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Above: Chess Set by Josef Hartwig (German, 1880-1955) from MoMA.
Linked by Air, designers of the wonderful new Whitney.org, share some of their class syllabi, including a chess-visualization assignment that’s after Duchamp’s, Hartwig’s, and my own heart.
Bennington College president Liz Coleman makes one powerful observation after another during her reasoned, eloquent call to reinvent liberal arts education at this year’s TED Conference.
On what’s wrong with the academy:
Simply put: when the impulse is to change the world, the academy is more likely to engender a learned helplessness than to create a sense of empowerment. This brew—oversimplification of civic engagement, idealization of the expert, fragmentation of knowledge, emphasis on technical master, neutrality of a condition of academic integrity—is toxic when it comes to pursuing the vital connections between education and the public good, between intellectual integrity and human freedom […].
On how and why to change it:
[… The] point is not to treat these topics [equity, education, the environment, governance, the uses of force, health] as topics of study, but as frameworks of action. […] A new liberal arts that can support this action-oriented curriculum has begun to emerge. Rhetoric: the art of organizing the world of words to maximum effect. Design: the art of organizing the world of things. Mediation and improvisation also assume a special place in this new pantheon. Quantitative reasoning takes its proper place at the heart of what it takes to manage change where measurment is crucial, as is a capacity to discriminate systematically between what is at the core and what is at the periphery. And when making connections is of the essence, the power of technology emerges with special intensity. But so does the importance of content. […] When improvisation, resourcefulness, imagination are key, artists at long last take their place at the table when strategies of action are in the process of being designed.
3) On the price of standing idle:
There is no such thing as a viable democracy made up of experts, zealots, politicians, and spectators.
Here are a few more projects from this year’s Typographic Research class that I think are worth a look. — RG
Above: Both Debbie Buchan (top) and Katie Rutherford (bottom) attempted to add contrast to the Helvetica in their responses. Debbie’s alterations reminded her of Art Deco faces. Her A–Z set of postcards combines security envelope patterns with the shapes of the letters themselves. Katie took a more analytical approach.
Above, top to bottom: Rohini Rathi explored the many moods of the common clothes hanger. James Dunphy and Yoshi Hozumi created a flashlight with modular pieces in order to easily fulfill the 3x3 ft size requirement. Their material was light. They recorded their alphabet through a ring-bound collection of cyanotypes.
Above, top to bottom: James Dunphy’s exhibition graphics were designed to be assembled within the viewer’s eye with optical effects like foreshortening and reflection. Katie Richanbach’s campaign was inspired by the color interaction studies of Joseph Albers. Alison Munn’s buttons and posters use optical after-images to reveal branding only after the viewer has passed it by.
Wikipedia reports the following:
In 1965, an exhibition called The Responsive Eye, created by William C. Seitz was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The works shown were wide ranging, encompassing the minimalism of Frank Stella, the smooth plasticity of Alexander Liberman, the collaborative efforts of the Anonima group, alongside the masters of the movement: Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley and the Italian Getulio Alviani. The exhibition focused on the perceptual aspects of art, which result both from the illusion of movement and the interaction of color relationships. The exhibition was enormously popular with the general public, though less so with the critics.
Suppose in honor of the show’s 45th anniversary, MoMA is bringing many of the original works back to the museum and placing them alongside contemporary examples from the worlds of art and design.
On the blog this week, propose several works you think the curators should consider as they make their final selections. In the meantime, design 3 or 4 headline treatments for MoMA’s outdoor advertising and prepare comps showing the headline treatments in place. Along with these treatments, plan to show the process by which you developed this typographic solution, including working drawings, mathematical models, optical distortion effects, etc.
This assignment is from the class Typographic Research.
Above: Yoshi Hozumi researched the ancient practice of salting the earth in her response. She presented her findings in a chapbook along with renderings of the barren strip she proposed salting at the outskirts of the site.
The following was broadcast on an NPR news report:
In 2002, [Desert Space Foundation Director Josh] Abbey created a design competition to find a permanent warning sign for the proposed nuclear waste site [in Yucca Mountain, Nevada]. The purpose of the competition, he says, is to find a universal warning sign which conveys that the deposit is highly dangerous. One caveat: the symbols have to work even if language or communication breaks down in the future. And the design has to last at least 10,000 years.
Take a moment to consider this design challenge. Then, respond to it in whatever manner you feel is most appropriate.
This assignment is from the class Typographic Research. It was inspired by several projects from the Long Now Foundation.
Above, top to bottom: Peter Murray’s poster adapted packaging used for generic milk cartons. Michelle Viau created a color-coding system for an event calendar based on the dual-ring lids of Ciao Bella gelato.
Go to the supermarket and take extensive visual notes on the typography you find there. Purchase any items you might require for further visual research. Sketch, sketch more, and then use your findings to design a poster for an upcoming event at the New School drawn from the University’s public event listings. The poster should list dates, times, prices, and all relevant event information. It should be sized A2 and posted somewhere on campus before class begins next week. Document your poster’s release.
This assignment is from the class Typographic Research. It was inspired by a similar assignment from Paul Elliman involving this scene from Jean Luc Godard’s Tout va bien. For more, check out this poster by Manuel Miranda.
I was thrilled when Prof David Shields of University of Texas at Austin invited me to come down to the Lone Star State to give a lecture about my work as a design writer and critic. In addition to a great studio called Viewers Like You, Shields and his students preside over the Rob Roy Kelly Wood Type Collection, and I was lucky enough to be given a grand tour shortly before this lecture was given.
All of the faculty at UT Austin were exceedingly generous and bright; I must thank them here for their hospitality. In addition to the lecture I was lucky enough to spend a day with the undergraduate seniors in the gallery where they were about to have their show, and they were curious and passionate about design in the most infectious of ways. (They were so passionate about design that one rejected theme for their show was “Designgasm,” which became a bit of a running joke throughout the weekend.)
For anyone visiting Austin, I’ve compiled a few great restaurants and shops on this Google Map. It’s a fantastic city.
The embedded slidecast above was created with Slideshare, which does not allow for absolute precision in terms of transitions but is excellent (and free) nonetheless. I showed two videos during the presentation: this one of Milton Glaser, and this one of Stewart Brand. Enjoy.
Above: y=mx+b magazine project. Custom tote bag designed and screenprinted by Yelena Avanesova.
Above: A spread of Ryan Quigley’s well story, “The Future of Fashion,” from y=mx+b. Page through the whole magazine from Issuu below, or visit the website to order or download your own copy.
Above: Christopher Miller created “A Gentleman’s Guide to the 21st Century,” a buying guide divided into three booklets: work, play, and love. Inside, the guides mixed a kind of email informality with a nostalgia for the classicism of centuries past.
Create a product catalog for an object from the future. This should be an object that you will desire, but it may be anything from an overpriced luxury item to an essential tool for surviving 10 to 20 years from now. Use your imagination. The market for this product will be an important consideration. Your catalog should be largely image-driven and should use minimal text. It should pursuade, convince, and seduce us.
Above: Yelena Avanesova’s project focused on a book she decided to read for the class, Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us, which imagines our planet after the last human has died off. Yelena’s underlined passages combined with imagery from vintage National Geographic magazines in this unique presentation of a world and text remembered. More + 10 to 20 projects below.
Above: Isaac Weeber’s book centered around sorting predictions about the future into three categories: plausible, possible, and impossible. These were color-coded and these colors showed up on the outer margins of all the content he chose to reproduce depending on his personal opinion.
Above: Yu Chung Lim’s book was a catalog of existing experimental architecture projects that she felt pointed a way toward the future of building and urbanization.
Generate a book about the future. This future should not be hundreds of years away, however: I’m interested in what you think about the immediate future, within your own lifetime, no more than 10 to 20 years from now.
