Simplicity
Looking about the world wide web for inspiration, I recently stumbled upon designer Albert Exergian’s blog (http://exergian.tumblr.com/). It’s filled with his own take on poster designs for popular television shows. What struck me the most is how simple the work is and yet it still encapsulates the particular show’s essence. He uses simple shapes and bright colors in a very effective way.
Of course, it does require some knowledge of the show’s premise to understand what Exergian is trying to accomplish. The show True Blood, a show about vampires, is represented with two sideways triangles that one can only interpret as fangs if one already knew what the show was about. Even the poster for the Simpsons still calls for the viewer to remember that Homer Simpson’s hair is merely a thin, zig-zag line.
I think what I really like about his designs is how they engage the viewer’s past experiences. How those images are activated by simple shapes and lines. He has managed to simplify the shows to a point where any more work would pretty much lead to a blank poster. But what little he gives us says so much.
I hope to apply Exergian’s designs to a project I am currently working on: a poster for bicycle safety. Hopefully, I can design a basic design that clearly cues bicycle safety the way Albert Exergian has done so impressively.
Speaking of Sustainability
Nathan Shedroff, author of the new book Design is the Problem, lectured on one of my classes this past week and talked about sustainable design. At the beginning of his lecture, he asked us three questions:
1. What’s a more sustainable world look like?
2. What’s a more meaningful world look like?
3. What’s a post-consumer world look like?
He never fully answered all of his own questions. Instead, he provided us young designers with strategies that would help build a more sustainable world, a world where the designers themselves are solving the problem of waste on top of consumers, where the designers are shifting from designing objects to designing services. He advised us to avoid calling it “green” because doing so ignores the other facets of sustainability like cultural, social, and financial sustainability and confines the movement to ecological sustainability.
Shedroff then laid out some concrete strategies that designers can think about while in the design process. Like dematerialization, a strategy in which the product is minimized to its most basic form by reducing the materials used to produce it and so therefore creating a less wasteful end product. Many of the strategies he presented were common sense. Like designing for use. It only makes sense for designers to make products that people will use and use for longer, delaying its wasteful destiny.
As designers start to consider the repercussions of wasteful design, our society can only move to a more sustainable future.
Objectified
I recently saw the documentary Objectified, by Gary Hustwit, an exploration of the design process of several designers. The movie interviewed several designers from different fields asking them about how the process affects what the end product looks like. The movie explores design aesthetics ranging from Ikea and Target, to Apple computers.
Further into the documentary, Hustwit makes a statement about the wasteful nature that designers used to adopt. Many never even considered where their designs will end up. Our craving for the new and the novel led to more and more waste produced, and only recently are designers becoming aware of this. Apple computer, due to Greenpeace pressures, has become the leading company producing conscious designs and products. Their current line of MacBook Pro laptops are mostly made of recyclable aluminum and are packaged in much smaller boxes to allow mass shipments and a much lower carbon footprint. That’s all good and fine, but as an Apple consumer myself, the one critique that I have for the company is their frequent use of the planned obsolescence strategy. They make innovative products that are only going to be trumped by their next innovative product six months later. And so people easily discard their obsolete iPhones to buy the newer model, thereby creating more and more waste.
I commend Objectified and Gary Hustwit for spreading awareness about our current waste problem. Hopefully, more and more conscious designers are created leading to a much more sustainable consumer world.
Let’s Talk Gaga
What does a pop star have to do with a love of good design, you ask? If it was any other pop star, then absolutely nothing. But when it comes to Lady Gaga, good design has a lot to do with her chart-topping success. Lady Gaga is a package. Her music is catchy, but alone they are only slightly better than most of what’s already been done. The beauty and genius of Gaga comes with her ability to take high fashion and merge it with pop music, a genre that’s supposedly catered to the masses and generally thought of as low brow.
Take her most recent video Bad Romance. The styling of each frame is, for lack of a better word, divine. She has taken haute couture, the likes of Alexander McQueen, and made it accessible to the general population. It’s like she was able to take high culture and aesthetics and deliver it to those who don’t normally experience such lavishes; which is more or less the reason why pop music fans are so dazzled by her and her vision. I, myself, have watched every single one of her videos and analyzed the design of each outfit, the set direction, the production values, and the overall concept. My evaluation of which is that she has produced high art in a medium never before associated with such refinements.
To Lady Gaga (and she even said this herself), pop music will never be low brow.
Is It Really That Green?
Color is one of the most important tool in a designer’s arsenal. As visual creatures, we humans respond to colors so much, whether it be the color of the next fashion garment or the color of the new leading website. For designers, it’s difficult to pick and coordinate the right colors for your design. Personally, I use Adobe’s Kuler website (http://kuler.adobe.com/) to help me decide on color swatches for my next design. It helps me look at colors together to see if they match well or not.
But one thing to think about as a designer is this: do we even experience color the same way? Is the way I see the color green the same way you would see it? Consider the fact that some people are born color blind. Chances are that not all of us are completely color perceptive, in that the amount of cones and rods behind our retinas could very well be idiosyncratic to each person. There could be something in my physiology that makes me see a greener green than you, in which case the designer would have to think about a more universal color to use to please most of the population.
One way I’ve found to control for this difference in my designs is to use gradients. So no matter how variant your color perception can be, the gradient remains universal. Plus, it adds a sort of depth into the design itself, making the colors a lot more vivid than using just one solid color.
So the next time you hear someone say their grass is greener than yours, don’t even stress. There’s probably just something wrong with their eyes.
Good Design for Evil Purposes
I hate to be the one to say it, but Walmart has significantly improved its image in the last year. I personally think that Walmart is an evil, homophobic corporation that oppresses its employees. That said, who can honestly turn down their low low prices? I certainly can’t.
In the past year, Walmart has definitely classed-up its image with feel good television advertisements that are as polished as the next Target advertisements. A change in logo and advertising agency was, in my opinion, one of the best choices the retail chain could have made. Also, it was wise to discard the old ads featuring the smiley face slashing down price tags for “everyday low prices.” Their new ads feature scenes that we can all relate to set to hip background music and shot with lens comparable to Hollywood movie chick flicks.
Good design is certainly working for them, which is something that we should all be wary about. The new polished ads are making it seem as if Walmart is a benign entity. We start to forget that Walmart exploits its employees, undercuts local businesses, bans gay people from stepping foot in their stores and, in some cases, even beats their customers suspected of shoplifting. Their ads may look good, their image may be improving, but we must all remember that at the core of it all, it’s still the same Walmart.
We must all remember that, in the wrong hands, good design could be a very powerful tool.
Can you turn that down, please?
I was going through the pictures that I took from the African American Quilts exhibit at the Nelson Gallery and I came across one particular quilt that deserves mention. Strips of contrasting colored fabrics were juxtaposed to create a pattern that, from far away, can immediately be associated with music. The evenly spaced vertical bars are reminiscent of sound waves in a recording device while the colors elicit strong emotional responses. The quilt, by Avis Collins Robinson, is aptly called Piano Keys.
Looking at this quilt and its vibrant colors made me think of only one word: loud, which is an adjective more commonly used when describing auditory experiences. However, the quilter’s haphazard use of repetition and contrast resulted in the quilt having a strong visual rhythm. Just as loud music uplifts our body to movement, loud design can make our eyes move just as much, to the point that our eyes are dancing for us. And just as loud music can be heard from far away, this quilt, with its bright colors, can probably be seen from miles away.
It’s amazing how good design can evoke the unce-unce-unce of rhythmic beats without disrupting the silence of a gallery like the Nelson.
Gay Zombies
In the spirit of Halloween, I decided to watch a queer cult zombie film called Otto; or Up with Dead People a few days ago. Otto is a gay zombie that came back to life and was discovered by a director working on a political documentary called Up with Dead People, the scenes of which were interspliced throughout the film. Written and directed by Canadian indie filmmaker (and pornstar) Bruce Labruce, the movie was a gratifying mix of bloody gore, queer politics and gay zombie sex.
The cinematography was beautiful. There were many scenes throughout Otto’s journey that looked more like paintings instead of celluloid. One image that I will take away from this movie is the one above, which portrays Otto walking across a field of bright yellow wildflowers. Design-wise, I appreciated Labruce’s use of symmetry and emphasis. The main character who’s dead and clad in black is emphasized with so many bright yellow flowers dancing with life. A contrast that is so emphatic and also most definitely visually pleasing.
The movie is not about to win any prestigious awards any time soon but as a designer, watching this film was very enjoyable. If anything, I doubt you could find a zombie out there that is more fashionably dressed than Otto.
Quilts and Things
Until December 13, 2009, the Nelson Art Gallery in the UC Davis campus is hosting the African American Quilts exhibit. The space is filled with vibrantly dyed quilts hanging on the wall with materials that even include repurposed jeans. I was, however, immediately drawn to one particularly colorful quilt called Slave’s Popcorn Quilt.
Scraps of fabric were twisted into little flowers which in turn were sewn together to create a visually stimulating quilt. The pattern can only be seen from far away: lavender-colored flowers bordered multi-colored ones achieving visual unity through variety. Up close, the intricate folds needed to create the flowers generate the quilt’s texture and another pattern emerges from the quilt’s negative space. Small imperfect diamonds in between the little roses adds another level of interest while also casting shadows onto the wall behind it.
Slave’s Popcorn Quilt is probably the most interesting one of the exhibit because of its departure from how a quilt usually looks like. I was curious to know if this quilt could really keep a person warm at night, but alas, the student working at the Nelson looked disproving when I attempted to wrap the quilt around myself.
The Nelson Gallery is located in the Art building of the UCD campus and is open M-F 11:00AM - 5:00PM & Sundays from 2:00PM - 5:00PM.
Audrey Kawasaki
Audrey Kawasaki is an emerging Los Angeles artist known for her wood panel oil paintings of young, adolescent girls often in very eroticized positions. I have been in love with her work ever since I stumbled upon them on a random art blog online. At first I was very intrigued by the expressions of the girls she is portraying which is a mix of youthful apathy and sensual hubris with a touch of mischief.
However, where Kawasaki excels is in her ability to play with Gestalt unity in her paintings. The panel above shows a pair of disembodied arms but as one looks at it, the continuation from the girl’s body is unmistakable. The brain creates the unity even though it is not there. All she has to do is suggest it. Most of her paintings even goes so far as to feature only a part of the girl but, as is the case for the image below, one can still see her entire body gracefully flowing way beyond the wooden medium. Another Gestalt element in which a part speaks for the whole.
I think her style of continuation and her fluid omission of body parts make for a very interesting painting. It’s not easy to portray dismembered girls in a sensual manner.
