This post is a draft of an introduction for a new academic paper aimed at a graphic design journal. It continues on from the previous post, and represents writing-in-progress. Feel free to comment but questions on how or what next will be answered in future posts as I construct my paper.
Before I begin this (see previous post) I want to establish a context to the problem and solution that I propose Visual Communication as a discipline can address. To do this I first wish to unpack what I mean as ‘aesthetics of surface’ and to establish what I mean by the ‘aesthetics of use’. This will be crucial for the main thrust of this paper’s thesis.
Firstly I want to define my use of Visual Communication as the disciplinary name. The term ‘Graphic Design’ was coined in 1922 by American typographer and printer William A. Dwiggins “to confer a loftier professional standing” (Heller, 2006, p10). In doing so graphic designers were raised from artisan to professional designer, predominantly servicing the commercial world. This new term also 'cemented’ graphic designers into a fixed narrow view of their socio-cultural contribution to contemporary visual culture, that was unfairly denigrated by others as "decorationists/dictators of style" (Laurel, 2003). Design critic Rick Poynor reminds us that the Modernist progenitors of the discipline such as Rodchenko, Lissitzky and Moholy-Nagy had naturally “moved freely across the boundaries” in the twenties and thirties “that later, more professionally-minded generations attempted to cement in place” (Poynor, 2004).
In 1999 Poynor made a statement that if, at the close of the twentieth century, the term Graphic Design had become too rigid it was “partly because it sounds like a largely technical procedure, but particularly because it fails to suggest the expanded possibilities of contemporary visual culture” (Poynor, 1999, p28). I argue that the term of graphic designer or graphic design is too narrow to describe the actual discipline that produces graphic forms of communication through the manipulation of the relationship between text | image. The outcomes of the design discipline have been more than graphic design, as it also encompasses illustration and now design for motion and interaction.
Since the end of the twentieth century the discipline has been undergoing true re-evaluation of it’s outcomes and boundaries. Therefore I follow Jorge Frascara’s use of the term Visual Communication as the purer definition of the creative design discipline, as it places the emphasis upon the method [design], the objective [communication] and the medium [visual], rather than just the creation of graphic forms [outcomes] (Frascara, 2004, p4). Frascara argues that the discipline of Visual Communication was deeper and richer than just the perceived design of the ‘artifice’, and it’s designers were more than mere creative facilitators of the ‘aesthetics of surface’ but facilitators of behavioural change. He suggests that the heart of Visual Communication is not the design of visual elements as artifice or surface, but the design of a “communicational situation” within which the design outcome impacts on the knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of its receiving audience.
The composition of aesthetic elements that rightly absorbs the attention of graphic designers is merely surface, tools and processes. It belies the actual true disciplinary strength of designing a communicational event through graphic outcomes that affect the “knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour of people” (ibid., p13) over time and space. Such a relational configuration of image and text affecting behaviour is reliant on a direct relationship with the person interpreting the graphic outcome. This relationship is situated within the internal and external life of the graphic outcome - within “itself, the medium, the place and the time” (Bergstrom, 2008, p82). This is where my argument for Visual Communication contributing more than what is usually expected beyond mere ‘aesthetics of surface’ through a communicational situation into a communicational event within the ‘aesthetics of use’. A way of achieving this, I will argue rests in a phenomenological methodology.
References
BERGSTRÖM, B (2008) Essentials of Visual Communication. London: Laurence King Pub.
BRUINSMA, M. and VAN DER MEULEN, S. (2003) Deep Sites: Intelligent Innovation in Contemporary Web Design. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.
BURGOYNE, P. (2002) GB: Graphic Britain. London: Laurence King Publishing.
FRASCARA, J. (2004) Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice. New York: Allworth Press.
HELLER, S. (2006) Better Skills Through Better Research. In: A. BENNETT, ed. Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design - A Reader. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, p10-13
LAUREL, B. ed (2003) Design Research: Methods and Perspectives. London: MIT Press.
MACDONALD, N. (2004) British Web Design: A Brief History. In: R. POYNOR, ed. Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp200-215.
POYNOR, R. (1999) Made in Britain: The Ambiguous Image. In N. BARLEY et al. Lost and Found: Critical Voices in New British Design. London: Birkhauser Verlag AG/The British Council. Pp 28-31
POYNOR, R. (2004) Spirit of Independence. In: R. POYNOR, ed. Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp.12-47
Showing posts with label Lissitzky. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lissitzky. Show all posts
Monday, 19 September 2011
Saturday, 17 September 2011
Moving Across Boundaries - Dwiggins, Frascara and Cement
This post is a draft of an introduction for a new academic paper aimed at a graphic design journal. A rewritten version of this draft is featured in the next post.
Before I begin this (see previous post) I first need to establish a context to the problem and solution I propose that Visual Communication can address. To do this I first wish to unpack what I mean as ‘aesthetics of surface’ and to establish what I mean by the ‘aesthetics of use’. This will be crucial for the main thrust of this paper’s thesis. Firstly I want to explain my use of the disciplinary term of Visual Communication. The term ‘Graphic Design’ was coined in 1922 by American typographer and printer William A. Dwiggins “to confer a loftier professional standing” (Heller, 2006). In doing so graphic designers were raised to a profession predominantly servicing the commercial world, but it had also 'cemented’ them into a fixed view of their contribution that was unfairly denigrated as "decorationists/dictators of style" (Laurel, 2003).
In 1999 design critic Rick Poynor made a statement in an essay in the book Made in Britain. At the close of the 20th century he commented that if the term Graphic Design had become a too rigid term it was “partly because it sounds like a largely technical procedure, but particularly because it fails to suggest the expanded possibilities of contemporary visual culture” (Poynor, 1999, p28). He expands on this further in another essay in 2004, giving some indication that the discipline of Visual Communication was more than mere creative facilitators of the ‘aesthetics of surface’ merely creating pretty business stationary or adverts. Poynor reminds us that the Modernist progenitors of the discipline such as Rodchenko, Lissitzky and Moholy-Nagy had naturally “moved freely across the boundaries” in the twenties and thirties “that later, more professionally-minded generations attempted to cement in place” (Poynor, 2004). I argue that the term of graphic designer or graphic design is too narrow to describe the discipline.
Therefore I follow Jorge Frascara’s use of the term Visual Communication as the purer definition of the creative design discipline that produces graphic forms of communication through the manipulation of the relationship between text | image. Visual Communication places the emphasis upon the method [design], the objective [communication] and the medium [visual], rather than just the creation of graphic forms [outcomes] (Frascara, 2004, p4). The outcomes of Visual Communication have been more than graphic design, as it also encompasses illustration and now design for motion and interaction. Since the end of the 20th century the pure discipline of Visual Communication has been undergoing true re-evaluation, and positively can be viewed as a re-strengthening of its disciplinary roots in communication.
This is in part attributed to Visual Communication’s roots of ‘moving across boundaries’, knowing no bounds when adapting to the design within other forms of media beyond print. Some momentum and professional ground had been lost in the 1990s due to reticence of ‘cemented’ on trying to control the design process and the visual outcomes of new media that called for dynamic rather than static design solutions (Bruinsma and Van Der Meulen, 2003; Burgoyne, 2002; MacDonald, 2004). A different ‘mind-set’ that knew no bounds when it came to working with other forms of media was needed, that reflects the true “open”, “diverse”, “inclusive” and “inventive” heart of the discipline (Poynor, 2004) that constantly challenged its own established ‘rules’. These new designers chose to design for interactivity accepting a new mind-set that the user is king. They learnt to collaborate within multi-disciplinary teams of experts with different skill-sets to achieve solutions that contributed to the ‘aesthetics of use’.
References
BRUINSMA, M. and VAN DER MEULEN, S. (2003) Deep Sites: Intelligent Innovation in Contemporary Web Design. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.
BURGOYNE, P. (2002) GB: Graphic Britain. London: Laurence King Publishing.
FRASCARA, J. (2004) Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice. New York: Allworth Press.
HELLER, S. (2006) Better Skills Through Better Research. In: A. BENNETT, ed. Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design - A Reader. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, p10-13
LAUREL, B. ed (2003) Design Research: Methods and Perspectives. London: MIT Press.
MACDONALD, N. (2004) British Web Design: A Brief History. In: R. POYNOR, ed. Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp200-215.
POYNOR, R. (1999) Made in Britain: The Ambiguous Image. In N. BARLEY et al. Lost and Found: Critical Voices in New British Design. London: Birkhauser Verlag AG/The British Council. Pp 28-31
POYNOR, R. (2004) Spirit of Independence. In: R. POYNOR, ed. Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp.12-47
Before I begin this (see previous post) I first need to establish a context to the problem and solution I propose that Visual Communication can address. To do this I first wish to unpack what I mean as ‘aesthetics of surface’ and to establish what I mean by the ‘aesthetics of use’. This will be crucial for the main thrust of this paper’s thesis. Firstly I want to explain my use of the disciplinary term of Visual Communication. The term ‘Graphic Design’ was coined in 1922 by American typographer and printer William A. Dwiggins “to confer a loftier professional standing” (Heller, 2006). In doing so graphic designers were raised to a profession predominantly servicing the commercial world, but it had also 'cemented’ them into a fixed view of their contribution that was unfairly denigrated as "decorationists/dictators of style" (Laurel, 2003).
In 1999 design critic Rick Poynor made a statement in an essay in the book Made in Britain. At the close of the 20th century he commented that if the term Graphic Design had become a too rigid term it was “partly because it sounds like a largely technical procedure, but particularly because it fails to suggest the expanded possibilities of contemporary visual culture” (Poynor, 1999, p28). He expands on this further in another essay in 2004, giving some indication that the discipline of Visual Communication was more than mere creative facilitators of the ‘aesthetics of surface’ merely creating pretty business stationary or adverts. Poynor reminds us that the Modernist progenitors of the discipline such as Rodchenko, Lissitzky and Moholy-Nagy had naturally “moved freely across the boundaries” in the twenties and thirties “that later, more professionally-minded generations attempted to cement in place” (Poynor, 2004). I argue that the term of graphic designer or graphic design is too narrow to describe the discipline.
Therefore I follow Jorge Frascara’s use of the term Visual Communication as the purer definition of the creative design discipline that produces graphic forms of communication through the manipulation of the relationship between text | image. Visual Communication places the emphasis upon the method [design], the objective [communication] and the medium [visual], rather than just the creation of graphic forms [outcomes] (Frascara, 2004, p4). The outcomes of Visual Communication have been more than graphic design, as it also encompasses illustration and now design for motion and interaction. Since the end of the 20th century the pure discipline of Visual Communication has been undergoing true re-evaluation, and positively can be viewed as a re-strengthening of its disciplinary roots in communication.
This is in part attributed to Visual Communication’s roots of ‘moving across boundaries’, knowing no bounds when adapting to the design within other forms of media beyond print. Some momentum and professional ground had been lost in the 1990s due to reticence of ‘cemented’ on trying to control the design process and the visual outcomes of new media that called for dynamic rather than static design solutions (Bruinsma and Van Der Meulen, 2003; Burgoyne, 2002; MacDonald, 2004). A different ‘mind-set’ that knew no bounds when it came to working with other forms of media was needed, that reflects the true “open”, “diverse”, “inclusive” and “inventive” heart of the discipline (Poynor, 2004) that constantly challenged its own established ‘rules’. These new designers chose to design for interactivity accepting a new mind-set that the user is king. They learnt to collaborate within multi-disciplinary teams of experts with different skill-sets to achieve solutions that contributed to the ‘aesthetics of use’.
References
BRUINSMA, M. and VAN DER MEULEN, S. (2003) Deep Sites: Intelligent Innovation in Contemporary Web Design. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.
BURGOYNE, P. (2002) GB: Graphic Britain. London: Laurence King Publishing.
FRASCARA, J. (2004) Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice. New York: Allworth Press.
HELLER, S. (2006) Better Skills Through Better Research. In: A. BENNETT, ed. Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design - A Reader. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, p10-13
LAUREL, B. ed (2003) Design Research: Methods and Perspectives. London: MIT Press.
MACDONALD, N. (2004) British Web Design: A Brief History. In: R. POYNOR, ed. Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp200-215.
POYNOR, R. (1999) Made in Britain: The Ambiguous Image. In N. BARLEY et al. Lost and Found: Critical Voices in New British Design. London: Birkhauser Verlag AG/The British Council. Pp 28-31
POYNOR, R. (2004) Spirit of Independence. In: R. POYNOR, ed. Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd., pp.12-47
Saturday, 27 November 2010
The Visual Communication Perspective
Visual Communication is a design discipline focused upon communication through the manipulation of the relationship between text | image. Within this discipline the two main design outcomes are graphic design and illustration. The discipline’s name places the emphasis upon the method (design), the objective (communication) and the medium (visual), rather than just the creation of graphic forms (outcomes). (Frascara, 2004, p4). Graphic design certainly is a commercial activity with a connection to marketing and advertising, but it performs beyond mere subservience to business models. It shapes much of the visual culture of the modern world (Crowley, 2004), but as a discipline Visual Communication is misunderstood by other disciplines. Other disciplines interchangeably use any of the following terms when referring to Visual Communication: Visual Design, Communication Design, Interface Design, Web Design, and Graphic Design (see Table 1).
Although designers traditionally have focused upon practice, there is a theoretical basis to their work that maximises the transmission of the central message within their design solutions. The sender of the message operates from a perspective of intention; the messenger (the designer) operates from a perspective of proximity; and the receiver reacts interpretively from a perspective of reception using their feelings and perception (Bergström, 2008, pp32-33). The materials to achieve this go beyond the printed page, and include typography, colour, form, texture, line, weight, composition to create discourse and emotional engagement with the communication. The shaping and selecting of the most apt visual combination of elements is important in order to transmit an intended message. The semiotic process of the visual signifier leading to a signified communication to an audience is usually within a specific socio-cultural context, and is intended to rhetorically elicit some form of behavioural change in the audience. The designer’s skill and ability to do this effectively is more complex than it first appears, and less self-serving and subjective the more it is understood. It is true, to a degree, that to some designers their work is implicit and creatively intuitive and devoid of theoretical rules; but the discipline is deeper than this.
Barnard uses the phrase “communication is a cultural phenomenon, not an engineering problem” (2005, p28) with which he means that this construction can only be investigated semiotically and through qualitative methods. Jorge Frascara (2004) attempts to reposition the understanding of Visual Communication as a proactive facilitator of behavioural change. The core of their arguments rests in the relationship between text | image to incite a change of behaviour in the viewer, using the rhetorical and semiotic structure underlying this relationship. Frascara says, “It would be a fundamental error to believe that in design one can deal with the form independent of content, or with sensorial, independent of the cognitive and the emotional.” (2004, p65). Barnard folds into this the semiological roots of Visual Communication, “Signs and codes are the bases of meanings in semiology. And signs and codes are explained in terms of learned and variable cultural rules.” (2005, p28). Through this framework for identifying behaviour, experience is evoked by tangible and experiential engagement with an artefact or in a situation, whether physical or digital. Interaction designer Jon Kolko sees this contextual framework as a methodology to connect ‘people, technology, and the emotional qualities of sensory data’ (p41) together to discover the effectiveness, scalability, usability and engagement of the solution. His use of the term ‘sensory data’ suggests that that data is mediated in some way. If data is to be classed as sensory with emotional qualities, then an aesthetic is emerging. This is phenomenological and Visual Communication has historical precedence in balancing the ‘tension between structure and freedom’ (Helfand, 2001, p61).
Some of the early Modernist progenitors that influenced the discipline’s development, Rodchenko, Lissitzky and Moholy-Nagy, moved ‘freely across the boundaries’ (MacDonald, 2004a) that defined its development into a less commercial and more experimental, rhetorical direction. From the manifestos of Contructivism, Futurism, de Stilj through to the minimalism of Bauhaus (Lupton & Miller, 2009, p62) and the International Style; the semiotic experimentation of visual language has led to the position where the viewer is equally involved in the processing of the visually communicated message. Typographer Jan Tschichold strove for a clear and ambiguous form of emotional clarity in communication. In his essay on New Typography he for urges that “a fresh and original intellectual approach is needed, avoiding all standard solutions” to achieve communication. Visual Communication’s visual language has developed “a ‘grammar’ of contrasts (instability/balance, asymmetry/symmetry, soft/hard, heavy/light)” (Lupton and Miller, 1999, p64). Within this tension comes a benefit of ‘structured clarity’ with a capacity of inventive expression, a liberation of a ‘subjective point of view as an enhanced expression of fact - not at the expense of it’ (Helfand, 2001, p62).
If communication, meaning, interpretation and construction can only be understood through qualitative means then, I argue that a methodology of understanding this through adaptation of research methods taken from phenomenology would help reposition Visual Communication as an influence upon Interaction Design. From the literature on Visual Communication the word phenomena is widely used to describe the discipline’s internal and external characteristics. Heller (2001) refers to ‘design phenomena’; Margolin (1996), Williams (2007), Huck (1997) and Barry (1997) all use the term ‘phenomena’ in different philosophical and sociological contexts when explaining aspects of Visual Communication; and Margolin, Hill (2004), and Smith (2005) take their theses deeper into phenomenology. But all stop short from using phenomenological methodologies to explore their individual perspectives. Kenney (2009) in his book on Visual Communication Research Designs, he features examples of Ethnography, Discourse Analysis and Content Analysis as qualitative research methodologies. But nothing on phenomenological methodologies despite the literature using the term ‘phenomena’ quite freely.
Although designers traditionally have focused upon practice, there is a theoretical basis to their work that maximises the transmission of the central message within their design solutions. The sender of the message operates from a perspective of intention; the messenger (the designer) operates from a perspective of proximity; and the receiver reacts interpretively from a perspective of reception using their feelings and perception (Bergström, 2008, pp32-33). The materials to achieve this go beyond the printed page, and include typography, colour, form, texture, line, weight, composition to create discourse and emotional engagement with the communication. The shaping and selecting of the most apt visual combination of elements is important in order to transmit an intended message. The semiotic process of the visual signifier leading to a signified communication to an audience is usually within a specific socio-cultural context, and is intended to rhetorically elicit some form of behavioural change in the audience. The designer’s skill and ability to do this effectively is more complex than it first appears, and less self-serving and subjective the more it is understood. It is true, to a degree, that to some designers their work is implicit and creatively intuitive and devoid of theoretical rules; but the discipline is deeper than this.
Barnard uses the phrase “communication is a cultural phenomenon, not an engineering problem” (2005, p28) with which he means that this construction can only be investigated semiotically and through qualitative methods. Jorge Frascara (2004) attempts to reposition the understanding of Visual Communication as a proactive facilitator of behavioural change. The core of their arguments rests in the relationship between text | image to incite a change of behaviour in the viewer, using the rhetorical and semiotic structure underlying this relationship. Frascara says, “It would be a fundamental error to believe that in design one can deal with the form independent of content, or with sensorial, independent of the cognitive and the emotional.” (2004, p65). Barnard folds into this the semiological roots of Visual Communication, “Signs and codes are the bases of meanings in semiology. And signs and codes are explained in terms of learned and variable cultural rules.” (2005, p28). Through this framework for identifying behaviour, experience is evoked by tangible and experiential engagement with an artefact or in a situation, whether physical or digital. Interaction designer Jon Kolko sees this contextual framework as a methodology to connect ‘people, technology, and the emotional qualities of sensory data’ (p41) together to discover the effectiveness, scalability, usability and engagement of the solution. His use of the term ‘sensory data’ suggests that that data is mediated in some way. If data is to be classed as sensory with emotional qualities, then an aesthetic is emerging. This is phenomenological and Visual Communication has historical precedence in balancing the ‘tension between structure and freedom’ (Helfand, 2001, p61).
Some of the early Modernist progenitors that influenced the discipline’s development, Rodchenko, Lissitzky and Moholy-Nagy, moved ‘freely across the boundaries’ (MacDonald, 2004a) that defined its development into a less commercial and more experimental, rhetorical direction. From the manifestos of Contructivism, Futurism, de Stilj through to the minimalism of Bauhaus (Lupton & Miller, 2009, p62) and the International Style; the semiotic experimentation of visual language has led to the position where the viewer is equally involved in the processing of the visually communicated message. Typographer Jan Tschichold strove for a clear and ambiguous form of emotional clarity in communication. In his essay on New Typography he for urges that “a fresh and original intellectual approach is needed, avoiding all standard solutions” to achieve communication. Visual Communication’s visual language has developed “a ‘grammar’ of contrasts (instability/balance, asymmetry/symmetry, soft/hard, heavy/light)” (Lupton and Miller, 1999, p64). Within this tension comes a benefit of ‘structured clarity’ with a capacity of inventive expression, a liberation of a ‘subjective point of view as an enhanced expression of fact - not at the expense of it’ (Helfand, 2001, p62).
If communication, meaning, interpretation and construction can only be understood through qualitative means then, I argue that a methodology of understanding this through adaptation of research methods taken from phenomenology would help reposition Visual Communication as an influence upon Interaction Design. From the literature on Visual Communication the word phenomena is widely used to describe the discipline’s internal and external characteristics. Heller (2001) refers to ‘design phenomena’; Margolin (1996), Williams (2007), Huck (1997) and Barry (1997) all use the term ‘phenomena’ in different philosophical and sociological contexts when explaining aspects of Visual Communication; and Margolin, Hill (2004), and Smith (2005) take their theses deeper into phenomenology. But all stop short from using phenomenological methodologies to explore their individual perspectives. Kenney (2009) in his book on Visual Communication Research Designs, he features examples of Ethnography, Discourse Analysis and Content Analysis as qualitative research methodologies. But nothing on phenomenological methodologies despite the literature using the term ‘phenomena’ quite freely.
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