Rather than focus simply or exclusively on "new media," there needs to be as much, if not more, thought put into creating communications content that asks the audience to think a little bit rather than communications that are simply "hard-hitting." -Joseph Frydl, AdAge.com

It's always been that way with design, where the clients don't really GET why we, as de­sign­er­s, do the things we do...but that is also an important part of our job, being able to get them to un­der­stand why they should do this or that for their product. I really think this article has made a good point, about how we as ad­vert­isers should be working towards making our designs more com­plic­ated and intricate rather than only following the design rules that we always do. Viewers are becoming more soph­ist­ic­ated, if we want them to pay attention to our ads, we need to keep up...better yet...stay ahead.

KCD

The three-person advertising and design firm that works out of a warehouse on an old tobacco farm beat out hundreds of others for a contract to create the program for the 78th annual Academy Awards and the commemorative booklet that will be given to each of the 1,600 people who attend the Governor's Ball after the awards are presented." - The Cincinnati Post

KCD is a design company based out of Williamstown, KY. The studio is on a 118-acre farm but as you can see...the office is FAR from country. We recently interviewed Kamren Colson at the Cincinnati Art Museum and he was the most impressive, in my opinion, of all the freelancers. He really knows how to present himself in a sophisticated but very down-to-earth way and he knows how to work an audience which, as a freelance designer, is a very helpful asset to your business.

KCD's designs are...good. I wouldn't venture too far to say they are the best in the practice but their work isn't the reason I really like them so much. I like them so much because of the presence they gave off in the interview.

The first thing Kamren did when he came into the conference room was smile and then proceeded to walk around the whole table, shaking hands with everyone and remembering names. And then...he actually DID remember our names and made sure to say everyone's sometime before the meeting was over. It's making the people who are hiring you feel important tha set him apart...and it also shows you're confident about getting in. He also got everyone's contact info and sent thank you cards and tins of candy to everyone (which was also nicely designed with the KCD logo). It's things like that that really set you apart from the rest of the designers. Taking initiative is what I like.

Their design work wasn't the best out of everyone's we had seen, but the initiative he took with the Oscar's program was what I think everyone was impressed with. Read for yourself.

Breaking the Rules

"In television commercials, through which the new American businessman presents his visions and self-understanding to the public, perpetual revolution and the gospel of rule-breaking are the orthodoxy of the day. You only need to watch for a few minutes before you see one of these slogans and understand the grip of antinomianism over the corporate mind:

Sometimes You Gotta Break the Rules (Burger King)
The Rules Have Changed (Dodge)
This is different. Different is good. (Arby's)
The Line Has Been Crossed: The Revolutionary New Supra (Toyota)

...Rebellion makes no sense without repression; we must remain forever convinced of capitalim's fundamental hostility towards pleasure." -Thomas Frank "Why Johnny Can't Dissent"

When corporations say they are "breaking the rules" just to get consumers to view them as rebellious, it is almost a straight contradiction to our being rebellious. In fact, most consumers to be rebellious buy certain clothing, listen to certain kinds of music, drive certain cars of which all is targeted directly to that group of ppl so really they aren't being "rebellious" at all, they are giving in to exactly what they are fighting. The advertisers are so cunning in their approach that people don't even recognize that they are falling into the same traps as every one they are trying to differentiate themselves from. In fact, the only way I can think of to be truly different from the rest of the population is to just not buy anything, which really would be quite hard.

VASAVA

VASAVA is a group of 10 young creatives based in barcelona. They do amazing work as you can see. In this one particularly, I again admire the way they used photography and incorporated design without interfering too much with the photos.

Their website is absolutely horrid however...as you will see if you visit the link. I wouldn't have even given it a second thought if the work had not been recommended to me already as being good...so I checked it out.

They have great book design and layouts. And this exhibit developed as a showcase project of MUSAC is also very inspiring and I would give anything to have been able to see it.

My favorite piece on their website though is a series of ads they did for Diesel (example shown below).



Sorry so short today...I'm running late on a shoot as it is.

The Desire of Simplicity

"As I become increasingly sensitive to those aspects of design which reinforce repressive attitudes and behavior, I increasingly question the desirability of simplicity and clarity.

Were the mass media to include contradictions; were its images to contain suggestions rather than statements, the viewer could make an effort to bridge the gap, to interpolate, extrapolate, participate." -Some Aspects of Design... by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville

This is exactly the point I was trying to make when I got into an arguement with my professors during the graphic design review. This statement could not be more true. There is no better advertising than advertising that makes you think about it minutes, hours, days after you've seen it...but really, how many of those kinds of advertisements do you see? Not many.

Granted, there is a place for this kind of advertising. It's not really necessary for an advertisement selling Reynolds Wrap to make you think about the ad for days...unless the design for it was SO well done that you think about it for that reason. There doesn't NEED to be a deep meaning behind Reynolds Wrap to get you to buy it...you need it, you're gonna buy it. Products such as that just need to have a better design and marketability than their competitors.

However...there are products that are everyday products that because of their incredible advertising DO make you think about them for days...and not because you are trying to understand something they are trying to say but because of how well they were designed. I have an example. The Pontiac commercials. The design, the music, the presentation of their product, all of the aspects work together to pull off an amazing advertisement.

ANYWAY...got totally off topic there. By a user participating with the advertisement, it becomes more effective. As designers, it's hard for us sometimes, to not break things down to their one core component, not to break the idea down into fragments. We are taught to do this consciously from the beginning of our schooling.

Unfortunately, by doing this, we often times break it down so far to the point that it is only conveying ONE of the ideas that we are trying to get across rather than all of them. This is what limits the viewer/audience from interpreting for themselves the whole picture...we have narrowed it down for them to the point that they no longer have any other interpretation to get from the design than what we have spelled out for them.

I'll end with a good quote from Levrant de Bretteville, "A more diffused manner of organizing material maintains enough complexity, subtlety and ambiguity to entice the readers who normally dart away with someone else's encapsulated vision, rather than remaining long enough and openly enough with the idea to make it their own." Couldn't have said it better myself.

Women: laugh, cry, doubt, make mistakes and hesitate

"In advertising, women are described as, or permitted to be, laughing, crying, doubting, making mistakes, hesitating: women alone are seen as nurturing or as providing emotional support for children and men. When, for example, a company represents itself in a service capacity or as particularly accommodating, it uses a female figure and reinforces traditional attitudes by this symbolic imagery." - Some Aspects of Design from the Perspective of a Woman Designer by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville

Is this true? STILL?! In the 21st century?! Damn straight it's true. How often do you see a commercial for a cleaning product, for example, that features a MAN cleaning? Uh...never unless it's trying to make some sort of joke through it.

And what does this say about our society as a whole? Can we still not handle the thought and vision of men cleaning or nurturing or worrying or crying? Are we still in such an infantile stage with equal rights that this cannot be shown without being ridiculed?

The other bothering fact is that women are seemingly taking over in the design field...which means WE are part of the problem now. WE are approving those ads that are stereotyping us and our male counterparts. Do we realize what we are conveying to the viewers? How we are influencing our own fate? We are helping this false image of ourselves to be accepted and reinforced each time an ad is falsely representing us.

If this country is really ever going to try to be equal to both sexes, we have to get involved with the advertising, it's one of the most influential impacts on human life. We can't get away from it no matter what we do and we need to use it to our full advantage and change the way the world looks at women and men's differences. It would not only change our biased views of the sexes but it would promote more equality in our every day lives.

It's not only in ads that women are still considered to be all those beforementioned...it's in the workforce and relationships as well and until we start changing this viewpoint in advertising, it's going to be harder to persuade everyone that this image of women is NOT true.

Women can and are "serious, decisive, professional and assured" (Bretteville). And the same goes for men. Men cry, laugh, doubt and most definately make mistakes just like the stereotypical woman does. When we acknowledge this, then equality will start to really evolve and an openness towards one another as a society.

Pony

Alternative Miss Ireland XII 2006, Pony

I love this piece. The color, the photo, all the sexual connotations in it. And I also love that this competition they have every year is raising money for HIV/AIDS victims. It's almost hypocritical it seems but at the same time, it's so mature of them to realize that just because someone has AIDS or HIV does not mean that they are any different from the rest of us. I also admire this piece because this is something that would get major publicity if it were over here in the States just because of all the sexual connotations and there would be an uproar because of the woman on the front being so provocative.

When I first saw this ad for the upcoming show, I thought "Wow. This design company is definately not based in America" (it's based in London) and also "This is an ad to raise money for AIDS victims?!" (Although it's not, I later realized, just the event is). I love it.

One thing I really like about it is that the type doesn't really interfere with the photo, it always annoys me when designers try to take too much control over a piece and therefore, overpower some really great photography.

The way the title of "Alternative Miss Ireland..." turns into the border of the piece is really nice too and leads your eye all around the piece and back up to the event information.

The colors used definately point out that it is an "alternative" contest and will not be focusing on the mainstream folks. The dark red and black from the photo bring about the feeling of violence and passion but also the feelings of seduction and eroticism (word?), which I find intriguing considering this contest isn't going to really bring out the type of people that most of us consider sexy and neither does it seem to be one to include overly competitive people.

Focusing on the design of the agency as a whole, I was impressed. They have a lot of messy, destructive styles going on in a lot of their work but they stick to grids with it along the way...like this piece for example:



For this concert event, Pony put the flyer, program for the whole event and the poster all in one document. And it's incredibly clean and organized. On one side they put all the event/program info and the other side was the poster with the date of the event.

The program/flyer/poster (here image #5-9) is the amazing thing. How they could pack that much information into that small of space and still make it look organzied and easy to read is unbelievable.

I love the clean but destructive, edgy style of this company's designs. I think I agree with what one of my professors was talking about the other day. He said that when he had been working for 10 years in design, he started looking back at his work...and he didn't like a lot of what he had done in earlier years...and so he started researching the history of design and what he found was this: The designs that are timeless are ones with obvious grids. The clean, more simpler (these are two different things) designs are the ones that stick around and look good years and years down the road.

A lot of the design work that this company does may not be considered good design years from now...but a lot of it will too...especially their book designs...which goes to show that books have endless design possibilities (even inside) where as we usually just think of such a standard format for the inside of books.

Anyway..enough. Check out the websites. ...and this one (I'm listed..are you?) Nubbit

I am a Criminal

"The profession of graphic design is criminal and really ought not to exist. We will devote a booklet to it. A hundred years ago it did not exist; in another hundred years it will probably be long gone. But just now it is flourishing." -Piet Schreuders, 1977

Designers will not evaporate. Those who think graphic design is a new field just needs to do more research, it has been around forever, it evolves with time. It's one profession that will indefinately in some form, always be around because it's ever evolving into something else.

To those of you who think that it will disingrate because of the fast world of techonology and "what about all the people who have access to design programs and can make use of them with templates just as we can?" To that I say, you foolish children, has paper and pencil not existed from before my birth? How many people cannot afford a pencil and paper? This is the cheapest means of being an artist that there is and everyone has access, yet...there are very few who even attempt the endeavor.

The same goes with Photoshop, Illustrator, using templates...sure, they can own the program, sure, they can make use of the templates (mind you, everyone else in the world has the same ones so those designs become stale very quickly), but there aren't many people who are going to actually take the time to learn the intricate workings of these programs. Not only that, but there aren't many people who have the design capabilities and understandings of composition and concept to make a design work if they DID know how to use all the programs.

To those of you who are afraid of the template-users...just be better than the current templates...really, it shouldn't be that hard...they are fairly simple in their makings most of the time so that the average user can understand them and put them to use. You can do better.

Reaching a Saturation Point

"We have been bombarded with the work of those who have flogged their skill and imagination to sell such things as: cat food, stomach powders, detergent, hair restorer, striped toothpaste, aftershave lotion, beforeshave lotion, slimming diets, fattening diets, deodorants, fizzy water, cigarettes, roll-ons, pull-ons and slip-ons. By far the greatest time and effort of those working in the advertising industry are wasted on these trivial purposes, which contribute little or nothing to our national prosperity." - First Things First by Ken Garland

To that I say...give the jobs to me.

Clear thinking is the road to inventive ideas.

"I believe the only ideal a designer should work to is complete clarity of expression. Not only clarity of words, or clarity of picture, but 'idea' clarity. Whatever is to be expressed must be thoroughly understood before it can be successfully communicated." - Visual Expression by Ashley Havenden

Although we are taught this from the beginning of our design backgrounds, it can never be said enough because realistically, there is a shitload of design out there that has no clear meanings behind it. And we all fall into the trap of doing it again at some point if we aren't careful. Don't just design for design's sake. Design it to carry a meaning, an idea, a clear message to the viewer. If it doesn't, you failed.

You cannot let the viewer be distracted by your type treatment or the way it's layed out. The average viewer should not really even notice these things except to get the information easily. They can appreciate that it's well designed but if you are trying to get a message across, and most of the time you are as a designer, the actual "design" should not be the main focus of the piece. The information should be. I think as designers we sometimes forget this and get wrapped up in trying to get "our" part into the design.

Neasden Control Center

Neasden Control Center consists of two designers. Only one of them did the designs for the Hotel Fox and it seems like the one that designed for them must not be the head honcho for the rest of their projects bc they are utterly chaotic.

I like their designs but they don't seem to get any sort of message across to the viewer...not a clear message anyway. perhaps if this was their intent, they would be masters bc i didn't look at any of their designs and get a clear representation of what their ideas were behind the work.


This particular style of their's which they have done several projects in reminds me what I would imagine Santana drawing if he could draw. It's very intricate and looks as if it took mass amounts of time and energy to accomplish but in the end, it's just easy listening and you don't get any real meaning out of the design/illustrations.


They also use word bubbles and this really strange big-headed character in soo many of their projects. I don't really get why but I like it. Almost all of their work is very chaotic in my opinion, mostly that you don't and can't really understand what is going on very easily by looking at their work, you would almost have to read their ideas behind them before you could really say you understood their concept. I'm not saying this is right or wrong, it's just all in what you are going for but I don't think this is a company that is going to be doing much designing for advertising or the likes.

oh yeah and their website completely sucks.
http://www.neasdencontrolcentre.com/

WK Interact

Before I start...someone mentioned that I'm not really doing "just" designers. Well to that I say "deal". kiss kiss!


I was overall completely disappointed with this design team's work. The only thing I found that they really impressed me with was more of the same work they had in Hotel Fox. The VW car is awesome...but what is it's purpose anyway? They're website was annoying as well, it didn't give any information about what their goals or concepts were with their projects and I didn't really get the jist of it from their pix of them either. They take a lot of pictures of them actually producing the work which I found interesting but still, not satisfactory because they didn't take time to explain what the hell they were doing in the first place.



So anyway...what do I like about their work? Just their illustration quality of the woman and how they let the paint drip and bleed into other images. They do a really nice job of this. But overall, in my opinion, their work sucks...even the other illustrations, posters and all other work they featured on their website just wasn't up to par with what I would expect a design team featured in a VW hotel to be.

It does make me want to play with loose ink though.

http://www.wkinteract.com/

Hort

I discovered Hort (Eike König and Martin Lorenz Frankfurt) by their work on the Project Fox for the Hotel Fox in Denmark. It was one of my favorite rooms to begin with, but it was only after reading their idea behind their room design that I really started to respect them as artists. Their reasoning behind the rooms was: "Someone is going to live in this room for a while, they are going to breathe the atmosphere more intensely than someone just visiting like at an exhibition. The idea was to create modern mythical creatures that function like fables or tales that give a polemic viewpoint to everyday lives. Each illustration tells its own story to the viewer. It is the visitor that brings the different fragments together and builds his own story from them.”

After reading this, I looked back at the room and they were clearly right on track. I, myself, liked their idea of breathing the atmosphere (of a hilly pasture, in this case) even though it's only four walls with paint. Just looking at the room, I could almost smell the green grass and fields stretching as far as the eye could see and I could feel the dirtiness and excitement from the monster truck in the dirt. I just loved how they took photography (at least that is how they appeared to me in the photo) and mixed it with hard edged graphics that seemingly had nothing to do with the photos but still flowed nicely together.


I researched Hort after viewing all their rooms in the Hotel Fox and was surprised at the turn their work took when it went from walls of paint to print in magazines. Not unpleasently surprised but surprised nonetheless. I expected to see clean, modern and an eclectic sort of mix of ideas put into one. They did this to some degree but more in the way that everyone else is doing it instead of solely their own like their room more represented I think. I do like this kind of work and I find it amazing sometimes when I take long looks at work such as this and wonder how they decided to put each element with each element...but then I think also, that if you really try to do this sort of thing, it's one of those kinds of designs that isn't nearly as hard as it looks and besides that, it's really been overdone...even though it fascinates me still...I just wasn't impressed with them to have done the same sort of style.


It did excite me to see some different layouts in magazines though and I absolutely adored this one and how they incorporated soo many pictures into one layout and yet it doesn't look cluttered or hard to read in any sense. It's hard to find different layouts such as this one in a world that follows in one another's footsteps all the time. And sometimes, it's hard to see that there are a bajillion ways to do one thing until you see an idea so unlike everyone else's and that still works to the ninth that it wakes you up and you say "ah ha!...well duh."

http://www.hort.org.uk/

James Victore

Where do I begin? I love his work...specifically this one. I love the anger and aggression in his work specifically and the raw style he has. I also absolutely adore politically based art-work and when artists speak their political standings through art or design...I think I like this so much bc I suck ass at it myself, as I don't pay attention to politics unless it's near election time. :(

Victore does a wonderful job of mixing raw illustrations and design with very strict, modern type. I love it and all the white space. It's the whole thing I was going with when I designed my circus poster for GD1. Raw, Clean and Modern with a twist of nostalgic.

I adore how he can do lots of different styles as well...although he really seems to excel and want to do that certain raw, made it from scratch and i never use the damned computer kind of feel, it's apparent he can do very clean and modern design when the job calls for it. I think it really all goes back to his political sense in his designs thought that I like the most. I guess I really like it when you can tell someone has something important to say in their designs and it shows through.



http://www.jamesvictore.com/

Paula Scher

http://www.aiga.org/resources/content/4/5/2/images/5paulascherpeanuts.jpg

One of the artists my professor brought up in defense to my saying that design is male-dominated. She may be a designer. She may not design everything in a manly fashion, but looking at a lot of her work, it's almost all still male-appropriate...which is to say that it's not directly female. I'd like to know of a famous designer who is very very feminine in their designs and is able to focus most of their attention on the feminine role that is playing in their work rather than the male. Are they succeeding? Who are they?

When I said that design is very male-dominated, I was refering to the every day design that we see. Street signs, billboards, logos, etc. They are extremely male oriented and by this I mean that they are hard-edge, straight to the point, blunt. Granted, we are taught in design to be that way, to get our message across in as small amount of time as possible. But why? Why can't we design something instead that makes the viewer think about it for hours? Or at least longer than 15 seconds. What is wrong with the viewer having to actually THINK? I would imagine someone who thinks about your product or concept longer than 15 secs, would actually be more likely to remember it over the others. I know this is vague and not well thought out as I would like, I'm exhausted and I'm making this short.

In short, Paula Scher is not what I consider a feminine designer. She may be a female and she may design some things with women in mind but overall, in almost all of her designs that I have viewed, she appeals more the the male audience than the female.

But I can still learn a lot from her and this peice I've posted is one of my favorites of hers.

http://www.hillmancurtis.com/

copycat

I'm going to somewhat copy from a future prof. of mine. Technically, it's not copying at all, since I'm not going to be writing about the same things as him really and also, I don't believe he has a copyright on his blog...though perhaps I should check it out.

Anyway, I learned a valuable lesson today. DO YOUR FREAKIN RESEARCH BEFORE YOU GET IN AN ARGUEMENT WITH SOMEONE!! not that I didn't already know this but it just got shoved in my face twice in one day so I decided to take action and kill two birds with one stone.

I'm going to research a designer everyday and write about them in here. Hopefully that way I'll also be able to remember some of the names of design that actually influence my work.

Here goes:

ok...well starting tomorrow...my comp is freakin slow and i have to work at 8 am and go strong until 9 pm. argh.

night