Graphic language
19 October 2004. Inspired by .
GraficEurope was quite something - and a big improvement on last year's event in BCN. (As Nick Richards has pointed out, I seem to be travelling so much that I now refer to cities only by their airport codes. I'll come to my thoughts on Berlin in a day or few.)
As the conference organiser herself pointed out in an excellent article last year in Eye magazine, "Many designers are brilliant communicators – when teaching or writing, pitching or designing. Only some are brilliant speakers." And so it inevitably was. It felt sometimes like a portfolio slideshow. Powerpoint, you've struck again, damn you.
However. Some speakers did truly engage the topic and make you think; for others, the brilliance of their previous work at least meant that we left the talk with something, even if it all could have been Googled. But who's to say that we would have done?
Here, styled a la Matt Jones, are some link-strewn notes I may find useful later.
The harshness of describing human beings as Meat, as technology improves.
International design aesthetics are making new buildings in once distant places all look the same.
Universalisation is the subtle destruction of a creative nucleus of cultures.
Riceur spoke of "mediocre civilisation" taking over. Marc Augé wrote of "non-places" in his introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity, eg. fast food restaurants, airport lounges, etc. - places to lose yourself culturally.
Tomorrow's People by Susan Greenfield extends the theme, talking about "content-free lifestyle".
More "crititical regionalism" needed - Frampton's book on Architecture.
Graffiti - tied to a place and a moment, created by the individual, commitment to actually being there. Proof of location. The stencil is now "one of the most urgent forms of expression". The designer's challenge is to "create design that feels of being somewhere that is not elsewhere".
You should be true to your experience and your surroundings.
Manson (title changed by Emigre to Mason) - formed from old Underground stations, English gothic archways, British tombstones and University of London signage.
Creating type or designs are about sharing experiences.
I saw Exocet used in the signage in Istanbul; I felt I'd destroyed its foreignness.
You should reinterpret the past in the spirit of your own age.
Prozac is a font made entirely out of six shapes.
Design cannot change the world in isolation. Be true to your beliefs and make your design world a part of that.
All my work has come from people I've known or had a geographical connection with being from Trondheim.
I had no graphic design training and am an amateur, which I find really freeing.
But with invitations to things like these I feel less of an amateur, which makes it much harder for me to work.
I became known because I design music albums. No other solid medium gets sent out internationally and is as viewed, as music.
Everyday experiences influence design. By working in Sheffield, it means that I don't get bombarded by popular culture as much. I have to work harder on my own ideas, and the work shows fewer external influences.
We create a small universe for each client, with their product then fits into.
Not being in London: "it's an issue that it's become an issue"
Being in Berlin - round table
Andrea Tinnes from the collective DasDeck: Low living costs - the freedom to do what you want.
Worked on a German/Georgian film exhange project.
Gets much of her work from the US college she studied at; spends most of her time on personal projects and her new typography label.
Conceptual. Left university and started his own.
Then created a furniture shop with one product only: selling shelves made cheaply from MDF. It was a huge, unexpected cult success.
His own fashion label dot-com failed badly
His own publishing house published just one book - his - and sold 20 copies.
New architecture label to "internationalise" public space, make it cleaner. Doesn't like success.
Joshua Davis
(Engaging speaker and big personality, but really what he showed can be summed up in an already well-known link)
Day Two
Design categories, genres are now the new locations. What goes on in them is regional and influences itself more. Sometimes you take things from "foreign lands".
Design spreads its neutralising seed liek some ardent missionary.
I want to invent from within and influence from without.
Deco-rationalism
Creates flyers after the event - for those there to pick up. Every time he speaks he does this; means that those who were there get a souvenir, rather than everyone who might attend. The opposite of graphic design. Design as art object.
Practise and preach, and/or theorise and teach.
An "exit-level designer". Now 67; retrained in his 40s.
El Diner - concept for a restaurant (comment from audience member: very much copying their mentor Sagmeister)
Labels a big focus of the humour. Toothpick label: "This is what happens to naughty trees", sugar: "Long pillow for tiny people".
Have a flowchart aesthetic - great website (see link above). Includes a spoken portfolio - a neighbour describes their visuals.
very much the cool designers of the moment.
Remarkable work, her type cramped in like the buldings in New York. All caps. Shouting like the city.
Writes on buildings, type as crucial elements of design. Hired signwriters to paint all over an arts centre.
Huge ad agency that creates its own projects too. Got massive coverage for Hans Brinkler Budget Hotel humorous ads about how poor the hostel is (and it really is), that included paying students to put small flags in dogshit. ("Now a bed in every room!", handing out tictacs in packs that say "sleeping pills", A3 cut-out card with "hair dryer, soap, shampoo, complentary wine, flowers" etc on it left in each room when you arrive). Visitor numbers quadrupled. Their website - filled with broken links - continues the aesthetic.
Spoof and irony the mainstay of their products - eg. The Other Final (which actually turned out some great emotional truths - perhaps by accident?), the Diesel ads.
Most successful in creating an entire branding for mobile phone company Ben in Holland. Witty pay-offs, made 50 ads a year so you only saw one.
(their own company website filled with all kinds of spoofs, from banner ad to banner ad. All a bit TOO clever, nudge-wink?)
Jonathan Ellery of Browns
Used unusual materials to create books - Pandora's Box about a brothel with themed rooms, using latex, etc in the binding. Blame Everyone Else used ten different paper stocks.
"You don't make money on books".
We try to avoid distributors. We print 1000 and then put 250 in Paris, London, New York, somewhere else. We have only 3 or 4 bookshops in each place we want it in.
(amazing wise man aura with a great beard)
Distribution is as important as the art itself. I don't hold out with the Ivory Tower idea. If you make something because you're angry or entertained or want to say something out there, part of your responsibility of creation, and part of the art, is getting it out there.
Day Three
Creative director at Fabrica.
They've created a new campaign for WHO. Different in Northern hemisphere from Southern - economy and visual language difference in message (But how?? he didn't go into detail, damn him)
Now creative director of manchester. didn't want to just come up with a logo or a slogan - believes that a redefinition could give people hope.
Went to Beswick, took photos, got mugged by a 12 year old.
John C Jay - creative director of Wieden and Kennedy in Japan
More than 1000 soft drinks are launched each year in Japan
People see and absorb graphic information more due to letter forms; you can't read a newspaper until age ten in Japan due to complexity of language shapes, so you process visual information for longer.
Otaku: means being super deep into something. The word's popularity comes from a murderer in the 1980s; they found his room filled with really dark imagery and manga. Now positive meaning of real knowledge/obsession. "I'm an otaku of bluenote jazz"
Japan has no high or low art; everything is fair game for the mainstream. Ideas are all in the middle ground, fuelled by commerce, design and a desire for the latest thing. There is no embarrassment about artists and commerce - it fuels new ideas.
Kusama: does art for coca-cola and exhibitions. Lives in a mental institution, still does her art.
Other cultural differences: numbers of addresses are not sequential - they are the order inwhich the houses on the street were built.
Book that talks about this: The Geography of Thought by richard S Nisbitt.
Doujinshi - the great honour of having others copy your work and create their own versions/adaptations. Twice a year, huge conventions where fans exchange their copied/adapted work. No copyright lawyers in attendance.
Form doesn't follow function. It follows emotion. Emotion tells you which form is functional.
Their music/animation/culture lab.
Now opened an office in Shanghai.
Wonderfully playful, witty, entertaining - finds things, hunts around for more things. The book a compilation of art he finds. The word "collage" as a collage, etc. Throwaway but v. pleasurable.
Graphic design is a language, not a message - Tibor Kalman
Are you going to believe me or your eyes? - Groucho Marx