Readings Week 4

Michael Bierut
On (Design) Bullshit
Design Observer 3.0: Observatory: Design Observer

-This artcile states that you must have a purpose for making design decisions.

"Before I could commit to a design decision, I needed to have an intellectual rationale worked out in my mind."

"It put aside arguments about taste; it helped them make the leap of faith that any design decision requires; it made the design understandable to wider audiences."

Calling bullshit on a designer, then, stings all the more because it contains an element of accuracy.

- the client will approve decisions that make sense to them, if you cannot say why you picked it, the client will not buy into it
-also you cannot just do something because you "like" it, that is no longer good enough.

WONDERS REVEALED: DESIGN AND FAUX SCIENCE
Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel from Michael Bierut, William Drenttel, and Steven Heller,
Looking Closer 5: Critical Writings on Graphic Design, Volume 5 (New York: Allworth Press, 2006)

For design—a profession that once prided itself on translating form into content—such ignorance is alarming, and the false piety is disturbingly ingenuous.

In a very real sense, science is the connective tissue linking past to present to future, and in this context, its relationship to visual communication is critical.

Filtered through design’s brutally neutralizing style engine, contemporary design is
anesthetized and stripped of its indigenous qualities: Science, in this context, is a graphic placebo.

“Science,” wrote Heidegger, “is one of the most essential phenomena of the mod age.” It’s
hygienic and objective, rational and finite, grounded in numerical certain and cosmological
reason.

Science is all about clarity and specificity and rationalism

We grasp its formal conceits—its systematic language of documentation, its methodical alignments—and parlay them into a visual language that resonates with kick-ass authority.

Information design has become its own legitimizing force, regardless of its content or context. It’s modernism run amok: form masquerading as content.

From appropriation came inspiration, a postmodern culture of juxtaposition and pastiche. Because the vernacular belonged to everyone, it resonated as real, familiar, and accessible.

Science represents an enormous opportunity for designers, but not if their contributions
remain fundamentally restricted by what they know

Graphic Design Thesis- a survivors guide
Michael Vanderbyle

Thesis-complex intersection between personal voice, conceptual understanding, and the ability to conduct and use research effectively in the service of creating public communication

description of classes

thesis is the culmination of your design education a CCAC
-created my michael Vanderbyl to challenge and broaden our understanding of what it means to be a designer

The Thesis Proposal
-is a proposition or argument- which you intend too support through your research
-thesis proposal is a map for the semester
sentence 1- proposition
Sentence 2-investigation
Sentence 3-map

Bad thesis- has no point, no argument it is merely and investigation


tips-
1. what interests you
2. make sure you have a point
3.do not base proposal on the obvious
4. develop system for note taking
5. footnotes
6. avoid pseudo science
7.ineterviewing friends about topic has no merit

-must have a thesis process book

-topic can be food and the proposal may suck
-tape or record midterm crit
-take responsibility for what you want to ask
-if you thesis is not working at midterm you should think about dropping the course