Where were the Campana brothers? Did the One-Laptop Per Child deny an interview? Was Phillip Stark not available? Javier Mariscal? How come no electric cars made it to the edit? How about Massimo and Lella Vignelli? And those unsung heroes who today produce some of the most amazing work on the sustainability front? How about Catalan designer Juli Capella who constantly writes about Spanish objects, their design and influence in culture? How come Scandinavia’s and India’s work did not make it? And why were there no architects? (they happen to design a large percentage of the objects that surround us) I bet you can also instantly think of a few more examples.

This project being a film, I understand its need for editing and focus. Not everything can make it. I understand that, but… Would it have been too hard to minimize the fourth showing of one person and introduce the perspective of an up-and-coming designer? And how come Latin American design has not been referenced? (I am so shocked about the non-showing of the Brazilian Campana brothers).

As you can tell, I am a bit disappointed, but don’t let that discourage you from watching it. The film offers a rare look into the process and thinking of some of those whose work has changed the contemporary way of living. It is a good reference. It just left me with too many questions that probably only a design nerd like me will ever make…

As I arrived on the location all that I could think to myself was: “How did I not know about this earlier? How had nobody told me?”. In retrospect, I did know of the activity. In fact, its promotional poster hung 5 feet from me in my studio for the last 3 weeks of classes.

What went wrong?

Poster for The Bain Project by somethingpressed

The poster, a beautifully crafted letterpress edition on light toned paper, with a balanced color palette and an elegant typographic structure, was a visually appealing composition. Yet, even though it was indeed a very nice piece, its contents, in my opinion, failed to communicate some of the most interesting aspects of the event. In my case, I dismissed the event as some sort of watercolor exhibition.

If it were not for my friend, I would have missed the opportunity to see such a wonderful structure and experience. Now, don’t think that I do not value a poster that plays with setting up curiosity or that delivers incomplete messages for a viewer to complete, but the type of poster that I am referring to is the one where the message being sent is completely inconsitent with the subject which it means to refer to.

In the end, I can only image all of the missed opportunities that may have crossed my eyes in the form of emails, flyers, ads or posters that I simply dismissed because they did not clearly communicate their information clearly. Graphic designers, don’t forget that there is an audience who needs to use our work…

Recently, while watching some of these shows, I noted a change in the commercial advertising landscape: the automotive industry is trying to harness the power of typography and verbal communications to make its pitch to us.

Take this particular advertisement for Ford’s new F-150. The advertisement, clearly influenced by recent kinetic typography explorations found in almost every video portal site, uses scale, contrast, motion, rhythm, and verbal language to communicate its message to the screen-engaged viewers.

My issue? While I am very happy to see typography take a lead-actor role in contemporary motion-based advertising, I don’t want to see it become just another plastic jewel of a bedazzled composition. Seeing typography play a superficial role illustrates a weak command of the medium. In this previous example, I question the effectiveness of the strategy when the subject matter of the commercial is rendered almost invisible. What was this commercial about again?

The kinetic typography technique, in my opinion, works best when the visual cues offered by the images allow viewers to immerse in the story being told. Examples of it cover the whole spectrum of genres, from comedy…

Content cited is from the movie Wedding Crashers.

…to serious dramatic compositions… (sorry for the Spanish)

For Random House Mondadori.

…but no matter the thematic purpose of these two previous examples, the visual cues assert the typographic narrativs being told.

In the case of some of these recent vehicle commercials, there is a split between the visual and typographic stories, rendering the ads, in my opinion, ineffective. I don’t mean to insinuate that this is happening because of the technique being used. In 2006, The Brand New School produced The Car That Reads the Road campaign for Toyota in Australia.

These ads, while beautiful and rendered to the highest of technological standards, also fall into this fuzzy realm where I think typography and content are not quite peacefully having a conversation, and I think this happens again because no substantial story is being told. This lack of narrative provokes a superficial role for the typography and to its possibilities.

The sad thing is that the automotive industry has experienced the success of real storytelling (By storytelling I don’t mean those ads where cars are the main actors of unbelievable feats, but stories with a plot, actors, and process). The 2002 release of John Frankenheimer’s Ambush on the BMW Films website serves as a clear case study.

Ambush, by John Frankenheimer.

With the series, BMW delved into storytelling and was rewarded when it saw their 2002 sales numbers go up 12% from the previous year. The movies were viewed over 11 million times in four months. ¹ The films proved to be so popular, that BMW produced a few more seasons and showcased many more of its vehicles in action that it would have ever done with a standard advertising campaign.

Clearly the automotive industry is in the midst of an identity crisis, questioning the ways it does things. I just think it has been doing this for a while now… not finding a clear position for itself… and not understanding how to talk to its audience. There is no need for this move to superficial strategies. All is has to do is connect with the audience… provide stories… (and then bring in typography) and not only will it see itself rewarded, but also provide a more meaningful experience for those who have to see these spots repeated for weeks at a time, armed only with the weapons of changing a channel or muting the speakers.

So the big question after getting the button machine was: what was I going to do as a first button set to share with others? I decided to make a gift to my classmates, and I made a button out of every single one of the Design Thinking Posters that we each made for this semester’s studio class. The set has all 16 concepts represented.

A typical scene in my life…

April 2008… I decide to submit a draft for the Social Studies Conference: Educating Designers in a Connected World to be held at MICA this upcoming October. Deadline for submissions… July 15th. Yup, I got time.

July 14th: 6:00pm… Dammit! It’s been raining all day, internet connection has been down, and I have to submit the abstract! Tic, tock… Tic, toc…

hehehe

I submitted the abstract on time (see below)(and I even got a happy confirmation e-mail from the conference).

In this three-credit sophomore course, Imaging II: Settings and People (Leading to Activity Scenarios)*, students are introduced to interaction and time-based media by working with three key ideas: settings, people and scenarios. Each of these concepts is addressed through a particular investigation: a “Site Survey (settings);” a “Subject Study (people);” and an “Activity Map (scenarios).”

For the site survey investigation, and to elucidate over this idea of settings, students built annotated panoramas of a repetitive event in their daily lives. To visualize the importance of people within a system, students interviewed members within the design school to collect ethnographic data, and then designed one-minute video clips and European-sized broadsheets. Finally, the semester concluded in understanding scenarios. Students created paper-prototypes, modeled in stop-animation video clips, to show possible interactions in the university (setting), between a user (people) and an interface on a mobile platform.

Throughout the semester, concepts and ideas were taught by exposing students to observation and interpretative methods such as annotated panoramas/tableaus, visual essays, authored journals, video interviews, collaborative ideation techniques, activity maps, paper-prototyping, and stop-animation photography. These “image-making” strategies help students visualize and actualize key aspects (and phases) of all manner of design problems (be they project-definition-driven, project-building, project-making, etc.).

Through these investigations, students can better survey, document and understand sites and subjects as they focus their attention on to new and unique design challenges brought on by contemporary communications systems, such as in branding, services and experiences, and interaction design.

* It was taught during the Spring of 2008 by co-instructors Santiago Piedrafita (full-time faculty member) and myself Alberto Rigau (graduate student).

Click image for high resolution.

The future really caught our attention.


Robert Ruehlman

Samyul Kim

Gretchen Rinnert explains her future.

Denise made the conversation interesting.

Steve Harjula

The future really really caught our attention.

Marty Lane looks forward.

Kelly Cunningham makes us aware of the possibility of bio-sensitive suits.

I am confused about the future.

Rebbeca Tegtmeyer explains social relationships.

The future confuses all of us.

Michéle Wong wonders about a future with no schools.

Kelly Murdoch-Kitt makes commenting social.

A few days ago I found the Insights Incite Change Style Guide webpage for Syracuse University. I was temporarily thrilled, for as an alumnus of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications I could not wait to experience a new visual transformation of my alma mater.

My excitement, sadly, lasted only seconds.

As I immersed myself into the contents of the site I was instantly shocked, and then, greatly disappointed with what I was forced to haggle with. I had not even seen the visual details of the project and I was already being thrown the line “…to help apply the… brand in print and online environments.” Brands do not need to be applied. These are born out of a good research and intelligent use. A brand is not a thing that can be placed. It’s a system that grows, shrinks and adapts as needed for its success.

After I clicked on the style guide link, only to find a sophomoric application of the seal, dated and sterile typography, hard to read emblems, restrictive and unnecessary placement strategies, color choices that limit all possibilities for play in a plural university and a clip-artish illustration style that reflects nothing of the school’s history and legacy. The campaign has barely left the ground and these stylistic decisions are already dated.

Let’s just consider typography for a brief moment. What are you saying with Franklin Gothic? Do you know that using this typeface dates the identity instantly?

Robert Bringhurst, typographic historian, wrote “…most, though not all, of the unserifed types of the nineteenth century were dark, coarse and tightly closed. These characteristics are still obvious in faces like Helvetica and Franklin Gothic, despite the weight-reductions and other refinements worked on them over the years. These faces are cultural souvenirs of some of the bleakest days of the Industrial Revolution.”

Is Syracuse University this kind of souvenir? Does it want to be?

I am realistic and I understand that the university has been struggling for many years to find its ideal visual identity. Remember the Orangemen and Orangewomen? But I do not believe the answer lies in superficial facelifts. Contemporary cultural entities have realized the answer to a good brand does not reside in logos, emblems or their use. It relies on research, history and a systematic adaptable visual representation that can grow with the institution as it moves on ahead into the next decades.

Photo chop

Fast-food restaurants promote indigestion in more than one way. Customarily, visual references used to advertise the menu –that is, photographs– are more than often fake. Most of the products showcased as value meals were never photographed as a group, but instead “stitched” from different sources. Not only clients save in buying a soda, sandwich and fries. Owners also play cheap by resorting to digital compositions that ultimately deceive the public. To add to the debate about the nutritional attributes of fast food, we can certify it can also endanger visual health.

Almost insistently, independent images of food and drinks are brought together by a digital click and then copied into a background. As if no one noticed, for example, cookies and muffins are often photographed once, then repeated and flipped on top of each other to create the illusion of plurality. These examples can go unnoticed to the untrained: the inexperienced lack command of shadows, contrast levels and perspective angles that are a basic requisite of photography, but also of Photoshop.

However, a few clues suffice to grasp the situation. On your next visit to a fast food establishment, turn waiting in line into a research project. Look carefully at the french fries, as represented in several value meal pictures. You will notice an identical arrangement in all of them, while sandwich and burger simultaneously appear in a different perspective angle. If the different items had been photographed together – as a true “combo” – food would probably appear more real, maybe truly appetizing. But fast food friends are prone to supersize even their omissions.

In many instances, the cheese, lettuce, bread, and meat images we are presented with are the product of extreme manipulation. Do you like your food when it has been played with? At an advertising agency, I once witnessed a designer “clone” a small hamburger patty into a half-pound version. No wonder the food we get over the counter never looks like those in the pictures. With the money earned by fast food establishments, you would think their owners would go though the trouble and expense of hiring a fast food stylist and a photographer to tend properly to their unique needs and expectations.

In contrast, by being cheap, they add to the already artificial nature of the food they promote, simultaneously diminishing the role of the graphic designer. It is less expensive to pay for a graphic artist to make a change on the food, than actually pay for a photo shoot. Thanks to the capabilities of photo alteration software, photo “chopping” photographs has succeeded at further deceiving the public. In truth, money-making concerns are not to be blamed alone for, unfortunately, most people do not take a good look at what they are about to eat. Be it food, or publicity.

Landscape Muggers

What USA publicists call a junior page advertisement is known in Puerto Rico, more informally, as a “robapágina”, or page mugger. Reference to the “illegality” of a fake full-page has less to do with the crime problems currently affecting the island than with the aggressiveness that permeates most advertising endeavors all over the world.

A case in point: Newspaper A1 design vis-a-vis front page advertising.

Publication designers love control over their work. Even though, customarily, one must follow lay out standards – to a certain extent – the designer more than often controls colors, typographic treatments, and image choice. To his/her dislike, there is one aspect of everyday work that, on most occasions, is labeled as hands-off: the advertising.

Lack of advertising control, if it’s any consolation, extends beyond the publication realm. Recently, a restaurant within my neighborhood sold some of its parking space to a billboard company. The new advertisement was placed above the restaurant’s sign; it’s twice its size, boasts excessive illumination, and challenges the sky boldly. Did the restaurant’s owner ever consider the billboard’s dwarfing effect? Did he realize clients would be confused by the looted landscape? Did he care? Does anyone care?

This situation is echoed in publications as well. Over the fold advertisements on A1 are, more and more, challenging the hierarchical space where once the masthead reigned supreme. With no control over the design and content of these printed billboards, the nameplate’s landscape is now being diminished by flashy, un-related colors, mirror typography, effect-ridden images, and non-editorial messages.

Publishers will argue these advertisements provide necessary revenue and, as such, it is no longer an option to do without them. But if, in fact, we have to do with them, why not exert more control over them? Both in Europe and the USA, key publications have paved the way for the integration of word, image, and page structure, regardless of editorial or commercial purpose.

Madison Avenue’s Mad Magazine and Barcelona’s design journal ARDI are to be thanked for saying NO! to uninspired publicists. Anyone wanting to advertise in their pages has to consciously address the aesthetics, style, and visual standards of the publications. Where did their efforts lead to? Undiminished sponsors and award-winning ads. If more than one continent has already acknowledged the values of fully integrated graphic languages, why can’t more of us defend the full command of the graphic landscape to which we are entitled?