This has been truest when it comes to Retinart. If you look through the archives it becomes quite clear that I work productively for a month or two, then lie dormant for several – there’s no real outcome to aim for, so I burn out.

A few weeks ago, as I was retreating to the warmth of my bed, I felt the exhaustion of the day swarming in my shoulders. “Hmmm” I muttered, “I have to stop with the Hard Work and just start working.” It was an odd thing to have flutter through my mind, but it was the closing of the day so I brushed the thought off.

The following days found the notion continually snake through my thoughts. Deciding to explore it further, I realised this was something I’ve always done, happily dedicating great effort to Hard Work.

I thought of it as something like this:

Hard Work

Hard work is a large task worked through until exhaustion, normally starting as a simple project made more complicated than necessary in an effort to justify time spent and prove something. It generally involves a mad rush to the finish line with little exploration or evolution. Like hacking away for hours with a blunt axe, wood is cut but you’re exhausted and the stump is anything but clean.

Working Hard

Working Hard can be deceptive – it looks as if less progress is made as fewer decisions might be acted upon or the output is perceived as being simple. It’s because big steps are broken down into little ones, contemplated and worked through carefully, ensuring each is worth pursuing, casting many aside. The end result is developed as the work is being done, rather than deciding on a very specific end result and then back-filling the blanks. But most of all, no attempt is made to get everything done in an unsustainable manner – only that worth doing is done, as it needs to be done. I’m sure you see where this one is going – it’s like sharpening the blade for an hour before splitting the air and wood in one smooth swing.

Hard Work is Easy

People often get the two confused or consider them interchangeable, resulting in Hard Work being used as a substitute to working hard. Hard Work is easier than working hard. Hard work is the tedium we instill in a project in the hope that something fantastic will appear if we just keep going and going and going and going and going and going, making it more complex to hide a simple nature. It’s easier because it’s a lot of simple or silly ideas executed in the hope that one of them, or a combination of them, will turn into something great. It’s what we think of as the safe road, employing brawn over brain.

It’s a tenet worth being able to notice in oneself. The immature designer will fill their page with as much as they can, hoping to make up for the lack of weight within their idea with an abundance of it in their execution. The experienced designer will know this isn’t how one finds a solution.

It’s one of those traits we refine more and more as we work, doing so naturally as we learn how to better communicate. But what if we were to continually look at how our processes and how we think about our work? What if we continually try to understand in which camp our decisions and choices truly lie – in the camp of Hard Work where the cabins are made of excess and wasted time, grandiose endeavors filled with trinkets and tacky furniture that holds no purpose, or in the neighbouring Camp Working Hard, where only sleeping bags sit on the floor of the earth below a roof of stars?

Three Months of Talking Without
Saying Anything

Why content dried up a couple of months ago.

When Retinart was relaunched on the first of July, I had written three months worth of content as a safety net. It was a lot of Hard Work, but having a number to aim for suited me well – I like Hard Work.

Once I launched I decided to spend some time marketing. After all, I had my safety net. Articles would be published and I would talk about them.

But my safety net got smaller and eventually the site began to bleed out, losing colour and strength. Wheezing on, forcing out soft breaths as new content was published fortnightly instead of twice-weekly, then monthly, then… then nothing. For months Retinart lay with death standing over head, just visible in diminished sight. I thought the Hard Work would be of benefit, but in the end it just burnt me out, leaving me with an inability to string a couple of simple words together.

The usual fun that accompanies writing had spun out. Instead of working through the joy, I turned it into a chore and saw my hard work deflate under its own weight.

After a few weeks of soft gasps, I found the strength to write again, a little each day, making it part of a routine.

In a variety of subjects did I drown myself, hoping to once again grip my hand on a joyful word swimming past. After reading and thinking and reading some more I found myself in the middle of a school of the little wonders. Before long I felt compelled to once again catch them before they went off into the mist, so I began to write out of a sheer lustful joy, raising the nets to see what I had caught. I had stopped making the work so hard and everything started to flow. Writing was fun and I was being productive. I was ready to breath life back into the site a word at a time with no number or specific goal in mind.

Writing for the Smashing Magazine Book

Why I didn’t start writing for Retinart, in spite of this energy.

One of the reasons I was happy to take on the challenge of contributing to the second Smashing Magazine book was because of how well I had been doing with writing before hand. I was much quicker, had refined my process and was excited to partner with Matt Ward of EchoEnduring to write the chapter.

I thought of what was at hand and made a catastrophic decision: this was a lot of Hard Work. I put it off for weeks.

I did this to myself – Vitaly and Matt were amazing to work with and never put any pressure on me.As the stench of the deadline grew, I wrote the first three quarters in what I can only remember as a haze. All I did was write. Every morning I would stumble from bed at 5:30 to write for three hours before work, at which morning and lunch breaks allowed me time to write and edit. Once I left the office and arrived home at around 5:30, I would continue to write until 11.

This happened everyday for a month.

I kept this up for the first three quarters of the job, which I sent off hoping to ignore the last quarter as I had run over my word count as it was.

Then we got the email back from Vitaly and he liked what we had done – he asked if I could still do the last quarter on typography. Vitaly is far too nice a guy to say no to, so what could I possible say? “Sure.”

Deciding this wouldn’t destroy me (or my marriage), I changed my approach.

Forgetting the deadline, I took it easy and just simply got to work. I gently engulfed all the words and ideas and philosophies I could, making notes and asking questions as I went. I allowed myself to enjoy the process, working hard as I scribbled notes, worked through ideas and explored what I had before me, but now allowing any of it to turn into Hard Work.

In the end it was (I believe; but you’d probably have to ask Vitaly or Matt) the best writing I’ve done to date. I investigated interesting ideas, wrote with happiness and enjoyed every part of the process.

Best of all, by working hard instead of succumbing to Hard Work, it only took three days.

Retinart Was Hacked.

Retinart was hit by the PharmaHack but no matter how many online guides I ran through, I was never able to vanquish it. After about a week of trying, Google still thought I sold small pills that make small things big things.

The hunt began to make me anxious. The little eyes had to be somewhere in the jungle of my server but no matter how desperately I searched them out in the darkness, the two burning embers weren’t to be found.

A few people suggested I talk to @snipey. Working through my site like a machine, Alison was able to figure out what was going on and why it was proving so problematic to fix. Turns out that it’s not a good idea to have old WordPress installations on your server, even if they’re in different folders, using a different database.

It’s through one of these old ones that the sneaky bastard snuck in. What’s worse is even after cleaning out all the infected and questionable files on the server, there was still an issue with Google — it was referencing cached version of the site that were served up by a plugin now removed.

In my previous mindset and potentially even in this case, my thought would be to hunt through the files once again and hope to find the zombie that was causing all my issues. More Hard Work.

“Let’s nuke the server and start over” was Alison’s suggestion.

Within an hour of starting, my entire server was cleaned out and replaced by a bullet proof WordPress Installation that only brought with it two or three minor design bugs that I was able to introduce to the heel of my boot in less than thirty minutes.

It took 90 minutes to solve my problem when someone decided to work hard on it. If I had approached it as Hard Work, I’d probably still be dealing with it, weeks later.

And the new design changes?

With the site cleaned I had the opportunity to look at my plugins and decide if having them on the site was worth the potential vulnerabilities.

I had been wanting to tweak the design for some time and saw this as an opportunity to do so. I was sick of Hard Work so decided to simply work instead.

This is an idea I think is well worth exploring – what kind of visual elements that we add to a design introduce a sliver of Hard Work for the audience in how the design works? I culled anything I didn’t think was needed, anything that caused a visual or philosophical crumb of Hard Work to creep into the design was removed. I had grown so sick of having an aggressive design that was built around the usual notions of what a blog should look like.

But more on that process soon.

One Big Jump

Very few things require the kind of mammoth Hard Work we tend to aspire to. Rather than trying to make the best website in the whole entire world, why not just make a website and work at it, everyday, with quality and dedication in mind? If you aim for making it the greatest in the world, then you’ll work towards a goal that disallows growth and evolution, based on an assumption made before you started.

For me the curse of Hard Work comes from who I am – I love to work hard. I love putting in a great deal of effort. But I’ve grown so tired of that effort being wasted, running in circles rather than forward.

I’m sure it stems from an insecurity – instead of being comfortable developing a grand idea, which is too hard to come by, I instead find comfort in distilling grand effort. So why not just try and hide the average idea I do have in as much fancy clothing as possible, hoping no one will realise how poor of spirit it truly is?

The work we do is only as hard as we allow it to be. We have built up a notion of being the hero, the soldier with no fear. Hard work? What of it! Ha ha ha! We aspire to be the heroes of comics and culture, rather than the heroes of life, thinking a building of effort and outcome can’t simply be climbed a step at a time but leaped in one grandiose—oof, whoosh—powerful jump !

The problem is we star gaze at the real life heroes and think we see them doing this – effortlessly bounding up buildings. What we often ignore is the amount of time spent working hard – laboriously contributing to that which gave them the ability to know how to navigate the steps with great skill at great speed.

We just see them on the roof and think “oh, they must have jumped.”

It’s not that I don’t love you, I do, really. You make me happy. Honestly. Crazy happy.

But I just can’t review you. I’m sorry. Yes, yes, we had some good times, you showed me some wild things. But no, I can’t. No… really, no, that’s enough, pick your self up! Have some self-respect!

Ok … yes … ok, I know, I know — you’re right. Alright, just a quick little one, ok?

A few of my favorite books

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to a few of my favorite books. For one reason or another, I’m (probably) not going to review these in great detail like I normally would; instead I’m only giving each a couple hundred words in place of a thousand.

In a sense, what they suffer from is that I love them too much — in other words, objectivity is being thrown to the heap. But biases-schmiases, I do very much want to share these books with you.

It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be
and Whatever you think, think the opposite.

Paul Arden • Buy On Amazon.com • CR Tribute to Paul Arden

It’s Not How Good You Are… was originally an impulse counter-buy. I had a quick flick through it and wanted to get something to read on the train home one night after studying, and this ended up being it. It was a great purchase — Paul Arden is a genius, you see.

Some-what feeling like a self-help book, but without the weird “you’re a winner just how you are!” kind of vibe, this little one is packed with one liners that curb the way you think about being wrong, trying new things, getting fired, taking the blame and what wealth can be found in sharing ideas with others, rather than hording them to your self, all while encouraging hard work. Phew, a lot for a little book.

It’s a super-easy read that is great to enjoy in the two minute patches you have spare throughout your day. For some its the kind of advice that seems a bit like schtick, but for others (me included) it’s a reminder that to get to where we want to be just requires some creative thinking, guts, hard work and determination.

A few years later I was so happy to stumble over his other two books, one of which is shown here. Whatever You Think didn’t quite hit the spot the same way his first did, but none the less, it’s spine has taken quite a beating.

History of the Poster

Josef Muller-Brockmann • Buy On Amazon.com

Josef Muller-Brockmann. Enough said, right?

While this is primarily imagery, the words written, and pages designed, by Muller-Brockmann are wonderful, even if brief, as we’re guided through the history of the poster from one of history’s greatest design thinkers.

Written in three languages, it’s broken into different expressions, including the illustrative poster, the objective-informative poster, the constructive poster, the experimental poster and briefly, the series poster. While the text is somewhat less than I’d prefer, when you are lucky enough to read some of Muller-Brockmann’s words, you won’t be disappointed — clearly an aficionado of the poster, knowledge is easily shared in only a few paragraphs.

The images are astoundingly beautiful and the use of gold ink doesn’t go unnoticed as a few posters really shine and bounce from the page. The scope of work, style and production methods covered is quite remarkable as you flick through, skipping past woodcuts, offsets, silkscreens, lithographs, lino-cutsm and many more.

This is one you sit on the edge of your desk and open to a new page every day, to be warmly welcomed when you sit to work.

A Smile In The Mind

Berryl McAlhone & David Stuart • Buy On Amazon.com

Generally I find most graphic designers to be incredibly intelligent. It’s also often the case that with intelligence, comes wit. A Smile In The Mind is about those moments when intelligence and wit are expressed through graphic design.

Almost surprisingly this one has a lot more than just pretty pictures that give you a chuckle. It’s split up into five sections, each with a dozen or two chapters and cover topics such as The Case For Wit (chapters covering What Wit Is, What Wit Can Do, Answers Objections, etc), Different Types of Wit (Ambiguity, Homage, Taking it Literally, etc), Items That Use Wit (Posters, Packaging, Annual Reports, etc), Business That Use Wit (Photography, Education, The Law, etc) and Witty Designers — How I Got The Idea (Saul Bass, Michael Bierut, Milton Glaser, Paul Rand, etc).

To say the least, it’s comprehensive.

To say a little more; it’s beautifully designed, well written and wonderfully interesting. This will help you start to think about how you can apply those ‘ha!’ moments to your own work. Even better, it helps give you the language and evidence to help sell those ideas to your client — it’s not just about little jokes for the sake of little jokes!

This is actually one that is so wonderful that as I was flicking through it to write this little mini-review, I decided that I’ll write a larger one — so keep an eye out!

Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far

Stefan Sagmeister • Buy on Amazon.com • Review at CR

If you’ve been following the online design world for about two years you’ll remember this one.

This is a book that captures Sagmeister perfectly — intriguing, different and often times amusingly quirky, this is a book that you truly interact with.

Even if I never opened a single page, I love that the book isn’t completely bound and that you can shuffle the signatures around to modify how the cover looks. All the signatures slide into a case, the front of which is printed with Sagmeister’s face as well as a mass of rivers cut out, allowing the front of the ‘book’ to change appearence depending on what signature is inserted where.

For those unaware, this is a collection of one-liners that Sagmesiter spelled out using various elements, from clothing to sausages and digital spider webs. They’re original, to say the least, and always make me smile and are as charming as most of the designer’s work often is.

Originally coming from a list he wrote in his diary, we are offered a glimpse into the mind of a living legend of design. We are then shown through each booklet—each phrase, each series of photos of that phrase—what such an intriguing person would do if they had a year off.

Type: The Secret History of Letters

Simon Loxley • Buy at Amazon.com • Review at Eye Magazine

While this is one I had intended to review in long-format, I ended up reading it in chunks spanning about a year as other things in my life kept coming up.

In short, Loxley covers the history of typography in a way that very few would.

The stories he tell are like, well, stories. His words don’t read like they’re coated with a fine film of dust as dates and names are spat out, one after the other. They’re entertaining, funny, quirky and interesting. You don’t read this book because you need to learn about type history; you read this book because you want to be entertained while reading about a topic you love.

Of course, the worry with this is you can’t be sure what’s perfectly true, what’s somewhat referenced and what is creative whim. For the true typographer, it’s might be a little frustrating as there isn’t much written about the philosophical or technical components of typography. But to a designer who could surely use more education in type history, this is a fantastic and enjoyable start.

From angry master/apprentice relationships to love triangles, foundries uprises and down-falls, men in bizarre clothing and eccentric manner as well as type legends being made, what’s covered is unexpected and marvelously satisfying.

For now …

Phew! Quite an article we’ve gotten through so far, isn’t it? But it’s not over yet!

…

… ok, it’s over for now. I thought it’d be worth giving you all a little breather for now, I’m sure there’s a limit to how many books you can happily read about in a single sitting.

So next week I’ll put up the second half, made up of the bottom row of books in the image at the top, online! It’s got some doozies, including one from one of my favorite designers (there’s four options! Perhaps if someone can guess who it’ll be, I might send them a cookie!).

Practise with intention and thought and careless abandon.

Learn theory but realise that it doesn’t help you become a better designer, merely a more knowledgeable one. All the theory in the world won’t make a page more interesting to look at unless you understand how to marry the theory with aesthetic.

Aesthetic is the craft of our profession. I’ve heard some designers say that aesthetic is like the bastard child of design, it’s there but it shouldn’t matter as long as the functionality is solid or the design serves its purpose as a communicative artifact.

These designers are idiots.

Aesthetic matters more than anything else. Our profession is largely built on craft and gut feeling and knowledge that can be learned but rarely taught. This makes some uncomfortable as it suggests that any ol’ creative hipster could walk into our studios and do what we do. But like I said, designers who think this are idiots. We are not part of an industry done by rote, nor willy-nilly mark-making.

The aesthetic implementation of a blanket of theory which wraps warmly around content should be our chief concern as we move from project to project. It’s the only way we’ll win awards or praise or recognition or, the only one really worth going for, gratification, through our work.

There’s a reason why we look at pretty people and want to be with them. They’re nice to look at. There’s a reason why so much of the creative output we see in design is shallow, pretty shells that hold no quarter against scrutiny – because it works and does so easily. It still gets attention and any functional mistakes made are forgiven because of how it makes us feel.

It’s the reason why the pretty girl can get out of a speeding ticket. Is it fair? No. Is it right? No. Is it the way things are, absolutely. And good on the pretty girl for knowing how to use her aesthetic to her benefit.

Aesthetic matters more than theory

Retrospect will prove a purely aesthetic piece to be worthless, but today it’s all that matters. If we wish for our work to stand strong and tall and for years to come, then we have to understand how to give it immediate appropriateness (modern aesthetic) so it is noticed in the first place and long lasting charm (base aesthetic, which is often instilled through theory) so that it is remembered.

To better understand how aesthetic works we have to understand how it is produced. No amount of reading or listening or studying will help us in this endeavor nearly as much as actually making pretty marks will. The only way for us to learn how to make such marks is to make as many of them as we possibly we can.

Make a million marks and hold them up against the marks of others. Compare and learn and see the difference. Think about the marks you’re making and how the one scratched against the paper now, can be made better than the one made previously. Experiment and make the strangest of marks just to see if something wonderful can be found in them. Deliberately make the wrong marks to see if you can make them right.

While practising we will naturally implement any theory that has been sewed in our minds using our marks as troughs into which the seeds can be planted. The theory will break through the surface all by its self, as long as we give it a little warmth and a little food.

Read a book and theory is learned. Go through process and it’ll be implemented. But aesthetic is only learned through practise. Lots and lots and lots of practise.

Now go create.

What pleased Gill so much was the Title Card for CBS sitcom Private Secretary, “because the result looks so inevitable and easy.”

He was 23 when he received this job and it served as the moment his career went into overdrive. Not only did it win him his (first) ADC medal and saw his name grow to demand more respect (he would joke it was the year that he finally got an answering service for his office), but it taught him something monumental.

Private Secretary was special because it helped him realise that a design can only be taken so far by an aesthetically driven solution.

“I stopped trying to ram my aesthetic prejudices down their throats. Why should clients have my tastes? … I talked to them about solutions and ideas instead of design.”

It is because of this attitude towards “inevitable” solutions that Gill’s clients thought so fondly of him. He was giving them tailored work that was concept driven and so well considered that he was able to effectively describe them over the phone.

He started to consider what the solution should be first, worrying about appearance second.

Not long after Private Secretary he began teaching at the School of Visual Arts, where he would encourage students to talk “about their solutions before they put them on the wall … Students began thinking of original ideas, rather than trying to impress [the class and Gill] with the latest graphic tricks.”

Gill’s 1981 Forget all the rules about graphic design. Including the ones in this book seats us comfortably in that classroom.

A marvelous classroom

Not only a documentary of a few good ideas about design, Forget all the rules … also gives us a sneak peek at the mindset Gill employed throughout his impressive career.

Our tour is guided through the rich logic that helped propel Gill to great heights and garner respect from his peers, clients and readers of design history. A logic that is lacking for many designers. A logic essential should one wish to do original work. A logic we are privileged to see wielded by a master.

A logic easy to talk of, implement and use to deliver powerful results:

If the problem a client gives us isn’t worth solving, then redefine it so it is.

Redefine problems so they are worth solving

Typographic tastes sweeten and sour over the years, considered fundamental and benign is illustration and photography from one decade to the next, and moving from redundant to intoxicating is how style shifts year to year. But there is one element of design that never, ever fails to tingle senses and delight minds – the good idea.

That is what can be found in this book before anything else – a clever solution that springs from the problem will always stay fresh.

A clever solution doesn’t need to use the crutches that style and empty aesthetic provide. Private Secretary is a great example – the typeface is as appropriate as can be, the concept has a legitimate source and it is visually perfect — you aren’t distracted from the problem plagued text of the secretary. The spice is added because it’s witty and has personality.

Make the problem interesting and you’ll be planting the seed of a good solution in habitable soil. The plant that bursts through the earth will grow far higher than one planted in uninspiring dirt.

Lessons Worth Learning

While a few images are scattered throughout this article to illustrate the (worthy of aspiration) genius of Bob Gill, I wanted to offer a little more.

Introducing each chapter are a few short paragraphs explaining the philosophy behind each collection that follows. These introductions show us varying lenses under which the original problems can be placed so that we might see something different when redefining them.

Obviously I can’t cover everything Gill does without running a blade over moral issues concerning plagiarism. Without going into great depth, I thought I would do what all of us do when we read such advice – put our own spin on it and apply it to concepts we already have. What follows are my interpretations of Gill’s ideas.

The problem is the problem.

Our creative expressions are the culmination of all those we’ve witnessed. Sometimes we rely on this too heavily rather than finding ideas within the client’s problem and content. We echo ideas of ideas of ideas of ideas.

To truly design something new we need to throw away our creative and stylistic laurel-resting ideals, forgetting about the solutions to other problems and instead focus on the one before us.

But what is often the case with problems is that they’re, well, problematic. A client will come to us with an idea they have and think all they need is an answer they’ve half-provided visualized.

Unfortunately it is common for the client to present us with the wrong problem to solve. They don’t phrase the question right. Perhaps they’re too close to it (forests, trees and all that), perhaps they’re not bright enough or they’re too smart, perhaps they don’t even have a problem.

So before we can find a beautiful, new, unique solution that’s buried in the problem we are facing, we might need to rewrite it so there is opportunity to to pull from it something interesting.

Interesting words need boring graphics.

A stupid designer grows intoxicated on their own greatness and self-worth.

Gill gives an example I could not top so won’t try; “We cure cancer for free.”

There is one design solution for this. White background, big, black, heavy as a whale text, left aligned. Want to go out on a limb? Center it (but don’t).

Think first. Then draw.

Research, research, research, research, research.

Then think visually – draw and sketch, draw and sketch and write and draw and sketch and write and draw. Pages of thumbnails. Pages of notes. Pages of research. Pages and pages and pages written and drawn until your wrists ignite.

With all these marks, why not try different things? Use different pens and pencils and crayons and brushes and markers. Different colours, widths, textures, sizes. We don’t think monotonously, so why draw like we do?

Then, after it’s formed in your mind, and you’ve put those thoughts onto paper, boot up the Mac.

Jump into the digital too quickly and we will start to produce work that feels like it belongs to the digital world. We’ll do what we’re comfortable doing and seeing, what we’ve seen come from the box of light a million times. Even worse, we might just rely on the trickery digital tools of design often encourage.

Stealing is good.

Should you find yourself in the situation where you are using the artwork of another—be they a photographer, illustrator or typographer—it is your honorable duty to respect their work.

Much like the designer who should shut-up in the second point above, Interesting words need boring graphics, interesting artwork needs boring design.

If you’ve found imagery or a typeface that ignites a fire in your soul, then it demands of you to allow it to do so unto others. Just let it sit there with no distraction, waiting quietly for its prey.

If you’re going to steal the beauty of another image, then don’t drop it while hauling it into your van.

Boring words need interesting graphics.

Most people suck at writing copy for advertising and marketing. Including advertisers and marketers.

If you have to deal with the usual dribble, then chances are your design will need to pick up the weight – but again, the foolish designer will race ahead as giddy as a gerbil! Just because the words are boring does not mean that they should be hidden behind your design.

The boring words still need to be read, that’s why your design exists. With boring words, it is up to us to strike up the balance in which the design brings attention and lends interest to the dull words, while not getting in their way.

Less is more.

Much power can be pulled from a design when it quietly and gently pulls together two opposing elements and has them sing the same tune. Aim to say more with less.

I could have written more, but….

More is more.

A sentiment I first stumbled over in Paul Arden’s fantastic It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be – if you’re going to make something big, make it REALLY big.

If you want the headings to be much bigger than the body copy, then make them 10 times bigger, if you want your website to be bright and colourful, make it overly bright and sickeningly colourful. If you want your photo to be funny, make sure it’s hilariously funny. Don’t settle for elegant typography, aim for royal-family wedding typography.

The point is that a little different isn’t often noticeable – things don’t often hit extremes in real life, but in the world where we are the makers, why not push things to the edge blow them the hell up?

“I was only following orders.”

If the job passed by your desk, it’s your fault it’s ugly. The client only makes suggestions, you have every right to tell them their suggestion isn’t a good one, explaining to them why and offering a suitable alternative.

“The client made me do it” doesn’t mean anything when the job is finished and in the hands of the public.

Change the original problem so what they hold isn’t embarrassing.

One of the most important books on design

While other books might be more valuable in many regards (Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style and Meggs’ History of Graphic Design for example), the unavoidable take-away Gill gives us stands alone:

Original and interesting solutions grown from the client’s problem are what make graphic design move from appropriate to good.

The body of a good idea won’t be completely obscured by the clothing of aesthetics that we drape over it. While the clothes may need to be appealing for the idea to be noticed in the first place, the body will still be beautiful even when the clothing becomes tacky as the sands of time are sprinkled over them. Good ideas last.

It’s evident with the work scattered throughout this article. I know there are some readers who would have closed this article upon realising the artwork is, most likely, older than they are. I understand why this would turn them off, even if I don’t think it’s a good attitude to have.

But if you spent a moment to see the beauty of the idea that is hidden below the (conceivably) tacky clothing, you’ll see the true value of the design. The benefit of which is more than just timeless design.

A good idea shines through stylistic preferences the audience may hold.

If the design you produce relies on visuals to appeal to the audience alone, then, by default, you are unappealing to a large proportion. But if a good idea, one born from the problem, is the body of your design, then people won’t need to rely on aesthetics to find interest and consider the design and message worth remembering.

While the edition of Forget all the rules about graphic design. Including the ones in this book. that we looked at today is no longer current, it can still be quite easily found and is absolutely worth the (very little) cost. The original hardcover (with a slightly different name) can be found on Amazon and AbeBooks, as well as the softcover version, also on Amazon and AbeBooks.

In 2006 it was re-released in a smaller format and has some updates done throughout (design and some of the pieces included) – Unspecial Effects for Graphic Designers.

And the marks that make up those words? Mostly never thought about. This can also be said of the question mark, the exclamation point, quote marks and the beautiful, beautiful ligature. Turns out their history is pretty interesting.

In September 08 I wrote an article on a small collection of typographic marks that had interesting histories, weren’t often seen in use or were often abused in their applications. It was a lot of fun and I wanted to give it another go.

But rather than have a look at a few of the lesser-known marks we use like I did with the previous article, I thought I’d go for the exact opposite — have a look at a couple of marks we all know about and use.

The Question Mark

Latin for question, quaestiō may be where the origin of the Question Mark can be found.

Whenever our Latin writing friends wanted to indicate a question or query, they would add quaestiō to the end of the sentence.

Lacking a sense of elegance, and not to mention taking up quite a bit of space, quaestiō was abbreviated to QO. This worked wonders for the scribes as their jobs became a little easier and they could produce texts quicker and have more space to work with.

But for some, QO seemed like a word with missing letters. To counter this, the O would be placed beneath the Q, rather than next to it — a clever little move that turned QO from an abbreviated word, to a glyph unto its self.

Being that this was now a sort of symbol that was always drawn by hand, the evolution of it to the question mark we know today is fairly evident (and pretty damn cool).

Borrowed from Wikipedia.

This evolution feels like a worthy explanation — but is it fact? Maybe not. The question mark has–excuse me for this–many questions around it and this is just the nicest solution for me.

The other thoughts on the question mark’s origin range from an evolution of the semicolon (which is used in Greek to indicate a question mark, but looks to have come into popular use well after the question mark did), the cats tail as it curls when it’s curious and the notion of it being a lightning strike mark that slowly evolved … even though it was only seen for a brief period of time then fell out of use.

A note on the Exclamation Point

Following on the heels of the Question Mark, the Exclamation point helps to lend some legitimacy to the history outlined above.

It is loosely accepted that the exclamation point come from the abbreviation of the Latin io, meaning joy.

From this, and most likely with the same conservation of space in mind, the evolution is the same as that with quaestiō — the i was written above the o, and it eventually evolved into the note of admiration that it is today.

Quote Marks & Blockquotes

Early in it’s life, the quotation mark would appear a little haphazardly and overly used, often being set in a different typeface to that of the main copy.

Traditionally, when a blockquote was part of a text, the entire paragraph would be italicized to indicate speech. But when our curly little marks came into popular use, the italicized lines were done away with, and instead, we were given long quotes with quotation marks at the start of every line.

De la décadence des lettres et des mœurs:
depuis les Grecs et les Romains — 1787

Clearly cumbersome and visually redundant, it was the printers of the sixteenth century who decided to do away with their excessive use.

But something interesting occurred — rather than set the text and marks flush left with the margin of the rest of the text, the typesetters decided to leave the indentation in place for long quotes.

Their name is Pius – 1941.
Unfortunately, an earlier example couldn’t be found

This indent became standard practice and is still seen today in large blockquotes set in print and online.

I can’t help but wonder if this is where the idea of hanging bullets, numbers and quote marks in the margins began? Is it possible that typesetters began to shuffle the text so it was aligned with the rest of the body, but left the quote marks to hang to the side? With bullets following?

The ligature

The little secret that only a select few knew of — something hidden under the surface or so many bodies of text, but only found by those seeking out the detail. A little bit of cherished elegance is the ligature.

There are a few combinations of letters that become too unsightly and unbalanced when brought together. The craft that has gone into their making seems to all but disappear completely.

To correct this, we have ligatures, in which two letters are joined together to go from heinous to beautiful.

An fi, fl and a lovely discretionary st ligature
set in Adobe Caslon can be found in the full version of this image.

It is often suggested that this begun when Gutenberg had his letters cut for his Bible in an effort to save time (one piece of metal being easier to set than two) and space (again, one being better than two).

And to an extent, this is true. But his type was designed to mimic that of the scribes as faithfully as possible. Combining two letters to be one (or three, or four) was common with the handwriting among scribes to help the hand glide across the paper with speed, and had been for as long as man has made marks which had linguistic meaning.

It was also an aesthetic necessity for Gutenberg to use ligatures, lest he have gaps in his words where one could visually tighten the text. The (wonderful) texture of his two columns may have become tattered and mechanical.

So perhaps the ligature might have been first cast by Gutenberg but I’m not sure he should be considered any more responsible for their existence than he is for any other letter or mark he printed, he merely solidified it in typographic history.

Gutenberg moved ligatures from the manuscripts of the scribes
to the metal of his letters

Just for funsies

I ended the previous Typographic Marks Unknown article mentioning that one can get by just fine without knowing how such little glyphs came to be or their history.

I could say the same here.

It might not be information that will make or break a potential graphic designer, but knowing such little nuances of our history and our profession, helps us become a little better at it. Understanding how language and typography evolves helps us understand where it may be going and how to communicate to those around us.

I foolishly thought of history as dusty facts and faded images. And only the foolish child thinks history doesn’t matter, that it’s irrelevant and inessential to growth.

I browsed Meggs’ History of Graphic Design sparingly, reading not much more than the captions.

Then a few designers kept catching my eye, so it was more reading — but no longer mere captions, but the illustrious body copy that Meggs gives us in search of understanding. Then it was everything I could get my hands on.

And something fantastic started to happen — I was becoming a better designer, producing work with greater reason, stronger justification and refined meaning.

Jan Tschichold is the designer who really kicked my interest in discovering beauty of image and theory in history

Graphic Design History Gives Us Theory

History is of as much importance as theory — they should be married in the classroom and honeymoon in the studio.

“Eyes and brains have worked the same way over generations … the environment changes but the principles of visual communication survive. History helps us understand these principles.” – Principles Before Style: Questions in Design History by Richard Hollis

To truly understand and use a piece of theory properly, we need to know why it became worth knowing — in what conditions was it first developed and used, why was it successful and what was its original purpose and audience? Without this knowledge, how could we use it effectively?

Many of our ideas are well established — concerning the relationships between image and text, or colour and balance, or texture and contrast, and countless more can all be mixed in infinite possibilities — and knowing of how (and why) these ideas were developed helps us use them today. Knowing the context in which they were originally born help us see similar contexts today that the theory can perfectly be matched to.

Rather than simply borrowing style, ideas about layout can be learned and expanded upon. We can see what ideas worked and what didn’t, allowing us to skip previous mistakes and forge forward, treading on new ground in familiar shoes.

“Graphic designers should be literate in graphic design history.
Being able to design well is not always enough. Knowing the roots
of design is necessary to avoid reinvention, no less inadvertent plagiarism.”
~

Steven Heller — Introduction to Graphic Design History

Josef Muller-Brockmann’s Grid Systems was written in 1961 but is still considered a definitive publication on grid theory 50 years on.

Graphic Design History Gives Us A Discerning Eye

That is, an eye that can look at a piece of work today and know if it’ll hold up in two or three years. As people who have to produce artifacts that last this length or more, this is an immensely powerful trait for us to own.

This discerning eye is developed through realisation. We can look at the work of the modernists and say “Impossible! This work is too current to be 60 years old!” Or there is David Carson, a person whom many have strong opinions of (at either end of the positive/negative spectrum) whose work appears to be utterly chaotic and an insult to the audience.

The curious thing is that his wild design had philosophical elements in common with the clean and open pages of the modernists — both were primarily concerned with the interaction between the audience and the content. Their aesthetic sensibilities are worlds apart, but history allows us to find a common ground upon which they stand. And somehow this fadish design still has a charm to it over a decade later.

An unlikely association that a reading of history gives us: David Carson and the Modernists were strange bedfellows in philosophical regards — pushing against the accepted in an effort to make things better for the audience with strong relationships between form and content.

History also helps us see what won’t work. Flick through the history books and you’ll find little blips of style and expression. Work that is clearly tacky but was, at a time, considered funky and cool and great. History helps us realise what kind of funky exists only for a moment.Again, let’s think of Carson’s work and the absurd amount of deranged devoted followers it spawned.

This kind of historical education can help us understand what we are looking at and what people may think of it in years to come. It helps us notice the fad from the timeless.

Graphic Design History Gives Us An Understanding

We can see connections made, how one moment lead to the next, how style and ideas evolved and what influence social environments played.

It isn’t enough to look at Modernism and simply say “oh, they were sick of ornament”, this isn’t an understanding! This is a childish assumption. What we are able to do is throw Meggs’ to the couch and jump on Wikipedia and learn about Facism, Nazism, Germanic and European tradition, the role Blackletter played, the state of Europe at the time and on and on and on.

Then with this new knowledge in tow, we can better understand why certain decisions about cleanliness and simple, unclouded communication was strived for.

“For after all, a poster does more than simply
supply information on the goods it advertises;
it also reveals a society’s state of mind”
~

Armin Hofmann

Take the following:

The childish designer will be satisfied with the caption that goes with it:

Armin Hofmann, poster for the Basel theater production of Giselle, 1959. An organic, kinetic, and soft photographic image contrasts intensely with geometric, static, and hard-edged typographic shapes.

Not awful nor poorly written. But not enough! No hunger for knowledge can be quenched by this, and good designers are hungry!

Instead, let’s jump back a page or two and see what Meggs has to say about Hofmann in the body of the text:

As time passed, he evolved a design philosophy based on the elemental graphic-form language of point, line, and plane, replacing traditional pictorial ideas with a modernist aesthetic. In his work … Hofmann continues to seek a dynamic harmony, where all the parts of a design are unified. He sees the relationship of contrasting elements in the means of invigorating visual design. These contrasts include light to dark, curved lines to straight lines, form to counterform, soft to hard, and dynamic to static, with resolution achieved when the designer brings the total into an absolute harmony.

Hah! Isn’t that wonderful?! In one paragraph we have learned more about the philosophy of Armin Hofmann and his work than that small little caption could have taught us, even if we had read it a thousand times! We see that what Hofmann pieced together wasn’t just because it was nice or pretty or whatever, it was part of a larger philosophy! What’s more, it gives an idea of how you can develop your own philosophy to explore.

Now consider a few more pieces of his with the above in mind — don’t they shine much brighter?

A little more reading leads us to understand that this philosophy, mixed with others from the area, evolved and became known internationally as Swiss design. These ideas were pushed forwarded by the publication New Graphic Design (1959), edited by, amongst others, Josef Muller-Brockmann.

Had I decided to read only the caption, I would have learned little and forgotten it in moments. But having dug deeper I found so much more! I found connections and the birth of a world-changing movement! What a thread to find! And these threads are almost infinite as we dive deeper and deeper.

Up To Us

History can often be an awfully boring topic to subject ourselves to. It is not that fault of events happened, but those who speak of them.

The Secret History of Letters by Simon Loxley is a fantastic example and a must-read. A list of names, dates and images does not an interesting history make. But it isn’t always the case — some writers make it exciting, interesting and entertaining.

Though the truth is, it is often up to us to find interest in history. So pick at a loose end in which you find interest and tug and tear and pull at it until you have thread that runs through decades of ideas and beauty from which you can learn volumes — witness how our profession evolves.

“… if we understand the past, we will be better able to continue
a culture legacy of beautiful form and effective communication.
If we ignore this legacy, we run the risk of becoming buried in a
mindless morass of a commercialism whose mole-like vision
ignores human values and needs as it burrows forward into darkness..”
~

Philip B. Meggs

Don’t think of history as a collection of dry facts, but as the greatest teacher one could hope for.

More often than not, it’s our own fault. At least in the sense that we can fix it, therefore we can take responsibility.

Very, very few people are naturally painful. They don’t go home and tell their kids exactly how to play with their toys, tell their partners that they are taking too long to do whatever or that their dinner guests need to move their plates a little to the left and down an inch.

(Alright, so there might be some people like this, but they really are shitheads and there isn’t much we can do about that.)

They’re nice people, just getting through the day, trying to get their work done. They have a boss they work for, a family they love, a book they cry at and a movie they laugh through. They have their own stresses and worries and don’t want us to add to them.

They’re normal. I know, I know, a whacky thought. But they’re human and nothing more nor less.

So why is it that they treat us so poorly? What did we do to insult them? Why do they ridicule us and force us to think unnatural thoughts involving the tearing of flesh from limbs by the teeth of angered hounds?

I’m thinking it happens when we don’t talk to them.

I’ve found that the best experiences I’ve had from clients is when we’ve spoken a great deal from the very beginning. Not just about the job but about anything that comes up — it helps develop a relationship and a better understanding of how they describe things, what their nuances with the English language mean and what they’re really hoping to get out of the job.

Children throw tantrums when they’re confused and out of place. Their mind doesn’t know how to handle all the new, unexpected stimuli so they just go nuts. Or they are just shitheads (not your kids, your kids are awesome).

But when they know what to expect and know they can trust you, then they’re happy little campers that are good for a laugh and great for a cuddle.

Clients are the same. (The real good ones might give you a cuddle, but be careful about how you go about it, lest you enjoy explaining to your spouse why there’s yet another HR meeting about some ‘sexual harassment thing’.)

Backing away from that tangent, back to talking to the client.

First — explain the process and desired result.

Let them know what to expect from you and what you expect from them.

Get them to open right up about what they hope the job will achieve, who the audience is, what you can and can’t do, the language the audience enjoys best (visual and written), what’s been done before, what hasn’t been done before and all those other things that are standard questions. It’s the most obvious thing to do, so it’s amazing how often this step is skipped.

Don’t assume they know anything
about your process

Tell them how you want the content (Word document, edited, approved, edited again and finalised) and how you don’t want it (in several emails, unfinished, unapproved by their boss and full of text in red that says “is this right? that’s kind of racist/sexists/idiotic/I don’t get it”).

Explain how you work when it comes to proofs, changes, finals, pricing, billing and so on. Don’t assume they know anything about your process unless you’ve been working together for a while.

Again, all basic stuff, but it’s wildly important that it’s explained to every single new client. Just because you’ve said it a million times doesn’t mean they’ve heard it once.

Second –  be devastatingly honest.

One of my favourite clients to work with is one to whom I once very bluntly said “No, not going to do that” when she made a request I didn’t agree with. Sounding shocked and hurt, her response was ” … why not?” to which I gave a proper, considered, educated response. “Oh, that makes sense.”

I’ve earned her trust

And what’s happened since? No more silly requests or, often better, the wonderful “what do you think?”.

Because of this, I will often make an aesthetic decision I’m not thrilled with but she is, just because she has earned it. It sounds condescending, but I’m in the exact same boat. I’ve earned her trust, so she does the same with me because we trust in one another’s honesty and knowledge.

Third — r-e-s-p-e-c-t

Pay them respect first, even if they don’t reciprocate.

There is a reasonable chance that the client might start the process of working with you with their back up and muscles tightened. They might not trust the process, they might have been burned before or they might not really see the benefit.

take their work seriously, their input seriously,
their concerns and thoughts seriously

In spite of this, be respectful.

This doesn’t mean say thank you and please and all those things you’d probably be doing anyway.

It means take their work seriously, their input seriously, their concerns and thoughts seriously. Don’t fob anything off. Explain when you don’t do something they ask for and when you do something they didn’t.

Above all, do good work. Do work to the best of your ability with your knowledge and your client’s message in mind at all times.

Fourth — ask, and answer, “Why?”

I’ve written about this before so I’ll keep this one brief.

If they want something and you don’t understand why they want it, then ask about it.

… your questioning should raise a flag

This is a great trick as it does a few things to improve the relationship you have with your client.

It shows that you’re paying attention and want to understand where they are coming from and where they hope to be. And even better — it shows that you want to help them get there as smoothly as possible.

If you’re asking why, it means that it might not be worth doing, and you’re the professional, so your questioning should raise a flag.

It also means they have to justify their reasoning, meaning that you’ll be getting into their head a little bit and understanding how they think (very handy). It also means if they can’t justify it, you can probably talk them out of it.

Even more importantly, be prepared to do the same when your client asks.

I said earlier that a lot of the tension that builds up in the client/designer relationship stems from misunderstanding or a lack of information. This is true of the designer as much as the client.

We must be able to give reason as to why we’ve done what we’ve done — why this colour, this shape, this typeface, this image—and how it works as part of a larger machine that the you’ve built into the design.

Just people

I’m sure there are many more things that can be done to improve the designer-client relationship, so I’d love to hear your ideas.

These are just few things that have worked for me, in my experience.

Clients are people, who probably have a head full of stress and a heart full of worry. Help them get past all this and earn their respect — just because they’re paying us doesn’t mean they trust us.

And once they trust us, they won’t be the shitheads we all loathe.

P.S

Also worth another mention is that, yeah, some people are just grumpy moles.

They have a little bit of power and they love to abuse it, they have the bosses ear and love to whisper sweet nothings or they just don’t know how to deal with people. These are the true shitheads to whom you simply smile, nod and try to avoid working with – their dollars don’t shine brightly enough to ignore who they are.

People were after something comfortable — a song buried in memory.

So designers of the eighties began looking back to move forward.

Digging through the archives and history books, designers searched for visual languages with more romance wrapped in their tones than what the clean lines and bold type of modernism offered.

Philip B. Meggs, Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, 4th edn., pg 481.Should a designer sit down and find novelty in a historical style, they wouldn’t set out to copy any exact piece. They would learn the language it spoke and use its “vocabulary of forms and form relationships, reinventing and combining them in unexpected ways.”

Looking Back with Paula Scher

By the mid-eighties, Paula Scher had become known as a designer producing original and clever work that sometimes spoke with the tongue of the past, emulating style and feel in interesting and new ways.

Doing this, Scher and her business partner Terry Koppel put together a promotional booklet entitled Great Beginnings.

Compiling the opening paragraphs of well-known novels, the booklet served as a great introduction to how one can employ design styles long gone in fitting and interesting ways.

Each spread was designed with nothing but type in a way that was suited to the times in which each novel was originally written. It was gorgeous.

Swatch Shopped for Style (and Got Brilliance Half-Price)

After flicking through the duo’s promotional piece, the marketing director of Swatch brought Koppel & Scher on board to help promote the Swiss watch company.

It comes as no surprise that they were asked to develop a campaign that was reminiscent of American 1950s advertising.

“All through the eighties clients seemed to believe
they were buying style, not thinking.”
~

Paula Scher — Make It Bigger, pg 68

After delving into magazine advertising from thirty years prior, the pair found a habit developing in the old ads — the products changed lives! Not only did soap make you cleaner, but it made you look younger and find happiness! Oven mitts keeping your hands from burning? They also make your meals taste better too! They had their catch.

It was a catch that was funny and memorable — a good one to wrap the contemporary and hip watch maker in.

The juxtaposition between the cool time pieces and the tacky photography and cringe-worthy tag-lines made sure that the ads were memorable and effective. The ads were clever, funny and cheeky, perfectly fitting within Scher’s body of work.

They were a hit.

Hello Herbert, So Nice to See You Again

Swatch found its home in the Swiss International Business Building, where upon the walls hung the work of Swiss design legend, Herbert Matter.

Herbert Matter (1907—1984) brought photography to the table of The International Style in a way that was fresh and interesting.

Matter was only 25 when he developed this now legendary campaign. Deep etching and contrasting photos, typography and colour (while keeping this modernly minimal), Matter developed a series of powerful and beautiful posters for the Swiss National Tourist Office.

While this was part of the same series, it seems as though the one below is the one most referenced.

Fifty years later, Scher held admiration for the pieces and decided “they were all simply crying out for a Swatch Watch.”

From singing the swan-song of the Swiss alps to voicing the marketing campaign of Swatch.

It was an utter joke. And that was her point.

The poster that got everyone thinking.
Herbert Matter’s original on the left, Scher’s on the right.

She got in contact with AIGA and Matter’s estate to seek permission and ensure that everything would be above-board.

The poster had to have some elements recreated — the lady in the ski hat was reshot at a different angle, with the title changed (and made bigger, then bigger still by the marketing department) and the arm dropped in.

It was credited to Koppel & Scher with Herbert Matter.

But Was it Parody or Plagiarism?

It went from magazine spreads to posters in shop windows, then into design magazines and annuals.

So naturally, when Scher spoke at an AIGA conference in Boston, she shared the piece with the audience.

It was greeted with laughter.

It isn’t that they all understood the joke (though many probably did), it was that earlier at the conference, Tom Wolfe gave a speech about what he called “the big closet” of design history that many creatives dip into to in search of ideas to “recycle.”

He showed the Matter/Scher Swatch posters as an example.

Then Tibor Came Along

“Designers abuse history when they use it as a shortcut,
a way of giving instant legitimacy to their work …
historical reference and outright copying have been
cheap and dependable substitutes for a lack of ideas.”
~

Tibor Kalman — Good History/Bad History

Expanding upon Wolfe’s ideas, Tibor Kalman believed in using design history in a genuine way.

To use it to understand how designers of the past thought about their problems and how they arrived at their solutions. It is not the study of pretty pictures that was the result of such thoughts that we should focus on — it is ideas and social context that is of importance — what pushed the ideas into reality. It’s what Scher had done so masterfully earlier in her career and was now doing it with less grace but with tongue firmly in cheek.

But generally, that wasn’t being done as designers weren’t doing it with Scher’s wit. Instead, the practice of pinching a style from history for nothing but superficiality had emerged. Designers were pushing aside context and looking at things through the narrowing view of retrospect and nostalgia.

What was once considered modern design that might have been ahead of its time, innovative and even boundary pushing, is now seen as quaint. Cute. Safe and familiar. But rather than employing the mentality of thinking ahead, innovation and discovery, many were just saying “oh yes, this is lovely, this will do. Ahhh, how pretty a memory!”

The resulting work is often pretty but dumb.

Tibor’s words drove people to ask questions (and subsequently answer them). Libraries of essays and discussions were written by students, lecturers and practitioners about the Swatch poster and others like it — is it really just a joke, a bit of parody?

Or is it simply plagiarism?

Do share with us, what are your thoughts?

We recreate what we are inspired by.

But the Swatch poster grabs and chokes the original through time and puts a plastic watch on it. It isn’t subtle by any means—it’s too obvious to be a mere reference.

Unlike the previous campaign, Matter’s original pieces weren’t departure points for Scher. The work of Matter became the work of Scher. But she intended for them to look exactly the same — that was her point, aiming it to be a bit of a joke for the company, for designers and those of the audience who would recognize her intentions.

So does Paula Scher get away with it because she is Paula Scher? Because of her reputation, because she was one of many doing it? Because it’s dramatically blatant? Because it’s a joke?

It raises an interesting question — what role does design history play for us today? Is it for mere interest? Is it something to bounce off? Something to recreate? Emulate? Ignore?

Personally, I get that it was a joke of sorts. Though, perhaps, not a funny one, but I’m not one for whom context plays any role – I was in diapers when Scher’s campaigns run.

But it is your opinion I think will be more interesting than mine. So please, do tell me, what do you think? Parody or plagiarism? What role does yesterday have today?

They exist in spite of the tools used to capture them.

The ideas that we develop for our clients, the messages we wish to communicate, exist in spite of Photoshop or any other piece of software. The lines of code wrapped in an interface do nothing but hold a (virtual) expression of our ideas. Much like the photographer’s moment, the ideas exist whether captured or not.

But so many insist on calling Photoshop mishmash pieces design, when they are nothing of the sort as they hold no idea, just stylistic nonsense. A hammer can help build a house, does that mean hammering two planks of wood together is good enough to be a home?

Oh Photoshop, Your Crown Is Too Heavy

Yes, Photoshop is, today, an essential tool of graphic design. Yes, knowing our tools well make our jobs easier and can help our work become beautiful — there is no denying that.

… the tool does find validation in the expression

But it isn’t enough to know the tools well without an idea to which they can be applied. The expressions these tools craft will be without soul, meaning or story.

The idea is not validated by the tools used to craft its expression. But the tool does find validation in the expression. The tool relies on it to be considered valuable. Photoshop is no different than any other tool.

In 100 years, discussions about what version of Photoshop was used to produce the wonderful work of today will not be held. It will be called it a tool. It might be a wonderful tool to wield, but it is only a tool. It may have changed the way we express our ideas, but it shouldn’t change the way we conceive them.

Wait … What’s Graphic Design?

If you were to stop using Photoshop, would you no longer have any ideas? No longer know how to express the message of your client? No longer know how to guide the eye, apply balance, stimulate through colour, harmonize with typography, dictate visual interest via illustrations or attract, entertain and enlighten audiences?

The next time you see a magazine or book proclaiming to teach you the 50 Essential Photoshop Tricks That Will Make You A Great Graphic Designer, do me (or yourself, or the profession) a favor. Destroy it. Rip it into a million tiny pieces and call it the scum that it is and bury it in flames. (Probably best you paid for it first though, though that goes against my point so … maybe just run out of the establishment screaming its name like bloody murder.)

Social media has upped the contrast. An average and random collection of many cousins to graphic design (Photoshop heavy pieces especially, but also motion, photography, illustration etc) can find legs and be thrown around the web at an astonishing speed. And with this average article, average assumptions on behalf of the author are made and taken on as knowledge in much of the audience — they’re being shown work that isn’t graphic design, but is being touted as such.

This Is So Wildly Scary To Me

I fear this because there are many who are jumping online and accepting diluted definitions of what graphic design is, what graphic art is, what typography means, what illustration is, what photography can be and on and on and on. All these wonderful mediums are being abused into a concoction that would best find a home at the bottom of a witch’s cauldron.

It isn’t the fault of … anyone. The author might not know better (right?) and when the audience is young-in-experience, they definitely don’t know any different. But those of us who ‘get’ the elegance that is found in design (rather than just see them as ‘vintage and cool Swiss design’) should say something, shouldn’t we?

We should bother to do so because of the coming years. With a loose definition of graphic design it’ll become harder to study it independently and talk about it with those who call themselves graphic designers. Most importantly, selling it to our clients will be trickier — what their last graphic designer did might be utterly different to their next.

A rose by any other another name

Graphic art isn’t something to look down upon. Nor is illustration or photography. I believe without these mediums that graphic design would be a horribly dull vocation and give such results 90% of the time. These things are essential to the work we do and enliven in ways a purely typographical and geometric-shaped laden design cannot — to say otherwise would be simply foolish.

That is why I hate when I see a piece of graphic art declared graphic design — it diminishes what the illustrator and artist does (as people think that if you’re a designer, you’re an illustrator or vice-versa) and it confuses what the specialty of the designer is, as if all our skills are so easily interchangeable — it’s lose/lose.

I don’t believe that graphic design is a strictly restricted practice and devastatingly sharp lines need to be drawn between the disciplines that touch it. Many graphic designers are very talented illustrators or graphic artists, so there is often a definite overlap. But what I worry about is that there might not be any lines what so ever, and rather than aspire to be masters of any, our new practitioners are attempting (assuming?) to be jacks of too many.

It holds breathtaking images of exotic destination and mountains of nostalgia! It’s the flag of the editorial institution that National Geographic has established over the span of 120 years.

The eponymous yellow rectangle has seen virtually no change, much like the interior pages, since it first bordered the front covers of the 1888 launch issue.

I thought it could teach us a few things about timelessness in graphic design, so I randomly picked four issues to look at; March 1964, November 1988, April 2000 and a recent December 2009.

The Front Cover

National Geographic’s front cover is a great example of how well simple branding can be tied to a product or message. In this case, the slightly warm yellow has become a symbol of wonderful photography, intriguing articles and serves as a doorway into places worlds away.

The ’64 issue is clearly the most different because of a floral border that, while taking up space, being distracting and kind of just kitsch, is romantically wonderful. It feels so appropriate to the sixties (echoes of William Morris?) that I’m glad to see it. Though I must say I’m also glad to see it evolve to nothing more than a yellow border.

The yellow frame works the hardest as a piece of branding, being more recognisable than the logotype (which only changed slightly — notice the slight type size change in the ’09 issue?) and far stronger than the floral badge that was used in the ’88 and ’00 issues.

It appears that idea of having such a formal mark was to give dignity to the Society, which has its name so proudly printed at the bottom of all the covers. But for me it just adds extra clutter, distracting from the marvelous photography.

Luckily, I’m not alone (perhaps its just the shifting of tastes?) as the ’09 goes without it and is replaced with a (questionable) inclusion of the URL and date, giving a much cleaner design.

The Contents Pages

The ’64 issue doesn’t have a contents page as it’s from a time when the publication was something to enjoy as part of a set. This issue starts at page number 306 and has the article page numbers appear on the cover.

I really like the contents page for the ’88 issue. It works well because the contrast in font size of the article title and the summary text is strong enough (12pt & 8pt?) that it shows off the face nicely and the titles standout well in little space. The long-running italicised summary text actually works nicely here because of this relationship with the title font and this type harmony sits in a simple (boring?) grid.

Then we jump to the ’00 issue and find an odd mix though it’s much nicer overall. The serif titles are replaced with a nice bold sans, while the italic text of the intro looks as if it’s trying to pull away from the heavy shadow the sans is casting. It’s a good example of how the relationship typefaces have with one another impact the feel of a page and can cause visual tension.

The ’09 issue does something wonderful with the photography — giving it more strength than anything else on the page, which is easily achieved through the white space, its placement and the way the eye is guided to it. It’s much better executed than the photo grid of the ’00 issue and leaps far ahead of the ’88.

The photo is framed well. The white space on either sides of the logo directs you to the middle of the page, but the logo is quiet and recognisable enough that you happily skim right past it as your vision is gripped by the magnet that is the image.

And that quiet logo? I can’t help but notice its crown like feel, sitting atop the image, with that line of rich red serving as a beautiful shining ruby.

Also worth a brief mention are the lovely hanging numbers, causing less clutter, a clearer hierarchy and the everlasting colour combination of black, white and red.

Eye direction

I thought it’d also be worth having a quick look at how the (ok, my) eye darts around these pages.

For me, it’s better when the eye skips past the logo at the top as the reader knows what it is they’re reading. I also feel that it a distraction that your is continuously being pulled up towards, even when reading the other content.

I thought I’d include the 6th stop, though I’d imagine it’d often be skipped for a page turn instead.

Page Design

The four issues break into pairs quite nicely, with the older two being classical while holding an argument between imagery and typography, where as the newer pair allowed the imagery victory.

Behind The Veil of Troubled Yemen & Down The Cayman Wall

The first thing we notice is the use of a large serif face for the headers, something we don’t see nearly as often these days as most editorial designers (and designers in general?) would be more likely to use a sans for headers for a cleaner opening.

Also worth noting is the centred alignment above the left align (or justified) body copy, another little ditty from the past that we wouldn’t see as often today as open space is better respected these days — though the ’88 issue is at least cleaner and more inviting as the type does somewhat play around with sizes while screaming “eighties!”.

The typographic texture of these two pages is also quite different as the earlier issue, wracked by lesser quality printing, is lighter and spottier. Where as the texture of the ’88 issue over comes this with heavier printing and ragged right text, which works nicely in such a wide column, next to an image.

Yemen United & The Other Tibet

Then we move onto the photo-rich ’00 and ’09 issues and all is well.

The images for both work so well as the eye is pulled down to the titles. The ’00 issue does it via the rich magenta against the headdress of the women, then to the title that is tugging it along. The ’09 issue does it by having the boy in the blue cap staring around the man, and we look with him, at the title sitting boldly in the corner.

The typography used for ’00 really hits me, with the use of a narrow and wide of the same font family (which I tried to figure out — is it a certain cut of DIN?), but I hate to see the by-line and photo credit set in the standard serif face. It isn’t awful, but it’s not a happy marriage, instead it’s perhaps a tedious one.

But the ’09 version hits the spot with the perfect mix of serif and sans. The title is strong with the same face dressing the subtle byline and photo credit, which is small enough not to argue for attention but still be noticed.

The use of italic is quite nice, but its placement encroaches on the title and steals its precious space. It’s odd as the following pages of this article are so powerful that I’m not sure the five lines of introductory text is needed.

Content Pages

The ’00 and ’09 issues do something new — they have photo spreads that introduce the article, and then have gentle introductions into the actual content. The earlier issues stand somewhere in the middle.

The ’00 issue has that charming elongated sans-serif J serving as a great drop-cap from which the opening paragraph grows. And it would work well if the life weren’t being choked from the text by a gripping lack of oxygen.

The ’09 issue treats the typography with much more respect and the whole spread is wonderfully executed.

The picture shows us a small glimpse into a horrific scene and is more powerful for it, sucking the eye in immediately. In a publication full of full-bleed images, this small peering-through-the-window kind of image is in stark contrast and is more powerful because of it. The date doesn’t need to be included, but it anchors the image and the little drop of blood-red below a photo of a man gunned down creates the right kind of tension.

Then we jump into a (finally!) wonderful mix of sans and serif. The bold sans guides us to the serif, which sits so nicely as it gently hangs over the edge on thick strips of lead — if it were less, it’d probably look as if it had be shoved into the corner, but no, it sits well.

Then the page is balanced so finely by the caption for the image appearing at the very bottom. The alignment, size and italic text helps it obviously stand as the caption, but without being too noticeable, giving us an elegant page to work through.

It’s often the small details that can make a spread like this work, so I thought I’d show you one thing that made me grin ever so happily — the vertical rhythm.

Invisibly Noticeable

I’ve always wanted to have a closer look at the design of National Geographic. While it might not set the world on fire, it’s always been solid. Timeless design like this is essential in creating a reason for leaving the copies on your shelves for years and years, which many of us are guilty of.

While I may prefer where the design of this legacy is now heading over the earlier stuff, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t consider the ’64 edition any less well designed than the ’09. It’s kept simple with the focus being on what is always sure to work — beautiful images and content that is interesting, with no design to get in the way.

In a sense, the magazine does exactly what design should. It’s hardly noticable. The typography doesn’t stand out in a way that’ll win it mountains of awards for innovation in design and the layouts aren’t exactly something you’d see on many (any?) design blogs. But it’s for exactly this that it’s a kind of perfect design — it sits behind the content, not in front of it, and is beautiful while it works.

It’s worth taking a moment to look at this kind of design so we can better understand what details we should pay attention to. Even when we try to develop a design that will stand strong against the grit of time, we often have some elements that won’t last too well. It’s hardly our fault as it’s often hard to know what’s fad and what’s ornament worth having. The kind of looking that we did today is a good way to learn the difference.

But I’d love to know — what do you think of the design of National Geographic?

Photo in title image is copyright Thomas Chudalla and National Geographic — thank-you for a wonderful image.