I’ve mostly been talking about my Design Seminar class with Dick Buchanan and my Interaction and Visual Interface Design with John Zimmerman because those classes involve more discussion of ideas, which are easier to write about.
My other two classes, Design Studio with Dan Boyarski and Graduate Type with Karen Moyer (and later Kristin Hughes), are studio classes where the focus is on producing work for critique.
Data as Self-Portrait
In Dan’s class we’re tracking data about ourselves over a seven-day period. We are going to explore visualizing this data as a form of self-portrait.
I collected data about my daily communications: email (sent, received, and spam for three different accounts), IM (sent, received), phone calls (outgoing, incoming), text messages (sent, received), and hours per day in front of a computer.
Type as Self-Portrait
On a similar vein, in grad type we were given a construct, “I used to _________, but now I don’t”to create a typographic self-portrait using our constructions in a 10×10 space.
These are in the order that I created them. Despite the text being all over the place, I felt the design was too conservative to represent who I really am. I moved to a more organic shape that plays with line breaks in a poetic way and has a sense of movement. The last one is a greater attempt to experiment.
My classmates seemed to like the first the best, with noted problems. I kind of like the middle for its poetics. But some said they liked the last. Design is subjective.
Next week we will explore using the same content for an accordian-type book. But I plan to continue working on these.
If you have any feedback, I’d love to hear it.
Comments
5 responses to “Design Studio and Grad Type”
Good design is never subjective.
Well, I have to disagree with Susan. There are solutions that are objectively better than others, but two equally good solutions for the same problem can be found. It’s a subjective art.
I think Dan makes a good point.
While a designer and an artist are not the same, art is a component of design, especially visual design. Design inherents that subjectivity.
So given the scenario of two equally good solutions, the one that is perceived as better becomes and individual, or subjective, opinion.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Is design art?
I am not sure if either of you actually disagree with my statement – both of your comments included ‘good solutions’.
When a design successfully fulfils the criteria for success we can look at it and say – that’s good. Dan, I agree that personal preference does come into play when presented with more than one good solution. However, I do not see personal preference as negating the merits and success of both designs.
replying so late may be like fanning a dead fire but….
Whether or not you believe design to be art, it is not only it’s subjective qualities that recall art: the act of thinking of something, making it, putting it out there, waiting for response (this is not art, this is the act of creating). Response to what you have made often makes you aware of what Duchamp called the “art coefficient” the “unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed,??? i.e. what you meant to convey versus what the audience actually gets from the work.
Even the subjective can be broken down into objective questions. If I compare two works, equally well executed, I can ask “If the goal was to make me recall my own childhood (now lost), then this one is more successful. If it is to read a stream-of-conscious recollection of someone else’s abandoned activities, then this one is more successful….”
A hierarchy of intention and perception reifies the subjective.