Michael Bierut
Why Designers Can't Think
At the start of Graphic Design there were no schools
Push for better design came from curiosity and also culture and politics
Two different kinds of schools
Process (Swiss Design) and Portfolio ('Slick' Design) driven school
Many modern influences have high school seniors wanting to be graphic designers
Process schools are driven by problem-solving
Though out process to final stage of simplicity
Portfolio ('slick') schools are driven by final product
More of a commercial end product. Focus on product design. More of a get hired fast portfolio.
Rather learn knowledge as it comes instead of knowing it in advance
Some designers fake that they know about a product or company etc.
With technology becoming more and more accessible to people and schools there are people who think they can design now that they have the programs that “designers” use. Schools are teaching the technology part more and the students then neglect the design process. Some teachers feel that by not knowing the technology it will hurt them in not knowing how to execute the design. This is fear is true, but in todays age figuring out a program enough to know the lingo and operations can easily take a weekend. Of course more in depth work will take longer to learn. Focusing on the technology could take away from the design process reversing the way design was taught in the first place.
In this picture is an example of what a 'slick' school designer might create during his or her education. There is nothing wrong with designing such products. There is however a difference in the thought process between the process designer and portfolio schools. Both create to sell its just the mentality and method behind the designing. While at the end of the day a process designer may only talk about design nonstop a portfolio designer maybe open up to other areas increasing their knowledge.
Lastly, this picture is a companies annual report. During the essay Bierut talks about how when a designer is hired, the employer just wants to know that the designer can design very well. That is not always a good thing. Some designers learn about the client as they are receivre already knowledgeable on the topic. Say someone is going to do an annual report for an accounting firm. They should already know or learn what all is involved in accounting and not just try to design an annual report based off of the images and thought that it involves money.
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Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture
Jessica Helfand
Paul Rand: The Modern Professor
Extremely serious about art and design, geometry, history and ethics, pychology, perception, and form-giving
Hated trickery, decoration, and trends
Strove for purity, efficiency, durability, clarity and purpose
Great knowledge in art history
Never showed slides
Never lectured
Never made conscious
Strong believer in grades
Started to narrow focus in courses and isolate for sharper focus and understanding of design
Many colleges agreed with the ideas and started to follow
Very blunt in his critiques
This poster created by Paul Rand for Art Directors Annual is a great example of his some of his work. It combines simplicity along with his creative use of geometry. There are no use of fancy decoration in this poster or really any of his others. It is straight to the point with no trickery even though this type of poster would not normally have any.
Here Paul Rand is teaching one of his students while he was a professor at Yale. Rand taught using the lessons he learned while he was a student. Though he never showed slides or lectured he gave either gave very detailed or blunt critques that sometimes made students leave crying. He was a strong believer in grades that it gave you something to work for. After teaching for a while he decides to make some changes to the way he taught design. He felt that there should be a narrow focus in courses and that there needed to be a more sharper isolated focus in the courses. Many of his colleges agreed with that thought and followed him as he made a change.
Rand would later go on to create verbal vocabularies in the industry as well as design systems for clients like Westinghouse and IBM. With this development he was able to adapt better to problems and creating a better design. By having this new take on work he would be able to apply this to his teaching giving him an even greater strength as being an educator.
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