Jim Whimpey brings this “Design Enforcement Kit” to our attention, adding:
Funny, right? For me it’s symbolising everything I hate about the culture of graphic design. I’ve always found it difficult to articulate what I don’t like [about] the snooty, high-and-mightiness surrounding good design but here it is. If someone put a huge “THIS DOES NOT COMMUNICATE”, “BAD TYPOGRAPHY” or “Learn colour theory” sticker on a piece of my work I’d punch them in the face.
Like Jim, I get the joke, but think it brings up an interesting issue. Consider this sticker:
It’s amusing, and I’m all for the sentiment, but the psychological streak behind the tone—and other self-satisfied umbrage, such as people driven up the wall by misplaced apostrophes—is just a more acculturated version of the mother in Donnie Darko taking the kids’ dance team a bit too seriously: she wails to another woman, “sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!”
Taste matters, but creativity needs to be opinionated, not just safe and bland. My take (slightly edited from a recent message to a friend):
It’s good to for creators to produce stuff that’s hated by some and loved by others rather than stuff that goes unremarked.
I agree completely that in a way design is the art of removing things till you can’t remove any more. I think it’s good as a general life strategy too.
You know how, when you can TELL that someone is acting, it’s not good acting anymore? Same with say, writing.. sometimes if you can’t feel that something’s actually ‘written’, that’s the best-written stuff.
On the other hand, there is a way in which there is more than Coco Chanel and minimalism in the vocabulary of good design, wouldn’t you agree? That sure, a one-piece black dress can be haute couture, but that doesn’t mean that baroque styles in say architecture or elaborate looks in fashion are somehow lesser aesthetics. You pick an aesthetic and go with it is what I’m saying, and sometimes if you can execute it well, then a house full of decoration can look just as good as a modern apartment. Particular styles do not have a monopoly on taste.
0 Responses to ““The inch glyph is NOT a speech mark!””