In Steven Heller's article, The Back-Stories, Informed by Trends, Cults, Philosophies and Nationhood in Eye Magazine he says, "Typefaces and typography are never designed in a vacuum." This statement is exactly what we have been discussing throughout this semester, but we have gone even further to include all parts of design.As Graphic Designers, we are given a responsibility to design both thoughtfully and creatively. In terms of being thoughtful, designers must have knowledge of what is going on around them. I believe that this is the most difficult part of designing. One must research and be aware of their surroundings in order to be successful. Events and happenings in the social, political, scientific, ethical, environmental, and popular world must all be taken into account when designing, not matter what is being designed.
A teacher once told me that designers must have reason for every design decision that they make. This is one of the primary differences between a graphic designer and a studio artist. Both artist and designer must have a creative nature or personality, but graphic designers must be creative under specific guidelines, constraints, rules, and/or requirements.
For example, a studio artist can use blackletter just because they want to (unless commissioned to do a specific work). A Graphic designer must have the knowledge that the use of blackletter has many connotations that are associated with it and always accompany its use. Steven Heller discusses this in his article. Blackletter instantly evokes feelings of WWII and the dark ages. So typography, typefaces, and any design cannot be created or utilized in vacuum because it would not be successful unless by chance.
Steven Heller's article expresses the importance of the designer's knowledge of the past and involvement in the present. Creativity comes naturally to a graphic designer, that's why we love what we do. But designers that take the initiative and have drive to do the extra work and research will surely prosper and this is what I have and continue to realize. I find myself wanting to know everything that I can about anything, because you never know when that information will come in handy.
I have found that reading articles such as Heller's make me even more interested and excited to be a part of the Graphic Design community, because it really is extremely hard work that we do. But I do enjoy making art just to make art as well. The images throughout this post are my own, I thought that I'd show you that even though I love graphic design because of its purpose and structure; I also love to make art just to make it.
LB
Sources: EyeMagazine.com
2 comments:
Lindsey- You make a good point about every choice we make as designers having to be supported by a reason - why we did what we did. I think too many times I find myself wanting to do design that is just clean and straigtforward and not so much conceptual. I've always had trouble with the concepting part of the process. But that's a difficult thing and something good to work on getting better at. I think that the environment a person works in has a lot to do with how much work can actually be done that is influenced by what is going on around you. But now that I say that I realize that everything is we do is SOMEHOW influenced by something else. I've thought about the work I did at my last job as just being straightforward, no concept, where I'm now thinking, even tho the work I was doing in the past was just straightforward and had no social or political undertones, it was still influenced by a variety of factors such as how well a certain product was selling hence the reason we'd do an ad for one product over another. And you could easily say that prices of certain items were effected by social and political reasons (ex. gas prices). Still tho... I really do just enjoy doing little projects like wedding invitations and party invites, and projects for family and friends because they're fun, and don't have to have any heavy meaning or social or political undertones.
linds...both are you paintings?!
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