen Lupton.
A spate of new writing textbooks suggests that a visual revolution is underway in college writing curricula. The sleek, sophisticated Seeing & Writing series, designed by 2x4 and launched in 1999, shook up the field of English composition by inviting students to analyze visual artifacts, from works of photojournalism to contemporary art installations. A bigger change came with Picturing Texts (2004), which not only uses visuals as prompts for writing but addresses design as an active, generative tool. The book’s designer, Anna Palchik, helped infuse the project with credible instruction on basic visual principles as well as selecting readings by Tibor Kalman, Jessica Helfand, Richard Wilde and other graphic designers. (Disclosure: Picturing Texts includes a piece co-authored by Abbott Miller and me.) Assignments include creating book covers, postcards, scrapbooks and brochures as well as traditional essays.
Meanwhile, many young designers are wondering if their own college English courses were tough enough to prepare them for real-world writing tasks such as bidding for jobs, justifying design solutions, delivering presentations and marketing their work. Even routine email communication requires command of the written language. (Some of my students seem to believe that just because they can’t spell, their employers won’t be able to, either.) Designer Scott Stowell, speaking at AIGA’s recent “Social Studies” conference, talked about the seamless integration of text and graphics in his work for GOOD magazine and other clients. “I can’t imagine being a designer who can’t write,” said Stowell. And it’s not just about business. The glorious, sloppy, over-populated blogosphere beckons everyone to participate, but you can only play if you have something to say and you know how to say it.
How are graphic designers learning to write? Since the late 1970s, a movement known as Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) has argued that writing should be taught in every course on campus, not just in specialized composition courses. Because each discipline—from art to engineering—has its own standards and conventions, faculty in each field should be teaching its own practitioners how to write. Yet few design educators have the time or confidence to load this duty on to their studio courses.
Some are giving it a try. Andrea Marks has authored a new e-book on writing for visual thinkers, which emphasizes brainstorming techniques rather than grammar and composition. As for me, I'm teaching a stand-alone writing course for graphic design MFA students at MICA this spring. I won’t be using any of the sexy new composition textbooks, however. Instead, I’m focusing on basic style, starting with how to craft a seaworthy sentence and how to pare down over-upholstered prose. Our textbook? Strunk and White’s classic Elements of Style (Maira Kalman’s illustrated edition, of course).
Even Liz Losh agrees that most young writers still need to work on the basics, especially on college campuses like hers, where over half the students speak a home language other than English. As foot soldiers in the visual revolution, students have more to learn, and faculty have more to teach. Introducing the principles of web design and typography shouldn’t replace teaching writing as a precise, rule-based medium of communication. In the digital age, people are writing more, not less. The alphabet isn’t dead; it just has a lot more company.
About the Author: Ellen Lupton is a designer, writer, curator and educator. She is director of the graphic design MFA program at MICA. Her next book, Design Your Life: The Pleasures and Perils of Everyday Things, is forthcoming from St. Martins Press in May 2009.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Reading
Some interesting articles on Design Taxi
Design is in the details
Arabesque: Graphic design from the Arab world
Design is in the details
Arabesque: Graphic design from the Arab world
Friday, June 13, 2008
Tasveer Ghar
Tasveer Ghar is a trans-national virtual “home” for collecting, digitizing, and documenting various materials produced by South Asia’s exciting popular visual sphere including posters, calendar art, pilgrimage maps and paraphernalia, cinema hoardings, advertisements, and other forms of street and bazaar art.
http://www.tasveerghar.net/
image: Matchbox. One of many, picked off Bangalore roads :)
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Bumper Bonanza Blogpost
After a L-O-N-G time, I post here.
I was reading novum magazine and Modart last night...there were a HOARD of links in them....so here goes
http://www.skoberne.com/
http://informations-grafik.de/
http://www.sfgbasel.ch/
http://www.golden-section-graphics.com/
http://square2.com/
http://www.koeweidenpostma.com/
http://www.extraverage.net/
http://swanofobia.com/
http://www.swanarts.com/
http://www.turbokolor.com/index.php
http://www.heliumcowboy.com/
For some cool illustration-based work!->
http://www.orosmoment.com/
http://flickr.com/photos/3kta
http://www.fotolog.com/ekta
http://www.stephandoit.com.br/
www.yannlegendre.com
whew
Take your time. but see ALL of them...this is enough to chew on for the rest of the month.
ok now im off to work, am very inspired to work after Helvetiva!! :D
Vive la grapheeks!
image--> bought from the junna-purana wallah outside the NID main gate
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
arial or helvetica? how sure are you?
hi there,
this link was forwarded by Armeen. I feel all of you should check this atleast once,
http://www.iliveonyourvisits.com/helvetica/
chhers
T
this link was forwarded by Armeen. I feel all of you should check this atleast once,
http://www.iliveonyourvisits.com/helvetica/
chhers
T
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Design for the other 90%
Here's a link connected with an earlier post that was posted by Moka on the 31st of May, 2007.
www.designobserver.com/archives/027474.html#more
Its a criticism of the much publicised exhibition about designing for the poor held at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York.
More ineresting is the response it has generated in the comments section. Varying vewpoints, and all making a point of their own. Don't miss them!
Friday, July 27, 2007
graphic design in india
this is just one of those few articles that address indian graphic design. Do take a look. A phirang point of view but worth glancing thru.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Hey thanks for sending me the invite shreyas...
umm..here is a link from debashish, who was here for sla before u joined..he started a yahoo group called
addled brains that has now died...but these links still work...:)
A little heavy but have a look, esp after Siddharth's ensad presentation, and the project he also did for the fondation cartier.
'The Museum of Accidents' is the part of the website Fondation Cartier pour l'art Contemporain" website:
http://www.onoci.net/virilio/pages_uk/virilio/avertissement.php?
The first article by Virilio is a foreword to the Museum.Bruno Latour's article on Iconoclash is again part of
the catalogue for the exhibition at the ZKM Centre, Karlsruhe called "Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars".
For the articles if you can't access them they are on the group site under "files".
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/addledbrains/files
umm..here is a link from debashish, who was here for sla before u joined..he started a yahoo group called
addled brains that has now died...but these links still work...:)
A little heavy but have a look, esp after Siddharth's ensad presentation, and the project he also did for the fondation cartier.
'The Museum of Accidents' is the part of the website Fondation Cartier pour l'art Contemporain" website:
http://www.onoci.net/virilio/pages_uk/virilio/avertissement.php?
The first article by Virilio is a foreword to the Museum.Bruno Latour's article on Iconoclash is again part of
the catalogue for the exhibition at the ZKM Centre, Karlsruhe called "Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars".
For the articles if you can't access them they are on the group site under "files".
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/addledbrains/files
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
olympics 2012
http://typophile.com/node/34223
a discussion on the logo of the olympic games 2012, london.
There are also links for video clips about the logo.
The discussion has also extended to "what a logo is".
Interesting.
I think this is important for us as design students.
Do comment.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Design For the Other 90%
http://www.peoplesdesignaward.org/design_for_the_other_90/
http://www.peoplesdesignaward.org/design_for_the_other_90/Blog/in-their-own-words
Guess the title says it all. Please do see the video too,if you're interested(the second link)...
i hope i am not posting redundant links....
http://www.peoplesdesignaward.org/design_for_the_other_90/Blog/in-their-own-words
Guess the title says it all. Please do see the video too,if you're interested(the second link)...
i hope i am not posting redundant links....
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Monday, March 26, 2007
notan
http://typophile.com/wiki/Notan
Also includes
Discussion:
Chirography & Notan in Japanese Calligraphy
Global Notan/Local Saliency & Cue Value
The Contextually Sensitive Notan
How Do You Develop Hand Lettering Aesthetics?
The Good Ship Notanic
Additional Articles:
Wikipedia: Notan
pssst...join typophile.it helps!
image>corbis, keyword>chinese calligraphy
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