Design Criticism

2006-06-28T16:06:00.000-07:00

SELF ASSESSMENT

I think that my new review is very different from my first, although it does hold a lot of the same information, a lot of the irrelevant information was taken out and other things were discussed more as suggested. In terms of the marking crtieria, I think that my second review definitely had a change of tone, to one that is much less formal and more fun. I also think that in my second review I answered the question a lot clearer and gave more information on the design piece and also my own opinions. Overall I think that this second review is a big improvement from the first and I think that I met all the crtieria for the task.

2006-06-28T01:37:00.000-07:00

Review – Blog 2 "The Lucent Logo Legacy: Long Live the Big Red Donut"

http://designforum.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=%5Fgetfullarticle&aid=2076918

This blog http://voice.aigo.org is one that has contributors from all fields that write pieces on all aspects of design, making it a huge source for design criticism. This particular piece written by James Bowie, on May 9 2006, discusses the logo of the company Lucent Technologies and the negative feedback it received initially but how it has become a ‘legacy’.
This design criticism is read almost as a discussion of the object, as it provides the reader negative responses to the design, ‘The media was quick to mock the new symbol, calling it “a big red zero”..’ yet at the same time Bowie makes clear his point of view about the logo and its success. ‘It’s survival and eventual emergence as a graphic trendsetter.’ This form of writing is what Poynor considers to be critical thinking as it advances a contrary view while at the same time the critic takes the ‘role of the supporter and advocate.’
In his writing Bowie uses many quotes from the media, people within the company and other crtics of the logo, in fact the overwhelming amount of quotes used within the piece is unnessecary as they all seem to say the same thing. It might have been better if Bowie used more of his own words and less of others, as it seems he is trying to ‘prove’ a point simply by using the voices of authority and power of numbers. In this way, Bowie is in line with Kitcheners level 6 as it gives an interpersonal criteria for evaluating the design. However many of his own arguments are more in line with Stage 2 or 3 as it assumes a truth that is not yet completely acknowledged or experienced by everyone; ‘Lucent’s willingness to adopt such a design and weather the scorn that followed is commendable. Here’s hoping the Innovation Ring can live on.’

King and Kitchener –
(http://www.umich.edu/~refjudg/rjsstages.html)

Rick Poynor –
(http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm?contentallias=lookingcloser2#poynor)

Despite these short-comings, Bowie’s ability to show both sides of the story yet at the same time make clear his own standpoint and opinion makes his piece of writing a very interesting one to read. He makes clear statements about his beliefs and is willing to back them up ‘Once established in use, the logo slowly gained acceptance and developed into a distinctive and memorable corporate symbol. The surest sign of its success came in the form of its dozens of imitators.’ In this sense Bowie’s writing is both Interpretive criticism and Descriptive Criticism according to Attoe as he ‘provides new perspective on the object’ by giving a personal view of it (Interpretive). However at the same time he ‘note(s) facts that are pertinent to one’s encounter with the environment.’ (Descriptive).

Wayne Attoe –
(http://www.jstor.org/view/07479360/ap050027/05a00090/0)

Bowie’s critical piece contributes to the world of design criticism as it thoroughly examines a well known design piece in a manner that allows all points of view to be shown while at the same time clearly communicates Bowie’s standpoint, allowing readers of all disciplines of design and even readers outside of design to read this piece in a well informed yet personal way.

2006-06-28T01:29:00.000-07:00

Review – Blog 1 "Typeface of the month Gill Sans"

http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/typeface_of_the_month_gill_sans/

Mark Boulton’s blog is a blog that combines posts about his personal life and also pieces of writing and criticism’s on design. From reading his blog it is obvious that Mark is a designer and therefore many of his writings about design come from an informed perspective, however he would not be seen as an authority. This knowledge is important when reading his articles as it informs the reader about where the writer is coming from and how justified his comments and opinions are. One of his pieces of writing; “Typeface of the month: Gill Sans” is a review of this well known typeface that asks the reader to re-evaluate or re-think their current view on the typeface, whatever that may be and encourages them to objectively look at this type.
The piece opens with a comical tone “Gill Sans, is he mad?, I hear you cry.” This introduction allows the reader to relax and straight away encourages them to be open-minded when reading his critique. His writing then goes on to reveal his own standpoint on the typeface while also giving insight into the history of the typeface itself. This use of history and data to inform or support his statements is in line with King and Kitchener’s first and second stage as he almost assumes that giving a history of the typeface will justify his statements. This is also shown as many of his statements are just that, statements without any back-up or evidence, ‘The characters are hard, sculptured forms which clearly show Gill’s education and artistic roots.’ This piece works with Poynor’s idea of criticism in that it exposes limitations of the subject as well as puncturing myths about the typeface as well, this can be shown in the line ‘Gill sans is a beautifully designed typeface which, unfortunately, has suffered at the hands of software, and to a certain extent, it own popularity. ’This is an ‘Interpretive Criticism’ according to Attoe, as it is highly personal and seeks to ‘mould others’ vision to make them see as he does. “I’m hoping that after reading this, at the very least, you’ll look upon Gill Sans with fresh eyes.’

King and Kitchener –
(http://www.umich.edu/~refjudg/rjsstages.html)

Rick Poynor -
(http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm?contentallias=lookingcloser2#poynor)

Wayne Attoe –
(http://www.jstor.org/view/07479360/ap050027/05a00090/0)

Overall this is a really interesting critique as it offers another perspective on a typeface that is so often used but not often given credit. It makes confident statements but does not give arrogant opinions, it simply offers a viewpoint in hopes of broadening people’s perspective on what the author sees as a beautiful and extremely useful typeface. Many of Mark Boulton’s blogs are interesting and well written, offering a fresh perspective for the design world. Boulton offers the world of Design Criticism new ways of looking at things without taking an arrogant or authorative position, allowing readers, not just those within the design discipline the ability to read his writings without hesitation.

2006-06-28T01:22:00.000-07:00

REVIEW - Dave Seaman's CD Cover

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover and it seems you can’t judge a cd by its cover… but you might be able to judge the designer for the cd cover.

Dave Seaman’s CD cover ‘Renaissance, The Master Series Part 7’ which was designed by a company in London, Insect, is what I consider beautiful. It’s a collage style with heaps of floating images including renaissance statues, foliage, birds flying in the sky, lyre bird feathers. Camouflaged within this gorgeous mix is an electronic cord and ampliphier speakers (which could be misconstrued as flower stems or pods if the audience didn’t inspect the cover closely). Can you picture it? This imagery is used throughout the cover, and some other elements, almost reminiscent of the Garden of Eden are also used on the inside flaps. What kind of music is it I hear you ask? Classical? Opera?, one of those nature tunes that you listen to before going to sleep? All viable guesses, but no this CD, for those of you who havent’ heard of Dave Seaman is actually House music, and for those people a little out of touch, House music, is a style of electronic dance music, that is synthesised music usually with a heavy beat, the kind of music that is played at clubs. Now House music, although very popular, is not by any means what one would describe as beautiful or reflective of nature. This is where this piece of visual communications seems to fail somewhat… Or has it?

We all assume, even unknowingly, that the CD cover that we are looking at reflects the music inside. Or looks like the music will sound. As Alex Steinweiss, the graphical designer who pretty much invented album cover art, envisioned cd covers should be ‘original works of art to project the beauty of the music inside.’ (http://www.eisnermuseum.org/educators/print/album.pdf)
But when looking back at album/cd cover art one could say that cd covers were not only a relfection of the music inside but also of the time that they were produced; ‘in the 1960s, album covers exploded with cheerful, colourful, organic shapes, and surrealistic photo collages. Punk brought along the angry young men and the blackmail letter style of the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks’ (http://www.tampere.fi/english/vapriikki/exhibitions/covers.html) However it seems that today CD covers are taking that extra step, perhaps due to post-modernism, in creating completely separate and individual pieces of art, or because there are so many people in the industry it’s the only way they can stand out! This came about when Graphic designers started designing album covers in the 1980’s and started introducing their own imagination and style, which yes is great in theory as a totally unique “buy me now” CD but in some cases the designer or design seems to override the style of the music or musician.

Now don’t get me wrong… the designer of this case is extremely talented when it comes to producing beautiful artwork and design… but when looking closely at the inside CD sleeve one notices that the information listing the songs and the information about the songs is in such a small font that it is in fact illegible, which suggests the graphic designer is not very competent in designing for usability. Not only that, but because of the design of the case, there is actually a lot of room for the text to be spread out if wanted. Instead the designer chose to fill these areas with white space and imagery. Now, unless the designer was trying to make a statement about the lack of importance of the people behind the music, then this is clearly just bad design.

Insect, the company who designed this cover, has a very experimental and illustrative style in all of their album cover design, some of these can be seen here (www.insect.co.uk). These CD covers are designed using a very different technique and in some ways this is actually a good thing as it gives the purchaser more for their money because they walk away with two pieces of art, the music itself and the cover that it comes in. Another thing that I noticed when looking at other CD Cover art is that the CD cover’s are actually a sort of branding for the artist themselves, even if it doesn’t reflect the music directly it can be used as a symbol or brand for the individual artist. But when looking at Dave Seaman’s other covers, (http://www.djdaveseaman.com/site.htm) there is no real consistency with any of his covers, let alone the ones that are par tof the renaissance series. So this style isn’t a Dave Seaman branding tool, which means we have to look for another reason that the the designer chose to design this cover the way that he did. Otherwise this chosen cover art seems pointless because for all those people who haven’t heard of Dave Seaman or his music, the communication of the CD cover would seem confusing and therefore lose all purpose.

In this post-modern world that we live in where artists are continually trying to stretch the boundaries and ‘break the rules’, it is no surprise that this has rebounded onto visual communications and in particular CD cover art. But I must still ask the questions; Does this new way of design take away from the direct purpose of communicating to the audience the music inside? And more importantly is it still necessary to do so? Can these two pieces of art work independently or must they clearly reflect each other? The jury is still out…

2006-06-28T00:04:00.000-07:00

Reflection on Taste Regime Responses

I was very surprised to see how accurate some of the guesses made about me were, as I was not expecting people to be able to guess that much about me from such a short and what seemed to be an uninformative profile. At the same time this exercise also proved that judgements that we are continuously making on people with the limited information we have can be completely wrong. The guess that I would get my primary source of news would be from television, due to the fact that I do watch a lot of television in the week, was only partially accurate but I can see why they made this educated guess. I would actually probably get my news from an even mixture of television, newspapers and radio. It is understandable why they made the assumptions they did, as I gave out no information that would have indicated that I listen to the radio or read newspapers at all. I only ever do take notice of the news if I come across it or it is in front of me and in this aspect Janina was right when she said that I am ‘not overly interested in the news, but do keep up to date with world events’, I thought that this was quite insightful, but again perhaps purely because this seems to be the case with a lot of girls my age and therefore it was more of a generalized guess.
The guesses in my movie likes/dislikes were quite accurate, I think he guessed that I like romantic comedies and mainstream movies as he associated netball, driving an echo and other answers as quite stereotypical of that genre’s audience and saw me as quite ‘girly’. I do in fact love movies with a sport twist, but this could be guessed as it was quite obvious by my profile that I was quite into sport. This was quite an easy question as quite often the movies you like are mirrored by what interests you in the real world.
Overall it was an interesting exercise and does point out the immediate judgments we make on someone or something when we know so little about them.

2006-06-27T23:52:00.000-07:00

Gormley’s “Field of Dreams” – Part 1

Antony Gormley’s work “Field of Dreams’, I believe has many voices as it tries to challenge the audience’s view on art, identity and the world itself. In Gormley’s own words it is about ‘the earth getting its own back... I am trying to put art back where it belongs in a world it should never have left.’ In the context of ‘Zones of Contact’, this years theme, which explores the spaces in which people live and also ‘a revivified interest in notions of cultural and ethnic identity.’ (www.bos2006.com) Gormley’s work also seems to explore ideas of identity and also the notion of ‘lost identity’ within the masses.
A work of this size is bound to embody many meanings, especially as each viewer imposes their own interpretation onto the piece. However it seems that Gormley is trying to communicate the idea of art reflecting real life, the worlds of reality and art working together and continually informing and creating each other. It explores the relationship between art and the viewer, as in his work the audience becomes the object as the artwork looks at them.

Although not an immediate intention of Gormley’s, the work also explores the idea of lost identity within a nation the size of China. The statues explore the idea of loss of individuality within masses, as beyond the first few rows the audience can no longer distinguish between the figurines and they simply become a carpet of colour and seem to become one. However with the inclusion of the portraits opposite the figurines, that depict not only the individual figurines, but also of the 300 Chinese villagers who made them, the audience’s attention is brought back to the individual and how each figurine, representing the villagers themselves, each have their own individuality and therefore each have their own voice. This may not have been an intentional meaning that Gormley was trying to convey however the work does embody this idea quite clearly. Gormley’s work does communicate what Gormley was trying to project, the idea of the earth giving its own back and art and reality becoming one, however it has another, perhaps not so obvious voice of individuality within the masses.

Gormley’s “Field of Dreams” – Part 2

Gormely’s work ‘Field of Dreams’ has an amazing impact on the audience, mainly due to the sheer size of the piece and also the effort that went into making it. The artwork has the potential to be very powerful and emotive as it explores interesting ideas about art and identity. I think that one aspect of its success is that it allows the audience to take away their own meaning from the artwork. Each portrait and figurine could be an artwork in itself as they each embody such emotion and beauty, however when they come together to form the 180, 000 strong army of figurines and 300 line-up of photos the impact is extraordinary. Ironically, the size being one of the reasons for the work’s success also leads to its downfall, as one cannot appreciate every part of the piece as it is too large to view. Gormley is well known for his large scale artworks, including his best known piece - ‘Angel of the North’ www.anthonygormley.com. However the enormous size of the pieces has such an impact on the audience that it has the potential to take away other more important aspects of the work, as it can overpower the audience. Gormely’s work is also seen in a better context than the other works, as it does not have to compete with any of the artworks, it has its own floor and therefore an entire area of its own. Again this could be detrimental to the work, as sometimes being in the context of other works with similar voices can assist the audience in understanding the work better.Overall I think Gormley’s work was definitely the best piece at the Biennale of Sydney Pier2/3, as it was the one that I immediately understood or took meaning from. It was also the one that was the most visually engaging and stimulating due to its enormous size. I think it is a great piece as it embodies many different meanings and is amazing as it allows the audience not only to view it but to participate in it as it forces the audience to become a part of the artwork itself. However I think that the enormity of the piece also meant that some aspects of the artwork were lost which seems a shame to an artwork that has so many layers and such an important message to communicate.

2006-06-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

Hey, sorry to do this. But if I am meant to be critiquing your review can you give me a heads up. I lost the piece of paper that said who my two people were... which makes it quite hard to then do. Thanks.

2006-06-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

REVIEW – Visual Communications
Dave Seaman’s ‘Renaissance Masters Series Part 7’ CD cover art.

If CD covers are used as independent pieces of artwork, then Dave Seaman’s CD cover ‘Renaissance, The Master Series Part 7’ designed by the London based company Insect, is excellent as its illustrative and experimental visuals and structure are unique and beautiful. However when looking at the purpose of a CD case, to inform the audience of the music inside and to be used as a visual language for a medium without one, then this piece seems to fail somewhat. As Alex Steinweiss the graphic designer, who was the first to introduce album cover art, envisioned that cd covers should be ‘original works of art to project the beauty of the music inside.’ (http://www.eisnermuseum.org/educators/print/album.pdf) It is usually assumed that the cover of a CD will often reflect the content of the music, ‘in the 1960s, album covers exploded with cheerful, colourful, organic shapes, and surrealistic photo collages. Punk brought along the angry young men and the blackmail letter style of the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the bollocks’ (http://www.tampere.fi/english/vapriikki/exhibitions/covers.html), however today it seems that covers have become more experimental, with graphic design artists now designing the covers and with the introduction of the CD format, cover design has transformed into miniature pieces of art.

However beautiful and striking this piece of visual communication, it is quite obvious that the designer focused primarily on the aesthetics of the case and not on the usability or sustainability. Examples of this is the typography, on the inside cover case listing the song names and their information, uses a point size so small that it is illegible and thus a design failure. There are many sides of the CD case within which to fit this information, yet it is instead filled with imagery, showing the designer’s ignorance of usability over aesthetics. In terms of sustainability of the design, one must question the use of the second cover case which is used, although this extra element does add to the aesthetics of the case and does keep the inside flaps together, it seems like a lot of waste of resources in order to do so. Again the designer was concentrating more on the aesthetics of the case rather than the sustainability or environmental impact of creating this other layer.

The music on the CD is House music, a style of electronic dance music. The beautiful imagery used throughout the case is very experimental which does reflect the unique style of House music, however it seems somewhat ineffectual, for the case to not communicate clearly to its audience what it contains and one must ask the question: Has album cover design become too experimental that it has lost its main purpose? Insect is a very experimental company that does a lot of work within the music industry and the use of experimental illustration can be seen in most of their other works at www.insect.co.uk. This somewhat novel technique of transforming the CD case into a piece of art, does ensure the purchaser is getting more for their money as it gives them two forms of art - the music and the case itself. CD covers have today become more of a branding for the music artist, and if one looks at Dave Seaman’s other album art (http://www.djdaveseaman.com/site.htm) it seems that there is no real consistency with the styles of album cover art.

However in terms of usability, does this new way of design take away from the direct purpose of communicating to the audience the music inside? And is it still necessary to do so? Due to the freedom given to CD cover design artists, the line is now blurred between the CD case as a tool of communication and reflective language tool for the music itself and the CD case as a piece of design or art in its own right. Can these two pieces of art work independently or must they clearly reflect each other? The jury is still out…

2006-06-19T03:01:00.000-07:00

Taste Profile Questions

1. Favourite Television Show in the last 2 years. How many hours television do you watch a week?

Favourite television show is Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy. Would watch around 12-13 hours of television a week.

2. What sort of camera do you have? What do you take pictures of: events, friends and relatives, things I find interesting, beautiful things?

I own both a digital and SLR camera. I used the SLR camera for photography subjects and for portraits of friends. I use the digital for friends, family, events and going out.

3. What sort of car would you like to drive? How often would you get under the bonnet of that car?

I own a toyota echo, which I am perfectly happy with. As long as it gets be from A to B then I don't care what the car make is. I don't even know how to open the bonnet of my car...

4. Do you play a musical instrument? Which?

I used to play bassoon, but no longer do so. I do sing in my car... does that count?

5. List your most favourite and least favourite type of music?

I like all types of music, especially ones I can sing along to. I would have to say my least favourite would be hard rock.

6. Which of the following would you visit or attend at least twice a year: art galleries, museums, public lectures, public libraries, political meetings, demonstrations or rallies?

art galleries... that is all.

7. List 4 films you have seen in the last year, from favourite to least favourite, and indicate how you saw them (cinema, video/dvd rental, video/dvd owned, pay TV, free-to-air TV)?

8. What is your favourite sport or game to play? What is your favourite sport or game to watch?

Favourite game to play would be netball, and favourite game to watch would be rugby union.

9. Where would like to travel to (apart from to friends or relatives)?

Yes would love to travel more in the future, there are so many places I would love to see.

10.What is your primary source of news? To what extent to do you take an interest in the news

11.Should the government be spending more or less funding on: tax relief, sport, the arts, the environment.

12.Which country are you from? Could you live in a country other than where you were raised for the rest of your life?

Australia. I could live in England, but see myself living in Australia.

13.Where do you tend to meet your friends: at each other’s homes, shopping centres, pubs or clubs, cafes and restaurants, parks or exercising?

Depends on the type of friend, but at our homes, clubs, cafes and excercising.