Graphic design represents ideas and values. A design is not in itself the idea, but the expression of it. Design points to something greater than itself. In most cases design serves as an ambassador, not as the self-expression of the designer, but as the expression of a business or organization to its audience. The value of a design is in how and what it communicates.

If your business or organization is a worthy enterprise, shouldn’t it be represented by something that is equally worthy?

If you were to choose an ambassador to represent your interests to the world, wouldn’t it behoove you to choose someone who will represent you accurately and deliver your message clearly; someone who cares how you’re presented and how people respond to you? You’re not going to simply drive by and pick someone off the street corner to do that. You’re going to carefully select from qualified candidates.

If your design assets represent your interests, why wouldn’t you want them to be as carefully chosen?

If a business is worth establishing and customers are worth pursuing, why not make the appropriate investment? You should be concerned that your graphic assets are serving your interests and representing your enterprise in the best way possible. A worthy enterprise deserves the investment in and the cost of a worthy ambassador.

This is an excellent discussion of the power and influence of visual imagery – design and illustration – to change ways of thinking, morals and systems for good or for bad. No matter what your persuasion, you need to understand what’s going on. As you view this, consider how you’ve been influenced.

Video from PJTV, a division of PajamasMedia.

Toward the end of my design fundamentals course I generally ask my students how they, having gone through the process of learning design principles and applying them to a variety of projects, would define design. Here are the responses from several who recently completed the course:

Design is the process of externalizing many possible solutions to a problem and making choices regarding which solutions are likely to be most appropriate to the future contexts of the problem -Matthew T.

[Design is] the creation, invention or materialization of an idea or thought into a visual and/or tactile and/or audial presence to be shared with others, either for an end-goal like persuading into action or thought-provocation or for pure enjoyment (which sometimes still leads to the aforementioned end-goals). –Erika R.

If I was giving a talk about design I would probably define it as a way of communication. The planning and execution of a project that says what I am trying to say and has a start to finish. –Amy M.

Design is a visual or graphic means to communicate an idea or message, toward a particular goal or outcome. While there is a very critical aesthetic element to design, the function has to be considered first and foremost. I have to first ask (and really take into consideration) very practical and fundamental questions, like who is the target audience and what is the purpose. Otherwise, if I always designed based on my own personal taste or preference, all my designs would probably come out with a very similar style and they wouldn’t as effectively convey the idea or message or achieve the desired goal. -Naomi B.

Design is the creative and artistic solution to an overall problem or goal through the means of texts and graphics. –Kathryn V.

How do you define design?

It’s red. It’s leather. It’s about two inches thick on its best days. It has rings. It is too big to fit in my pocket.

I am describing my daybook: my planning/organizing/time management companion. It’s a throwback to the 1980s when planning systems first became popular, and Filofax and Franklin were the top-of-mind options. I formed my planning habit of keeping my contacts, to-dos, appointments, ideas, and doodles all in one place within easy reach back then.

For me, there’s something luscious about the feel and sound of paper; how my pen or pencil grabs the surface and creates a tangible drag as I write. Then there’s the physical action of flipping pages, which to me is much more interactive than scrolling over a digital screen. I can add pages or remove them, tear or fold them and use both sides of the surface.

I replace the filler set every year but have used the same binder. This year I designed my own filler pages. I bind up prior years and archive them in boxes. Occasionally I go back through them. Events and people long-forgotten come to my recall. I have a record of things accomplished and things left undone. I can easily see my history.

My tradition of keeping a daily record and planning my days ahead of time was learned from my parents. My mother kept a calendar and my dad kept a journal. Bits and pieces of lives that I knew well were handed down to me on paper. Those recorded comings and goings remind me of the people I came from, as I suppose my daybooks and sketchbooks will remind my progeny in the same way.

I have an iPhone and use the Evernote, FCTasks and Calendar apps regularly as back-up to the more creatively-contrived and personable daybook. To jot something down is quicker for me than keying it in on a touch screen, and I commit fewer typos in the process.

In thinking about the archival issues, I suppose that with our technology few people really consider how they will leave their legacy, or even if they think about it at all. What do they have to hand down that is personal and stable enough to last for years and years? With technology renewing and upgrading constantly and rapidly, access to older technologies disappears. Paper, at least for now, is the timeless and more tangible option.

House Republicans' chart depicting Democrats' plan for government-run health care.

Setting aside that fact that many think the Dems’ proposed national healthcare plan is a total nightmare, the GOP chart is no sweet dream from a design standpoint.

Where do we begin? If information hierarchy is necessary to provide a “front door” into the design, the first thing we note is that there is no front door – no “first read”. As we look at this thing, where do we start? We could begin anywhere, and spend hours hopping from point to point in the design trying to decide where to go next. There’s no single element that stands up and cries out, “Here! Come this way. Follow me.” In fact, we are forced to hunt even for the chart’s title.

Every element in the layout and the amount of space in between are approximately the same size. This amount of similarity creates monotony across the visual surface. The chart is relegated to mere pattern rather than operating as a purveyor of information. It has no focal point.

The colors used are base level, highly saturated and create legibility problems for the textual content inside each box, oval or circle.

There is no exit point. Once we’ve made some sort of entry into the layout we’re stuck. We can’t get out. We’re either going to keep going around and around or become incredibly tired or crazy from our frantic maneuverings through all that clutter. When we finally extricate ourselves out of sheer exhaustion and make a swift getaway we have gained no greater understanding of what’s being communicated than when we first entered the design space.

The single redeeming element is the gray background, which sits quietly behind all the noisy chatter of the brighter elements.

The Democrats responded to the Republicans with a simpler, “questionable” chart which is less cluttered (meaning, it has a bit more white space) and takes a stab at establishing hierarchy, but communicates little:

Democrats' health chart opus

Compare these charts to another, created by the folks at The New Republic which more elegantly describes the current state of health care in the United States. It, by the way, has a front door (note the red burst at top left with the small word, you.) That’s where you enter and you know exactly where to go next. You’re given clear and distinct visual choices. This is good design: it is both aesthetically pleasing and communicates well:

The New Republic's opus applies aesthetic principles to make sense of the current US healthcare system.

From a design standpoint, if good design is our plumb line, the Republicans’ chart appears to fail. Except that it doesn’t. It actually accomplishes its purpose quite successfully in its ugly confusion. The chart is meant to be confusing, monotonous, difficult, illegible and unfriendly. Its purpose is to communicate the confusion, monotony, difficulty and inhospitality of the proposed healthcare plan its describing, and it achieves its purpose very well. It is a worthy example of what not to do if you want to create good design, and also of how some ideas are best communicated by breaking the rules of good design.

Those who track and analyze cultural trends generally agree that our culture has become design-driven. It’s no longer based on business or technology but on design. We consumers generally assess the value of a product or idea based on post-modern criteria: its design, its visual appeal, how we experience it, how we feel about it. Design has overtaken business and technology as the impetus for consumption and economic growth. For example, chewing gum products are packaged to look good when sitting next to a Blackberry or iPhone. This, of course will increase their appeal and resulting sales.

Because we are design-driven, there is ample opportunity for innovation and new ideas to flourish when presented to the public in desirable “packaging”. Thus we judge a book by its cover and the contents inside the box by the graphics on the box. Designers develop these visual assets, packaging and experiences to, in essence, present ideas. Any idea presented in an elegant, exciting “package” generally achieves greater acceptance than one that isn’t. A good idea offered in a cheesy “box” will be passed over in favor of a bad idea presented in a thoughtful, aesthetically-sound container. Design persuades us to accept something based on its packaging or graphic environment.

A designer can take any idea – whether authentic or not – create an appealing graphic environment for it, provide a positive user experience, and it doesn’t matter if the idea is authentic or not. It matters only if it makes the user authentically feel good. As long as the design appeals, the idea it presents will gain acceptance, even if unprovable or dangerous.

Thus, surrounded by aesthetically-sound design, any idea can be accepted as valid. There is danger in this. Not every idea is valid or even worth consideration. Not every idea is “true”.

In our post-modern, design-driven culture, form has taken priority over content and style rules over substance. Post-moderns gauge authenticity based on experience rather than proof. It doesn’t matter if something is verifiable or not, as long as we feel good about it, as long as it makes us popular, provides a sense of community and belonging, or is compatible with our desire for absolute freedom. If it accomplishes any of those things, it must be authentic. If it is presented as being authentic, it will be considered as such even when proven otherwise.

Does it matter if we create excellent design to package a lie? Does it matter if we might be helping to spread inaccuracy and fabrication? Does anyone care, as long as something looks good?

Experience

Experience is what allows your level of skill to catch up with your level of desire.

word art created at wordle.net

Shepherd Fairey, the designer of the Hope and Change iconography which helped Barack Obama become elected last November, is being taken to task for his use of a photo of Obama owned by Associated Press. This has brought issues of copyright, ownership and fair use to the forefront of our news media, and is significant in light of the fact that copyright laws may be changing and Creative Commons is so widespread.

Illustrators, who often borrow from photographic references, have long been dealing with issues of fair use. How does one make a portrait of a public figure if one does not have access to take a photograph of their own or to have the person “sit” for the portrait?  If a designer or illustrator uses a copyrighted image and simply performs an editing job on it, which is what Fairey appears to have done, that may very well be construed as infringement. If the designer also profits from it, the infringement is compounded.

I believe this incident will be the impetus for tightening of copyright law and possible re-thinking of the Orphan Works Act, as well as differentiating copyright more specifically from Creative Commons uses. The lines of separation are being drawn. In a culture becoming used to and demanding common use, will rights of ownership disappear? Will intellectual property be re-defined? Will work for hire, which artists and  photographers have so long fought against, become standard practice? Depending upon how the AP/Fairey case is decided, we may be on the slippery slope of changes we don’t want.

Imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery, but it is the laziest form of creativity. 

There is a common response from my design students when I give them their first project assignment: They want to see some examples of previous work. But I won’t show them examples. Instead, I provide them with a specification sheet (a design brief), describe the desired outcome, answer their questions and provide information for them to go forth, design and conquer. I will show them inspiration images, suggest artists and designers to research and even present approaches they might take to solve the problem. But they really don’t like it when I don’t show them previous work.

There is a reason why I don’t: They have to be able to see the thing before it exists. That’s what designers do. We imagine and envision first, plan it out and then manifest the thing into actuality.

It is easy to imitate: to simulate or copy something else. It is also easy to innovate: to change something that already exists by adding to it, deriving from it or expanding on it. But to create is to bring something into existence that isn’t there already. It is a different pursuit requiring a different set of skills.

To create something, we must be able to see it first in our mind’s eye while it does not exist. This is a daunting concept if we have never had to seriously think creatively. In our desire to do things right the first time in the most expedient manner, we default to imitation – a safe but non-creative endeavor. Creating is a courageous act in that we go boldly where no one has gone before, not knowing exactly how it will turn out but knowing what it’s supposed to be because we’ve got it solidly in mind.

Imitation does not build creative thinking or the necessary confidence in oneself to be a designer. Imitation can never see beyond where or what it is, and does not allow for the development of a distinct artistic style and voice because it only copies someone else’s. A copy cannot measure up to the original.

I ask my students to be creative instead of imitative and to know the difference between the two.

There is an online petition with the goal of creating a better world by implementing a Secretary of the Arts position among the others in the President’s Cabinet. The petition is being circulated by Jamie Austria.

When I logged on to read the petition, I found this text:

To:  President Barack Obama

Congratulations and thank you for all you do. 

Your good friend Quincy Jones said: “…next conversation I have with President Obama is to beg for a Secretary of Arts.” [November 14th 2008 WNYC interview by John Schaefer on "Soundcheck."] 

We the undersigned support Quincy Jones’ plea. Thank you.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

I’m a bit confused. What is it that The Undersigned are signing? What, exactly, are they supporting? What is the rationale behind the petition? What is the stated need for the requested Cabinet position? If this were a design brief it would fail before the project was even begun. There’s nothing to go on, here.

There’s nothing in this petition to agree with. All it seems to state is that “whatever Quincy Jones wants, I want, too”. I am not adding my name to something so vague.

The opposition petition presented by Paul Marquardt is much more reasonable. It states an actual argument, not an unsupported assertion. I will support this one, not only because I agree with it but because it really is a petition.