Lifes Good

Posts have been few and far between lately but I'll be back to my usual updating self very soon. I have loads of work to add but quite a lot to do in the meantime too so unfortunately a bit of a wait still. Anyway I'm currently doing a placement at Headlines Communications in Milton Keynes at the moment which has been really good so far and hopefully I'll be able to show some work from there soon too. In-fact the only thing I have on my computer from there at this moment in time is this:

(above: James Elsey - Picture circulated around at work)

Anyway it's late and I need a break from screens so TTFN.

Dissertation

This dissertation has had all of its images removed and is copyright of Daniel Gresly. It may be used as reference but must not be claimed as your own work.

Graphic Design in the
How has digital technology
has affected modern day
visual communication?
Daniel Gresly
Digital World

Graphic Design in the
How has digital technology
has affected modern day
visual communication?
Digital World
Daniel Gresly - 06238004
BA Honours Graphic Communication
The University of Northampton
January 2009
Word count - 8743

Aknowledgements
I would like to thank a couple of people for their guidance and support during this dissertation. Firstly I would like to thank Melanie Bush for keeping me pointing in the right direction, secondly I would like to thank my father, Stuart Gresly for the time he has given me by reading throgh all my drafts and helping me with my punctuation and the odd spelling mistake.
Image Source: ‘Scientific American’ Magazine

Abstract
This dissertation sets out to summarise the changes in graphic design and visual communication that have resulted during the digital age. It also presents arguments to whether digital technology has helped or hindered the role of the graphic designer in recent years and what ask what actions should be taken to keep the role of the graphic designer just as important as ever.
The end results of this essay show that design has been split down two paths as an increased amount of amateur designers have the software and hardware they need to produce basic designs. The graphic designer themselves have still got an important role as their greatest assets of putting idea to paper is not something a computer can do for the user.


Introduction
During this essay I plan to investigate how we got to where we are within graphic design today and to show the true extent technology plays from the design process to final outcome.
There have been many technologies invented and developed over the past century that have revolutionised the process in which the designer gets from initial idea to finished product, the design process may have started the same way over many years but when it comes to the end result, the finished product can be radically different from that of 50 years prior.
We are now living in the digital age where many more media are available at the designer’s disposal. Design has been taken to the masses and today you may find it is hard to escape some kind of visual communication whether out and about or in the home.

I plan to look at the impact mass media and the evolving technology of todays easy to use design software has made in educating the consumer about the role of the designer. I also want to distinguish where today’s amateur designers role ends and the professional begins.
The graphic design industry has evolved rapidly within the past 20 years and maybe we need to sit back and think for a while what the true role of the graphic designer is within this day and age. Computers are now at such a high standard that they can offer almost limitless possibilities to the user from the size of a font to enabling a consumer to interact with a design. The way design seems to have been shaped is that the designer now plays the lead role and all the roles thereafter, designers are expected to be masters of many crafts and be able to take control of the entire design process. I want to investigate whether this shift could have a negative impact on the ‘quality’ of modern day design. Has the professional been removed completely or is it possible with the aid of computers that the Jack-Of-All-Trades designer can replicate the same quality of imagery that their highly skilled predecessors produced?
Another area I wish to approach is that of the contemporary design style. With the current levels of development for virtual communication there is a growing ease of promoting a product,


this communication also means there is a call for the constant development of visual thinking, this development gives rise to wide and varied approach to design problems. However, design development, I believe, is not entirely due to the changes within the technological realm neither is it reliant on it; in his book ‘A Century Of Graphic Design’, Jeremy Aynsley tells the reader “while computer technology bought about a substantial shift, it would be misleading to suggest that computers alone determined the nature of design changes after about 1980. In fact many of the characteristic stylistic ideas had been developed before their extensive introduction in electronic form” (1). With this in mind I believe that despite taking a very modern approach, with most contemporary design work it is possible to follow their design heritage back to past artistic movements such as ‘Functionalism’ and the ‘De Stijl’ movement. Of course I am certain there will be many exceptions where the design has been mostly based on problems dictated by the confines of the machine, a matter that I shall address later on.

It seems that we are only just viewing the tip of the iceberg when you look at digital technology’s effects on communication and the mediums that it brings with it. New means to publish media and improvements on the existing products will mean that applications such as interactive digital television and the Internet will offer many more ways for a consumer to interact. This also brings me to how the consumer can have a strong influence on the way styles develop, with increasing amount of people becoming computer literate it won’t be long until we see a massive digital world full of digital consumers, all importing real life data about themselves to improve their interaction with this digital world; in some cases, this seems to be true already but to what extent can this be developed?

An Information Era
In modern society we are able to communicate vast distances from an early age through the use of technology. This use of technology in the home and workplace has also placed a vast amount of information at the users fingertips. This has all been provided to us by the digital revolution. Today, many people expect to have this level of technology and in many cases can rely on it. From a child’s homework to multinational companies sending vast amounts of money from place to place without the money having to physically move, we are no longer living in a totally physical world but an increasingly digital one, where once teleportation was dreamed of by scientists as a viable method of transportation, digitisation has already seemingly made this dream obsolete, with the new digital world we no longer need to be with someone to communicate with them, however, in theory the reasoning is sound but this loss of physical interaction can also have negative affects on the human psyche (2).

Nicholas Negroponte states in his 1996 book, ‘Being Digital’ that “where the industrial was an age of atoms, the information age is an age of computers” (3).
When considered in the context of advertising, this new digital world opens up many new areas and ways in which to promote a product. So, with this rapidly expanding digital world the role of the designer has never been greater and it is now their role to visually aid the education of the inhabitants of this digital world. Another much more neutral role for the designer is that of a digital cartographer, ever since the very first commercial website was built in 1994 for the football World Cup which was being held in America, the vast amount of information online has had to be easily readable and easy to navigate, this is something which has not changed in general, despite new possibilities and intricacies presented along with the latest digital technologies.
In the United States, as far back as 1956 office work had surpassed manual labour in terms of employment figures, this movement from rural to urban working signified the beginnings of the ‘Information Age’ (4), this was also a time of much prosperity and rapid growth across most of the developed world fuelling the consumer culture (5). Between then and now we have seen personal computers, digital machinery, fibre optics and communication satellites, all of which were key to the

development of the Internet. All these things combined have contributed to the smaller, better-connected world that those with access to the many communication tools such as mobile phones and personal computers have become accustomed to. Today when we need to find something out we don’t go to the library, we “Google it”, we are no longer solely influenced by our peers but increasingly by television and the Internet (6). The Internet itself has matured a great deal since 1989 but we have only seen the tip of the iceberg and as technology pushes forwards so will the boundaries currently confining the designer.
With a great need for clarity in an otherwise confusing domain, you would expect the designers role to be more important than ever before, yet, clients are increasingly cynical when they consider whether it is worth hiring someone to do a job they can seemingly do themselves with the aid of a computer and a bit of software. The internet itself has never been anything more than a series of 0’s and 1’s, a binary code which command a group of pixels, modern software interfaces mean that not only can the everyday user read and understand these 0’s and 1’s but they can also create them with ease and possibly even publish it in a way that others may see all around the globe, social networking sites such as Myspace (7) and Facebook (8) are great examples of this, in particular Myspace, with its ability to allow the user to change almost anything they want from the point sizes of their fonts to the colour of their background, you no longer need a PhD in Computer sciences to produce complex pieces of work on the computer as the interfaces aid you through the design process. This ability to experiment in design and to publish the results across the globe in an instant has had some effect within the design world. With our digital environment we no longer need to purchase hugely expensive and large machinery or to have a lifetime of skills just to put together a ‘simple’ spread. The term ‘desktop publishing’ summarises this change as it relates to both the sheer amount of information available to the user but also shows that computers can be used to produce and publish the various forms of visual information, an area that previously needed many professional skills. The dilemma many designers saw though was the degradation of design work due to the unskilled users; again something I will expand upon in later chapters.

Living within the constraints
When personal computers first became availiable, their use within design was looked upon very cynically amongst many traditional designer and typographers. Despite this, in 1984 Apple released the Macintosh computer (9). The Macintosh was aimed at the designer and marketed by Apple as the future of design, although its crude graphics and small amounts of memory made it difficult for many in the industry to take in and realise its potential (10). Many designers even saw this digitisation of design as a big step backwards for the industry. Generally it was those studying and working in educational establishments such as the Cranbrook Academy that first experimented with the Macintosh as, unlike professional graphic designers, they did not have the demands of the commercial world. Two leading figures of digital experimentation were the likes of April Greiman who pioneered the use of the Macintosh with her early graphic design experiments (fig 1) and the Illustrator, John Hersey, whose witty illustration style had overshadowed the crude constraints of the available technology and caused people to accept and look beyond the medium. (fig 2) Greiman’s approach was slightly different to Hersey’s as she wanted the reader to see the machine for what it was, to do this she included the Macintosh’s low-resolution textures in much of her experimental work and showed the world how the Macintosh could be used creatively within the design world. Rudy Vanderlans and Zuzana Liko closely watched the results of these experiments and eventually they came together and formed the design company, Emigre.
Both designers were attracted to the challenges thrown down by the early limitations of the machine but believed there would be many more possibilities from this beige box in years to come. (11)

Both Vanderlans and Liko had very different backgrounds, Vanderlans trained as a traditional graphic designer in Holland during the late 1970’s, at this time graphic design remained a very manual process and this was reflected in his education, the graphic design courses were also often modelled on the functionalist ideologies of the International Style, I intend to go more into depth about the development of the International Style later on, this International Style emphasised the importance for grids and clarity of message to the reader. Vanderlans explains “the aims were always simplicity and clarity and a necessity of fitting design to modern printing methods and of making design ‘modern’, in harmony with the new modern world being created around them”(12). This manual approach would always be a slow one and a lot of time was spent on typography, as a result, Vanderlans understood what made ‘good’ typography.
Vanderlans never truly believed these clear set rules of typography and later turned to the work of more expressive designers such as Milton Glaser for his greatest inspiration, Glaser, quoted as saying “there is no single voice capable of expressing every idea, romance is still necessary, ornament is necessary and simplification is not better than complexity” (13) showed a rejection of Modernist design believing that there are no rules within design which can lead your work, instead the designers role should be to capture the emotion of the given product, Glaser’s influence made a great difference to Emigre’s work in future years and showed that modern design didn’t necessarily have to be ‘Modernist’. (fig 3, 4 & 5)
One of Vanderlans’ main reasons for personally doubting the ‘International Style’ was due to his belief that people find easiest to understand what they are most used to reading, this idea came to him after seeing people reading poorly designed newspapers in even poorer reading conditions such as on the train. Vanderlans believed that if someone was able to train their mind to read something like that, then really type can be experimented on and played with and that when placed in the context of the Macintosh with its low-res screen it meant that there was actually no need to create typefaces based on existing typographic styles, but it was in fact better to create entirely new typefaces specifically for dot matrix printers and the low-res screens.
In contrast to Vanderlans, Liko had emigrated from her home in Czechoslovakia to America at a young age with her parents, she was never trained in the International Style. She in fact initially showed a greater interest in computers than in type although she liked to experiment graphically with these machines. Liko had an early career at MIT; this gave her access to incredibly expensive and state of the art technology that normally would not be accessible to a designer. With this access she made her first typefaces using early applications such as fontographer and from then on was hooked on designing typefaces to work and be designed within the constraints of the machine.
When Liko and Vanderlans got together in 1984 they began a series of projects which were made possible by the introduction of the computer, these projects included Emigre magazine and Emigre fonts. The magazine came first and was targeted at émigré’s in America, much like Liko and Vanderlans themselves. The survival of Emigre magazine was dependant on the computer due to the resulting low production costs. After a few issues Emigre shifted their target audience from American émigré’s to graphic designers, this was also vital to their survival as it provided them with advertisers. The magazine was cheap to produce, as often the text was set and printed in a large point size then scaled down on a photocopier to smooth the lines (a trick which Liko discovered) then, the correctly sized text was added with the imagery and was sent off for printing or even just photocopied to produce the final magazine. This use of technology meant that it no longer took a team of expensive skilled labourers to produce such a piece, also the designer was given back full control resulting in being able to save money. This is not always seen as a good thing however as I will show later on. The magazine was also used to promote their other venture, Emigre Type, which was headed up by Liko.

Typography saw a huge amount of change with the advent of the new digital age, as, in the graphic design industry, the typesetting industry had to integrate with other industries as typesetting was no longer just a job for professional typesetters but for anyone with a personal computer and piece of word processing software.
Many designs for type are based on traditional typefaces but some, and especially those designed by Emigre, are presented in a form that does not look to tradition but rather experimentation. A new medium can give some room for experiment but when you have a new production technique thrown in too it can open up many new possibilities. Early dot matrix printers could not handle traditional typefaces so there was a need for a new breed of typeface that could be used and printed digitally and at a varied amount of sizes whilst still remaining legible (14). At this time bitmap fonts were all important, Liko produced many bitmap typefaces including Emperor, Oakland and Emigre. (fig 6)
These were a progression on existing typefaces, both serif and sans-serif and were made up of a series of square ‘pixels’ rather than smooth lines, these kinds of typefaces tended to be used as screen fonts on low-res screens, they were also used though in business when printing off data sheets and other documents on the dot matrix printer. These typefaces rapidly became familiar to a generation of consumers as they were also used in early computer game consoles due to their low memory usage. Later raster text was developed for use with new, higher resolution screens and also LaserJet printers. Some artists, designers and typographers still like to produce typefaces that are reminiscent of early bitmap fonts, this may be because of the ties to the early digital gaming era (as in the case of pixeljam.com) or may be because of the reference of what the machine truly is (in the case of Emigre), it has to be said that modern day displays, in most situations, are now up to the job of showing high resolution text and images yet I believe there will be a role for some of the older typefaces for years to come due to their, now historic, importance. The main thing we have seen happen to these older faces however has been their steady evolution as technology which produces them has developed, an example of this is Modula which is an evolution of the bitmap font, Emperor. (fig 7) Modula uses the shape of Emperor whilst smoothing the edges off to show a more modern finish. Those early bitmap typefaces can no longer be used in the same ways as they were previously, despite the typeface not having changed the technology has seen a dramatic change and this has put the once hi tech bitmap fonts into the category of 80’s retro. This has shown that fast paced changes in technology can have large impacts on the way we perceive the world around us, confining state of the art technologies to a pieces of history in a matter of just a few years.

The Crystal Goblet
Sometimes in design the way something is produced can counteract the message being sent. In the past this has meant that the designer may need to use older technologies if they were to keep the message clear and precise. The idea of the crystal goblet is the use of production techniques in such a way that the user does not consider how the piece was created. With modern advancements many new things have been made possible by using the computer in design and it is now purely down to the designers skills to what can be perceived through a piece of work. An organisation such as the Woodland Trust does not need to be seen using the latest technologies as they represent nature and the preservation of our environment, however, because their website and in general, corporate ID, has been digitised it seems to me that, within the design process, the clients vision has been put to one side so that the designer could quickly and easily produce something. (fig 8)
Image Above: A recent TV insert designs for Sky, despite the change of medium and the use of computer 3D graphics it is still very reminiscent of a poster designed by Josef Muller-Brockmann in 1955
Fig 8: The woodland trust website, the way the text is laid out makes it hard to navigat and the style does not nessicairly make it easily distinguishable

On another level, the way the information is presented can also be very important, as the reader is not going to read something that looks boring or unimportant and if there is no natural flow to the text then it will get overlooked. In the case of the Woodland Trust, the medium controls the product but I don’t believe this should be the case. The final product shouldn’t look as if it represents the technology that produced it, it should share the same flow given by nature yet represent all the important information that the reader comes for, it should use colour in a way that wouldn’t look out of place in a woodland and submerse the user into the settings they want to promote, this could even use a series of audio and moving images. All that is all possible with modern technologies but to create something like that costs money and design is something that a client, and especially a non-profit organisation such as the Woodland Trust cannot deem financially viable when what they have already ‘will do’.
The possibilities created by using the computer in design are endless and this means that now it can be viewed as a ‘Crystal Goblet’ as such, which, holds vital information either consciously (through content) or subconsciously (through the use of design). Print has been capable of doing this for years as we gloss over the limitations, this was the main reason why professional designers didn’t want to move onto the computer when it was first released. Since the advent of the computer the overall quality of design for print in many cases has decreased as the designer’s role gets faded out in place of the non-professional in a lower market, in a world where you get what you pay for it has been remarked that there is little digital work which designers can be proud of currently on the internet and other mediums. (15) Work as seen below is a great example how the non-professional can take a disregard to traditional methods learnt over many years due to a lack of education.(fig 9)
Wielded correctly a computer can be a powerful ‘invisible’ tool for the designer but when used in the wrong hands the reader may not instantly see the difference but they will not take in the same level of information as they would if the piece was designed professionally. The important thing to realise now is, that the consumer has become used to, and has integrated with digital machines; the technology has matured, and will continue to mature to a level in which not much is digitally impossible. If you were to show a well designed piece of printed work to a consumer they wouldn’t even consider the digital process that produced it, even if you were to show a website to some extent this would be the case. On television some adverts are so well produced that the consumer makes a connection from the advert to their life, this connection can be often broken down using simple semiotics. There was a time when low resolution limited what you could represent but the computer is now a
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Better connected
The possibility of connecting the world through digital means also means there are endless possibilities to promote yourself. This can be especially seen on social networking sites like Myspace. On Myspace users from all over the globe upload photos, change backgrounds, add music, alter type, adjust colours and generally personalise their pages. The digital realm has now became a secondary world where you can look good or bad based on your design skills alone, you let people see exactly what you want them to see by a series of careful selections, you are not limited to a physical form which comes with its own natural discrepancies. You do not need money to have all the fashionable things in this digital world, as long as you have access to the world you can ‘pimp’ your profiles and promote yourself digitally, fashion itself has gone digital and you can make a huge statement online just by the way your site looks. Graphic design

Better Connected
author, Rick Poyner, describes how online digital fashions have became increasingly respected amongst consumers
“What we have is a climate now in which the very idea of visual communication and graphic design, if we still want to call it that, is accepted by many more people, they get it, they understand it, they’re starting to see graphic communication as an expression of their own identity”
this identity is now a part of the individual, as its now a part of themselves they take more care over it so that it represents what they want it to, Poyner goes on to talk about how this can be explained and how it can develop,
“you start to care about it in the same way you care about what clothes you are wearing as an expression of who you are, of your haircut or the way you decorate your apartment. We accept the idea of identity being expressed in that way, through these consumer choices, well now it’s happening in the sphere of visual communication. And there is no reason, as the tools become even more sophisticated, why this won’t just go on developing and developing and developing”.
The digital world cannot be confused with the real world though, as what you see is not necessarily what you get and it is hard to judge a person or even a product by what is represented. Of course better connections in the real world also has other benefits too, information on the move is a fairly new idea but one which is quickly developing. The first mobile phone that I owned in 2000 could make calls and send messages to other phones while I was out and about; it wasn’t particularly huge as microprocessors had seen to that issue and it did exactly what I needed. Three phones down the line I can now receive and watch film trailers via Bluetooth whenever I visit the cinema, I can send videos and pictures from my phone to another or even to a computer, again via Bluetooth or even through online services like 3G or Wifi. It can now even locate my position and direct me to the nearest restaurant if I asked it to via GPS. These advancements have meant that there are now even more possibilities.
This is a time of viral advertising where for a limited budget a huge audience can be targeted as individuals. It sounds all too easy and there is a catch, for it to work the consumers need to physically pass it on and more importantly, actually want to pass it on. Wanting to pass on an advertisement can be due to a number of things, firstly the ad could simply be something that the consumer agrees with and wants more people to know about, secondly it can have an artistic merit which classes it as a kind of digital ephemera, finally it could just simply be something the consumer finds funny or clever and wants to share with their friends. Currently I believe the most effective of the three seems to be the latter as the consumer has a positive experience caused by the advert and feels that friends and family would appreciate this same good feeling, The consumer can then subconsciously associate the product with the feeling itself which may bring the product to mind at a later date. It doesn’t mean though that the other two ways should be ruled out, it just means that they target a different audience. Viral advertising is just a progression of word of mouth advertising as it relies on the consumer but it offers the designer a lot more scope when it comes to producing the message. Another benefit seen is that the message is always the same so the information is always accurate and as intended. Being able to access the Internet on the move also brings other benefits such as real world integration with the online world. In 1944 a Japanese corporation, Deso-Wave created a new form of barcode called the QR Code, (fig 10) (16) recently this code has found many digital uses, in a new card game for the Playstation3, the code can be picked up by a camera and generate a digital object on screen which can interact with the included cards.(fig 11) The real benefit though, with this technology, is that when combined with the internet and certain mobile phones a simple bar code can bring up information about a website for a company or product, so in years to come we will be able to interact with these billboards and printed products in the street and find out more information or purchase a product. With the new scanners you can scan a code and instantly have a phone number, url, or even a piece of text pop up on your screen. QR is a physical connection to the digital realm and may play a big role in the coming years as mobile technology advances further.

With all these changes happening around us should we maybe reconsider the position of the traditional ‘graphic designer’, living in a world dominated by information and communication surely there is more relevance in being a ‘visual communicator’, a modern graphic designer is now required to do a wide range of things, to help educate the masses about just about anything that they are asked to, to simplify information within the new digital realm, to help navigate or entice the consumer, to inspire and to inform and always through a visual medium. So has the role changed enough to validate a change in name? At the design school ‘Ulm’s Hochschule für Gestaltung’ the term ‘visual communication’ has already been used to replace ‘graphic design. (17) This was due to the belief that contemporary film and televisual media opened up boundaries of definition and it is these new media that give us our connection to one another.

A change within Graphic Design & Typography
The graphic design industry as such has witnessed many changes in its lifetime; before any form of graphic reproduction was used the graphic artists, during the period before movable type, followed the entire process from initial idea to finished product and were seen more as an artist than todays designers who are driven by consumerism. In those days the writing, type design and graphic design were all done by one person from start to finish and each piece often crafted by hand, however, in 1476 Johann Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press and this changed the way the graphic designer worked for many years to come. (18) Of course in today’s digital age the idea of the designer having full control of their projects is nothing special but in the past you needed a team of specialists to handle each area due to the sheer amount of specialist skills required in the design process. But is this integration necessarily a good thing?
Above Image:
Neville Brody, Fuse
Magazine Cover, Issue 6
1993
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A change within Graphic Design & Typography
Clients today want to save as much money as possible in business and in many cases the design budget is the first thing to suffer. The way that the clients saw that they could best solve this problem would be hire one designer and get them to do the work from start to finish on their computer, this was previously the domain of many specialists but specialists were expensive and you would have to wait for artwork etc. and in business time also means money, so, when the client saw what the ‘all-in-one’ graphic designer could do with their Mac computers they deemed it better value for money as, in their mind, what was created was ‘good enough’; this sense of being ‘good enough’ was what put the final nail in the coffin for the commercial viability of using specialist typesetters and artworkers etc. (19) With the advent of the computer not only did some specialist industries fade out or were forced to adapt, others were also formed. When the Internet was bought into the public domain for instance many design agencies either commissioned out their work or brought in in-house web designers as this is a deeply technical aspect and for the graphic designer it would often take them a long time, meaning that they would have to forfeit some of their previous roles. Some designers do like to follow a project from start to finish but in general drawing a defined layout and keeping a close eye on the process is good enough for many. Where once graphic design could be viewed as an almost mythological process where the client was happy to sit back and wait for their finished design
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A change within Graphic Design & Typography
work to appear on their doorstep, unaware of all the technical processes which were used. Clients today are far more aware of visual communication through use of the computer and everyday use of desktop publishing software. Even back in the 1990’s this amateur understanding, picked up through their experiences of typesetting on the computer, caused a shift in the way clients wanted to get things done, an article in the April 2005 edition Applied Arts Magazine informs the reader of these changes,
“In the world of computerized design, clients are no longer content to take bit parts, but demand starring roles. Many submit text on disk, yearning to get involved in stages they once ignored. Instead of buying original design work for each issue of a newsletter, some acquire reusable templates. Others only consult professionals about technical matters involving colour or printing, and do everything else themselves.” (20)
The defining line between professional designer and ‘have a go’ client gradually became finer, and, as many designers feared, the quality of many pieces of work suffered in the hands of the amateur. It isn’t all doom and gloom though as, for the professional designer there is a much higher level of control over each project and if trained correctly in typography and layouts. there are far more possibilities to experiment with the work at the click of a button, a level of involvement which was previously unheard of, this means an increased pace which can keep costs down and which leaves the designer in charge of their own
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A change within Graphic Design & Typography
project from start to finish. One of the many, more recent advancements in design and advertising, is the development of new media and through exploration and experimentation of these new media the professional can assert their importance within today’s age and show the need for well designed work within them.
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The Default Designer
The Default Designer
During World War II many European designers emigrated to the United States to escape Nazi rule. With them they brought along their European design education that relied strongly on the traditional Swiss style. The Swiss have always been well known for their clean Modernist style and this stayed with them even after moving to America. With time the Modernist styles softened as they came into contact with the strong copy lead advertising work previously well known in the U.S, this style some classed as Biomorphic Modernism due to its softer lines (22), but when you look at the progression, it is a slow evolution and hard to separate it from the original Modernist movement. (fig 12 & 13)
World War II then, played an important role in much of the design style we see today. After the war had ended consumerism began to take hold and along with it many multinational companies started to emerge from America, these were some of the high days for the graphic design industry as they had a new world to build with people wanting to move on from the bad days of the war. Many companies wanted to shake off their
Fig 12: An early Modernist poster designed by Jan Tschichoid for the film Die Frau ohne Namen, 1927
Above Image:
Emigre Design
Emigre Magazine, Issue 43
Front Cover 1997
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The Default Designer
corporate appearances and whilst these companies were growing globally, many also wanted get rid of all the visual ephemera that previously adorned much of their current artwork which was associated with the ‘old times’. This was a time of much change and rebuilding across much of the world and companies needed to evolve. Of course the first place designers instinctively turned to in this re-development was the new wave of Swiss Modernism, which, by now was steadily growing in America. Not long after the start of this renovation process, in 1957, The Hass Type Foundry brought out a brand new typeface called Helvetica. Helvetica was tailored to be the ultimate typeface for legibility, of course its success in legibility was only due to what the reader was already used to. The Hass Type Foundry promoted Helvetica to the masses and made it readily available to those who needed it, it wasn’t long before corporations and governments fell in love with it and wanted to use it for their own work and corporate identities. To many a logo is seen as a representation of a company and the type within the logo can say a lot about you or your company, by using Helvetica companies remained formal but at the same time gave a warmness which the reader could associate with accessibility, many found it hard to see why you should use anything else. Neville Brody, when interviewed said “Helvetica is a badge that says ‘we are a part of modern society’” (23) and this remains the case over 50 years on.
If you look at the poster in fig 14 by Josef Muller-Brockmann that was designed in 1955 for instance, it is impossible to distinguish that it was designed before the use of computers in design, when mixed with the right graphics a piece
Fig 13: A much later poster designed in 1946 by Paul Rand for Jacqueline Cochran which shows how the Modernist style has began to soften
Fig 14: A poster designed for Orchestral performance of Beethoven. Despite being designed in 1955 Josef Muller-Brockmann’s use of Helvetica makes it look just as modern today as it was when it was first designed.
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The Default Designer
done in Helvetica can appear timeless. When the Macintosh Computer was initially released the creators decided to make Helvetica the default typeface.
Initially dissuaded by the crudeness of the Macintosh, many traditional designers were put off from using these early machine as they felt they wouldn’t be able to replicate existing standards, it was in fact predominantly a mixture of office workers, students and secretaries that took up the challenge of this simple machine. These people had no training in classic typography and rarely any knowledge of graphic design yet through the computer they were able to set their own text, lay it out, add images and print the finished article, Helvetica was, by then, extensively used by not only the professional designer but also the amateur. (24) This new group of ‘amateur’ designers were the worst nightmare to those designers still practicing traditional ways as it now meant that the general public were beginning to understand typography and how to make newsletters etc. but they had no formal training and took no consideration of line widths, kerning, leading and the associations that went with some typefaces. However despite this, the computer covered up for some of their mistakes and the value of the graphic designer came under scrutiny, cost cutting had to be made and to do that some of the specialism’s within the trade were lost. Now that the latest generation of designers have been bought up on the defaults of the Apple Mac and
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The Default Designer
trained mostly on the machine it would be wrong to ignore the lessons learnt from previous generations of designer. It is all too easy to slip into using just what you are given but in doing this you will be losing the sort of well spaced text we have become accustomed to and that has been developed over many years, it is up to today’s designers to take an active interest in typography and to keep that line drawn between themselves and the untrained. David Carson once said
“it doesn’t matter what application you use, you’re only a good designer if you have an eye for it” (25)
his style of graphic design is very expressive and having not been traditionally trained as a graphic designer has left him more reliant on experimentation. (fig15 & 16)
Helvetica has gained the myth of being the ultimate typeface through its heavy usage, but many, including Carson can’t see it having an everlasting future, as the times change, expression is becoming more popular and it is up to the designer to decide between style and emotion.
Fig 15: A self promotional poster by David Carson. It uses photo montage, overlaid and unusual typefaces to seperate it from the traditional International Style
Fig 16: A poster by David Carson to promote a talk he was giving. Designed in 2000 it uses Carsons typical grunge technique
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Targeting Audiences
Targeting Audiences
As we are living in an ever more ‘digital’ society we are also becoming increasingly connected globally. This social globalism has meant that, in advertising, it is much easier to communicate a message to a large number of people and to even specify the audience who may receive it. When you look at television advertising it is evident that certain products are promoted during certain programmes, this method relies on data gathered on the audience which the advertisers then look at and try and match a programmes audience with their target audience, this can be quite inaccurate but with the new media it is possible to add a new level to the personalisation. With new media, products can be aimed at very small niche markets through specialist websites and smaller specialist TV channels. This form of narrowcasting has a far higher hit percentage than an advert on a channel with a wide-ranging audience. Technology has not yet shown its full capability with narrowcasting yet though.
Above Image:
Katherine McCoy,
‘Cranbrook The Graduate Program In Design’, 1989
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Targeting Audiences
Some websites, Amazon.co.uk for instance, use data they collect on your account and use it to promote additional products that may interest you, based on reviews you have given, products you have bought, other products you would like and even things you have looked at; this is just the start though. Being digital means that we could one day do just about anything in the digital realm and this means that it will even be possible for varying machines to communicate to an individual helping them make decisions during their everyday life. If Amazon.co.uk can do something like that with their products then in the future your fridge might tell you about special offers on a certain jam because not only did you buy that jam before but yours is also starting to run out, it might even be linked up centrally and tell you things like your car needs filling up and where to get the cheapest fuel or even give you some options for what you can do on your day off the following week, with this level of narrowcasting advertising will become much more individual so you will only get the information you need and that is tailored for you. This technology is reliant on information being input, it could be done automatically or manually but either way the computer will learn and build up a digital version of you that feeds on your physical life. On the other side of the spectrum you still have the mass media and this may require a much different style of advertising. You may not always design an advert for your entire audience and this can have negative responses if picked
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Targeting Audiences
up by those who use your product but don’t feel targeted by the campaign, this means that wider target audiences are often used but the sheer number of people in contact with the mass media means that even though there may be a lower hit percentage, the overall number of hits from the campaign can be far greater.
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What makes today’s style?
What makes today’s style?
Despite the use of Apple Mac computers and new interface products such as Wacom’s Graphics Tablets, contemporary designers often still put pen to paper, in years to come this may change, with developments in touch screen technology and other interfaces, however, there will always be something more final and personal about a physical product, if a designer were to work from start to finish on the computer the end result may even be seen as just an unskilled piece, by taking the computer out of the design process at the very early stages it would represent the designer as a specialist craftsman. We are in a time when many consumers look on at the work of the graphic designer and think to themselves “I could do that” and in many cases this is true but there is a difference between saying and doing and the graphic designer has always had the ability to put their ideas to paper and to solve complex design problems.
Above Image:
Paul Rand, IBM, Poster, 1982
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What makes today’s style?
Often the technological influence is very slight within design. In the bottle image fig. 17, 18, 19 & 20 you see how the idea hasn’t changed between 1818 and 1999 despite the production methods being drastically changed. The first thing you do notice though with the four bottles is that each one has a typeface to define the period.
The first image “Chansons et Poesies Diverse do Capelle” (fig 17) by Pierre Capelle was printed in 1818. Most likely using movable blocks of type, he was confined to the restrictions of the metal letters that had been hand made. The actual process of designing and casting the type by hand, often having to stop to create a carbon copy so that he could check what it looked like, was a very timely process for which you had to be well educated. The skill of the typographer is shown in this example by the way he adjusts the kerning (space between letters in each word) and the tracking (space between words) to produce a fluid piece of text in the shape of a bottle. Being a poem, it is also required to be read, a similar piece could have been done calligraphically instead of using the letterpress but this could have led to misinterpretation and if produced in mass it would have taken much longer to replicate. In this case then it was still vital to use the modern technology of the time despite having to work within its confines.
Fig 17: Pierre Capelle, ‘Chanson et Poesies Diverse de Capelle’
Poem, 1818
Fig 18: Paul Bacon, ‘The Big Drink’ Book Cover, 1965
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What makes today’s style?
The second bottle, ‘The Big Drink’ (fig 18) by Paul Bacon in 1965, uses a typically sixties typeface, the big bold letters are a far cry from that of Capelles’ piece. In this example the type has been warped, a clear sign that it was not printed using metal type blocks, this is because if done in movable type it would make it hard for even the very best type setter due to its complex imagery and varying sizes. Most likely in this case the piece was hand drawn and then printed using a form of offset lithography or even screen-printed.
The third image, a famous advert for Pepsi (fig 19) by David Carson in 1992 begins to show you life in the digital age. In 1984 the Macintosh Computer revolutionised the way designers worked, but it also meant a great shift had to be made within typography, the role of the typographer was placed back into the domain of the ‘graphic designer’. Becoming a designer had never been easier from this point on, anyone could do it and to get started all you needed was a computer, a printer and an understanding of how computers work. As I have mentioned in pevious chapters, this worried both the traditional typographer and designer as it meant that there would be an influx of ‘bad’ typography and ‘poor’ layouts etc. The default settings which were built into the DTP (desktop publishing) software meant however that not only did the user now have the software but they also had the basic skills to produce their own work, this event was quite important
Fig 19: David Carson, ‘Be Young, Have Fun, Drink Pepsi’ Advertisment 1992
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What makes today’s style?
in the way design developed. David Carson was one of these designers that had neither had a traditional education in design nor in typography but was a part of the generation who through modern publishing had a greater visual knowledge. His work was all very experimental and this often led to him producing work that was deemed illegible. Under the supervision of Andrew Christou and Erik Baker, Carson produced the “Be young, have fun, drink Pepsi” advertisement. The way it was produced on the computer meant that he had unlimited possibilities to change the leading, tracking and kerning of the text along with the curvature of the text to a certain extent, this kind of experimental work would have been difficult in the commercial world before the Macintosh as the amount of time it would take to hone and create the design would put you way past the short deadlines that the client would expect. Within the digital process you can even skip out the manual hand rendering if you really wanted (although pencil and felt tip visuals are still frequently used by today’s designers), all this combined means that what could have previously taken weeks could now be done in just a matter of hours. It is hard to tie a traditional design style to Carsons work as he was very much the facilitator or the so-called ‘grunge’ period that broke up the more traditional Modernist designs. It is possible to see this though in how he uses type to suit the language being spoken rather than just using the conservative typeface of Helvetica and ‘playing it safe’.
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What makes today’s style?
The final bottle is an even more recent one that has been designed for Burger King. (fig 20) For this the designer would have made an outline of the bottle and made it into a 3D mesh. Once created the text would instantly wrap around. This is a good example though as it is well executed. Time and consideration were spent deciding where each word would best fit, the main typeface is Helvetica which, as I’ve mentioned, has been adopted by many giant corporations and governments to make them look official yet friendly and approachable in the modern age, also the fact that it uses languages from around the world shows that we are now living in a much smaller, connected world full of multi-national giant corporations, whilst it also compliments the reader in their knowledge of recognising them as foreign languages, a knowledge gained from the advancements in technology.
Fig 20: Unknown Designer, Buger King, Advertisment
1999
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Conclusion
Conclusion
Graphic design today doesn’t rely on technology the evolution of the bottle designs demonstrates that, but the constraints given by technology can often have implications to design styles for many years to come. Current generations of graduating designers are the ones who have grown up while technology has matured around them, their early childhood was lived in the low-resolution digital world and this can have an effect on the designs of a generation but it won’t be the only influence. Because the computer and other digital technologies have now progressed to a level where the medium has become invisible to the reader there are many more opportunities offered to the designer, while giving a fast paced and mildly automated design environment. Being digital doesn’t mean letting the machine control, as the role of the graphic designer is a professional one and for the profession to survive there are many technical aspects that still need to be addressed. It seems that our technological
Above Image:
Stefan Sagmeister,
‘Fresh Dialogue’, Poster, 1996
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Conclusion
design style is influenced both by the many advancements in technology and also by social changes, people take inspiration from many places and as the digital media has been a key tool in the designers arsenal over the years, it is no surprise to see its influence on the thought process. As technology progresses we will become more and more digital and the digital world itself will have to grow and develop to cater for this new wave of published information. The future for the graphic designer may not be even as specialist as it is today as within the next few years the overall subject of visual communication could be included in the designers vast repertoire of skills. The main area that will develop as technology develops is the media itself, with increased interaction with technologies and better communication the consumer will no longer just be a reader but a participant in the advert. No matter what the influence technology brings the graphic designer will always evolve to cater to the job at hand. While the creative thinking aspect of the professional will remain the same I can easily imagine the practical skills of the amateur greatly improving through updated and increasingly easy to use software. There will however never be a direct comparison between the two as the role of the professional graphic designer will develop and improve on previous experimentation and continue to produce cutting edge pieces of design work.
Bibliography
Negroponte, Nicholas. ‘Being Digital’ Vintage Books 1996
Aynsley, Jeremy. ‘A Century Of Graphic Design’ Barrons 2001
Shipcott, Grant. ‘Graphic Design In The Computer Age:
Typography For Desktop Publishers’ B.T. Batsford 1994
Emigre Graphics. ‘Emigre (The Book): Graphic Design Into
The Digital Realm’ Byron Preiss Visual Publications Inc. 1993
Stone, Sumner. ‘Typography On The Personal Computer’ Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd. 1993
Heller, Steven & Llic, Mirko. ‘Icons Of Graphic Design’ Thames & Hudson 2001
Mander, Jerry. ‘Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Televison’ William Morrow 1978
Spiekermann, Erik & Ginger, E.M. ‘Stop Stealing Sheep And Find Out How Type Works (Second Edition) Peachpit Press 2003
Redhead, David. ‘Electric Dreams - Designing For The Digital Age’ V&A Publications 2004
Creative Review
www..creativereview.co.uk/crblog/q-do-you-think-you-r
Accessed 23/11/08
Creative Review
www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/a-new-map-of-the-world
Accessed 23/11/08
Essay by Barrett G.Lyon 2005
www.opte.org/downloads./optelsart.pdf
Accessed 23/11/08
Interview With Wim Crouwel
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=I5y3px4ovxE
Accessed 23/11/08
Books
Web
Bernard Sumner talks to Peter Saville. Hacienda Factory
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=37aHpoX8G_I
Accessed 23/11/09
Applied Arts Magazine. Issue No. 20 March/April 2005
Technology’s Terror & Triumphs Article
Courtesy of Wilson Web
Creative Review Magazine. Issue No. 24 September 2004
In With The New Article
Courtesy of Wilson Web
Communication Arts Magazine January/Febuary 2007
Communication Arts Magazine Interactive Annual 12
September/October 2007
Hustwit, Gary. Helvetica (2007)
Journals
Films
Reference Notes
Aynsley, Jeremy. ‘A Century Of Graphic Design’ P.202
Mander, Jerry. ‘Four Arguments For The Elimination of Television’ P.87
Negroponte, Nicholas. ‘Being Digital’ P.163
Negroponte, Nicholas. ‘Being Digital’ P.163
Hoon, Will. The University Of Northampton, lecture notes
Mander, Jerry. ‘Four Arguments For The Elimination of Television’ P.216
http://www.myspace.com, Accessed 23/11/08
http://www.facebook.com, Accessed 23/11/08
Aynsley, Jeremy. ‘A Century Of Graphic Design’ P.202
Emigre Graphics. ‘Emigre (The Book): Graphic Design Into
The Digital Realm’ P.5
Emigre Graphics. ‘Emigre (The Book): Graphic Design Into
The Digital Realm’ P.5
Emigre Graphics. ‘Emigre (The Book): Graphic Design Into
The Digital Realm’ P.9
Emigre Graphics. ‘Emigre (The Book): Graphic Design Into
The Digital Realm’ P.9
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=I5y3px4ovxE&eurl=http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/the-greatest-design-and-ad-clips-on-youtube-well-a-few-of-them, Accessed 23/11/2008
Creative Review Magazine, December 2008, Patrick Burgoyne P.9
http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/q-do-you-think-you-r, Accessed 23/11/2008
Aynsley, Jeremy. ‘A Century Of Graphic Design’ P.100

Emigre Graphics. ‘Emigre (The Book): Graphic Design Into
The Digital Realm’ P.6
Applied Arts Magazine. March/April 2005
Technologies Terror & Triumphs Article
Applied Arts Magazine. March/April 2005
Technologies Terror & Triumphs Article
Heller, Steve & Llic Mirko. ‘Icons Of Graphic Design’
P. Unknown (http://www.segura-inc.com/archived_news_iframe.php?month=12&year=2006#) Accessed 26/11/2008
Aynsley, Jeremy. ‘A Century Of Graphic Design’ P.114
Hustwit, Gary. Helvetica – Film
Emigre Graphics. ‘Emigre (The Book): Graphic Design Into
The Digital Realm’ P.5
Hustwit, Gary. Helvetica – Film

QR - Linking Two Worlds

"What's the point in this" I thought to myself when I first saw the barcode reader on my phone "It don't even work". A little experimentation and play later and I finally understood what I was doing wrong, it wasn't a product scanner but a Quick Response Code scanner (QR code), my first introduction into the workings of this code was when I wanted to get the Sports Tracker Application onto my phone and the website gave me a direct barcode link so my phone could pick it up straight away, this of course just meant it was easier for me to find the right website as the N95 doesn't have that great a web browser. However this use is only a minor advantage of the QR code. Online retail over the past few years has grown massively, the consumer can see huge ranges of products quickly and easily and when they want to buy something the first port of call is often the internet for many consumers. As we are increasingly living our lives out in this new digital realm we have come to expect instant information at our fingertips. Like my previous post said, I like getting what I want when i want, and this point of view is now shared by many. But what's this got to do with QR codes? Well QR can be seen as a link from the world of atoms to the world of bytes, many computers and phones now have cameras built into them as standard meaning that these digital devices can read and input physical data, for instance you could be walking down the street and find a poster for these shoes that you REALLY want, after being initially drawn by the image I may decide to buy the product, but where? In the most effective instance it could be for an online retailer and a quick scan of the code on the poster would bring up a website with sizing information, order forms and all the other terms and conditions you get on your run of the mill websites. In business you could have a business card that, when somebody holds near their webcam or mobile phone all the details get saved to their contacts list which leaves no room for human error and saves time. All these things can just be the beginning though as our digital world is constantly growing and the merging of the physical and the digital may become increasingly important. This does all sound great but when I tell you that the QR code was invented by a company called deso-wave in Japan in 1994 (according to wikipedia), 14 years ago, and to many this may be the first you have heard of the code, it must be noted that the consumer must be able to understand what to do with this code. Also the medium needs to be improved and mobile internet made cheaper before this technology is commercially viable. Despite all these things though there is a lot of promise within the code and as it is used on a wider level the consumer will build an understanding of what is required of them. For more information it is worth taking a look at a recent blog entry by creative review and if after having read this you want to make some codes for yourself or get the reader for you phone then take a look at Kaywa's website.

Last.Fm My New Toy

Over the past few days I've been using last.fm quite a lot to listen to music and to me its the best thing since sliced bread. Another thing I really love though is how trough the latest technologies I can either listen to pretty much anyone I want for free on my ipod app with a wifi connection or if I'm on top of a mountain I can just use my N95 Nokia Application on my phone and connect via 3G, GPRS or EDGE. So, being the music fan that I am and having the eclectic taste in music that I do, I never have to be without what I want ever again. The digital world fits truly in our pockets now and thanks to company's such as last.fm the consumer choice and amount of physical information in this realm is growing daily.

Whats New

I thought I'd also take the time to explain what I've been doing the past few months, in fact I can sum 3 months into one word, dissertation. A little under 10,000 words it has all but gotten rid of my will to live, writing has never been my strong point despite getting good grades in essays recently. At first its enjoyable, lots of reading and learning, then about 15 books later comes the writing, again at first its fun and easy as you have 15 books worth of notes, the fun starts to go though each time you have to read the thing, 10,000 words takes a long time to read and in total I've read this about 15 times, the thing that annoys me most is that I'm spending my time reading something I already know. Lets just hope its worth it in the end. The finished dissertation I will post on here once its finished in January next year. On top of the dissertation I've been doing my final major project & Welsh Tourism project at university and working my usual shifts at Comet, also a bit of christmas organization has been required here and there and all together its a busy schedule. Now on top of this I have my work experience I'm still trying to get and to start looking at D&AD briefs and possibly even a penguin book cover IF i get time but thats a big if. Anyway time is money and I need to go to work. I'll post the rest up later tonight.

A Mini Venture

I was recently asked by James Dean of Immacula to design a logo and web layout for a fellow who decided he wanted to go around the world in his classic Mini Clubman for the third time. I got started straight away and came up with a series of logos which were sent to Duncan to review. Below are a few of the logos I went through and the final one can be found at aminiventure.com.







The website James wanted to work on himself in the end although by the looks of things he still needs a designers touch with the layout etc. Hopefully Duncan will also be able to get me some of his photographs from the MPH show in London and I'll get some actual images of the car up. Until then keep checking this post for updates

Spare time = Update

After todays assessment I now have a bit of time to catch my thoughts and to get everything I've been up to on here. Patience is a virtue though as there is quite a bit I need to gather and post but there will be plenty to see when I'm done. I'm also in the process of getting yet another website up and running after I thought the last one was in need of a serious update.