Design Criticism

Design Review #2

2006-06-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

Help - somebody PLEASE call me a doctor! I am absolutely sick-to-the-stomach because I feel like I’m helplessly drowning in a sea of naked females, erotica, sexual imagery and exaggerated feminine forms. Worst still - this culture is originating from females themselves as a poor excuse for feminism and empowerment!

No I am not your lovely churchgoing, knitting conservative nanna-next-door. I am a 21yr old active female with a keen interest in fashion, design and culture - part of the precise group of females who, so we are shown through pop-culture, should be wearing belts as skirts and embracing our promiscuity in a very public manner in every possible outlet. This sickening trend is seeping through my blood system into my head space - and it goes by the name of female raunch culture. Please don’t get me wrong at this point in time - I do believe the human figure is to be celebrated and embraced in all its beauty and individualities but I draw the line at senseless, distorted raunch simply for cheap thrills. Such activities are NOT empowering to women of any culture, but rather a mere type of conforming to stereotypes. (See Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs and the Rise of Female Raunch Culture.)

And to top off my sincere suffering the one publication I thought may possibly offer some medicinal relief to my ailment, Curvy, leaves me out in the cold. Flipping through the pages of Curvy the reader is confronted with women with four breasts in a bikini top, women in underwear in unfavourable positions, and indiscreet, distasteful nakedness in any context, among other things.

Curvy was designed to a provide a platform for emerging, talented young female artists to present their design, photographic, illustrative, artistic, graffiti, digital and animate skills to a public audience, and is a publication produced in conjunction with an exhibition held as part of semi-permanent. The line-up of talent includes “invitees [who] are all extremely talented and at the top of their various fields... Deanne Cheuk, Rilla Alexander and Yasmin Majidi from Liness (Australia/USA), Etsu Meusy (Canada), Fai (France), Fiffany Bizic (USA), Von Dekker (Australia) plus many, many others.”

While the focus of much of the publicity and press surrounding the Curvy book is on shining light on the emerging artists themselves, consequently an array of issues these artists believe in and feel inspired to create works about such as Feminism, politics, war, indigenous rights and homosexuality are also thrust into this spotlight.

Interestingly, the book is published in conjunction Yen which, for those of you who don’t know, is a magazine which claims to make a departure from mainstream and popular women's print publications. Inside to the covers of Yen issues such as diets, boys and celebrity gossip take to the wings and “fashion, style, serious issues [and the celebration of] the achievements of inspiring women making their mark and shaping the world we live in” take centre stage. So I am left puzzled that with of all these wonderfully inspiring women to choose from the producers of Curvy included works that I can only describe as vulgar and tasteless in what could be a beautiful book.

What a shame. Especially when the design, production and much of the content of Curvy is truly aesthetically beautiful; the baby pink embossed cover, the art paper stock, choice of colours, neat and concise typographical treatment. At $35, if you can learn to live with the raunch appearing in unexpected pages like an unpredictable skin disease, in my opinion the good design submitted for inclusion by artists such as actually outweighs the bad.

Links of interest:
http://www.ariellevy.net/
http://www.designiskinky.net/index_main.html
http://www.semipermanent.com/
http://www.yenmag.net
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,,1802335,00.html

Blog Critique #2

2006-06-28T06:49:00.000-07:00

Ok, so my original thoughts on Garr Reyonolds’' blog ‘Design and the World Cup: what can we learn?” were.... Mediocre blog - yet does discuss and has encouraged discussions around visual communication, which can’'t be all that bad. Right now, I’m having second thoughts. Can design criticism really do more harm than good? Perhaps...

The article beings with the use of the World Cup Logo, being quite the popular dinner conversation in the circles I (and I assume many othersot living under a rock) move in, as an appetiser into the world of visual communication. For our first course we are offered a brief discussion about German design; direct personal, generalised observations like “Given Gemany’s history and love of great design” which, along with knowledge claims backed-up by evidence from an authority figure assumed to be absolutely certain, belong at levels 1 and 2 of King and Kitchener's Levels of Reflective Judgement model.

The second course arrives and we seem to now be dining on general discussions about design/visual communication. Everything from the purpose of design being functional and emotional; “Design has a functional role, but also creates a mood,’ to a ‘Logo Design 101’ list of bullet points of effective logo elements (i.e. Distinctiveness, Visibility, Usability, Memorability, Universality, Durability and Timelessness) and then to design being a vehicle of memory: “It [design] matters if you want people to understand and remember you.”. Great I hear you say, some members of the general public are talking about design and the article is provoking thoughts and conversation about our field of work.

But let’s have a moment to take a deep designer breath and take into account RIck Poynor's thoughts in “A time for being against”. He ponders if it is really necessary and beneficial to start visual communication discussions “by zeroing the the clock”. With statements like “What’s in a logo?” this blog article “assumes the general reader has never heard of this arcane activity.” Is this really providing design professionals or any educated person with any sort of substantial food for thought? I find myself asking: How is design criticism ever going to evolve if we are constantly starting back at square one? Poynor argues that if graphic design critiques were written for designers, a higher level of sophistication would be possible.

And apart from a poor structure (dessert is a paragraph on presentation design, in case you’re still hungry) we are subjected to relatively low levels of reflective judgement. Reynolds, in telling us about prestige car logos explains that these logos are “identifiable everywhere in the world” without giving any sort of context to the claim of knowledge. Everywhere in the Western world? Possibly still unlikely. Perhaps by the majority of people in a certain (specified by Reynolds) context would be a more useful description. I would identify this as a pre-reflective level of judgement. Reynolds also does not state or identify his own prejudices and biases, or even his role or position from which he makes his claims of knowledge. Poynor, on the other hand, is well aware that in beneficial criticism he needs to “state my own position clearly to supply the context for [my] remarks.”

The blog may be found interesting (or at least mildly interesting) for members of the general public who are interested in World Cup Soccer and culture, yet I personally don’t see much point consuming information such as contained within this article when there is more substantial readings to be at the very least read or hopefully - to be written in the very near future and shared with us designers starved of real design criticism like ravenous world cup soccer players after a grand-final match.

(Reynolds - http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2006/06/visual_design_a.html)
(Poynor - http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm?contentallias=lookingcloser2#poynor) (King & Kitchener - http://www.umich.edu/~refjudg/rjstages.html)

Biennale Critique (Task 1 Part b)

2006-06-27T20:06:00.000-07:00

After Action for Another Library is an exhibited work in the 2006 Biennale of Sydney. The area of the exhibit, within Pier 2, is enclosed by 4 white walls making an approximately 6m x 6m square within. The walls are almost entirely covered by poster-sized prints of photographs, being of the title pages of some of the books donated by bookstores, libaries and individuals (through an initiative established in Melbourne) to East Timor following the August 1999 destruction carried out by occupying Indonsian Troupes, following the announcement of the overwhelming vote for East Timor to become an independent nation. The raids saw many thousands of civillians killed, hundreds of thousands transported to concentration camps and among other libraries and educational facilities, the widely-used University Library and Engliglish library in Dili destroyed by fire. The donated books now reside in the National Library of East Timor.

After Action for Another Library is a work attempting to achieve a raised awareness and create a response to these complex political and social issue through public exhibition of the work and by demonstrating the “relationship between micro and macro politics, world events and individual experiences.” (http://www.monash.edu.au/muma/exhibitions/past/2003/feedback.html)

The exhibition aslo aims to evoke a response from the western, educated audience and address the “contemporary circumstance.... at least in part, through remembering the past” by using recognisable, classic books and reconfiguring them to construct a new meaning. (http://www.westspace.org.au/archive/projects/actionrecollection/actionrecollection.htm)

On a positive note, Nicholson’s installation piece brings the issue of the Indonesian Occupation of Eat Timor to an public arena where inquisitive viewers can be educated and inspired viewers are able discuss the event and consequences. Also, he effectively brings the issue into the public sphere without resorting to gruesome, bloody imagery and symbolism to which the public can become numb, and still leaves a lasting impression for the curious who decode the meaning of the piece. The scale of the installation is large and memorable and the use of familiar titles may inspire viewers to feel an affiliation with and compassion for the affected East Timorese people.

It may have been interesting to provide an unobtrusive afterthought to the piece somehow, perhaps in the form of an image of the books in use, to further clarify the context. Also, the exhibit is not entirely accessible, especially for those who are mobility or sight-impaired as they may not be able to navigate the viewing of the artworks high above eye-level.

Other links of interest
http://www.theprogram.net.au/creativeIndustrySub.asp?id=1557&state=3&category=17
http://www.tomn.net/
http://www.tomn.net/projects/2003_02.htm
www.biennaleofsydney.com.au
http://www.bos2006.com/

Blog Critique #1

2006-06-27T17:55:00.000-07:00

Posted on 'Voice: AIGA Journal of Design' Redesigning a symbol of Faith (Steven Heller) grabs the attention of the reader with a seemingly definite statement about the cross; “Being one of the most recognisable and emotionally charged symbols in the world, it is inconceivable that design improvements could be made upon the cross.” With such a bold statement one could be forgiven for thinking Heeler's writings should be interpreted as belonging to a lower level of King and Kitcheners levels of reflective judgement. It seems Heller is exerting his own opinion as true and correct and almost seems like he is daring the reader to not read on and show not even a slight interest in an issue that should be of as greater importance to the reader as it is to himself.

(Heller - http://voice.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=_getfullarticle&aid=969815)
(King & Kitchener - http://www.umich.edu/~refjudg/rjstages.html)

Yet, Heller's second sentence promptly places his claim in context as he states that his knowledge of the cross symbol is understood in relation to the context of a variety of theologies and ideologies and the evidence of the interpretations and different meanings it has for different people. This degree of understanding knowledge and contexts places Heller's writings at level 6 of King & Kitcheners levels of reflective judgement.

Further evidence of this level of reflective thinking can be discovered in Heeler's argument that understanding the cross must be actively constructed and interpreted in different circumstances such as general, present meanings and historical associations related to the symbol. Heller lists the many contexts in which the cross becomes culturally significant in a host of different ways; “...for example, when emblazoned on the robes and banners of the crusaders, it marked a bloody brotherhood feared by an Islamic enemy, and when carried by the Spanish conquistadors, it wed faith to fear.”

Parts of Heller's writing on this particular blog reveal his reflective judgement level to be at level 5, in that his perspective (the the design of a reinterpretation of such a prominent and significant symbol presents a complex and challenging design problem) reflects his principles and values in that he knows and/or understands the complexities involved in design processes and client-designer communication and therefore the nature of the challenge with this particular client “for whom the symbol is more than a manifestation of an all-powerful faith, but also a tribute to reunification.”

Being Critical, as Rick Poynor describes in The Time for being Against, “involves, not taking things for granted, being sceptical, questioning what’s there, exposing limitations, taking issue, advancing a contrary view, puncturing myths.” The latter of which Heller accomplishes in his first paragraph by acknowledging the common, general symbolic meaning of the cross and then pushing further to reveal lesser known, alternative views on the symbolism of the cross.

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

Readers would be hard pressed attempting to discover information about Heeler's prejudices from this blog. He doesn’t inform his readers from what position, occupation or social context he makes these claims of knowledge from.

Interestingly Heller does provide a description of the design process: “The Celtic cross without the orb was the original model that was modified and streamlined as the design process proceeded and in the end came to look more like a Tao cross. As the design progressed, each element - the open book, flying dove and flame - was rhythmically and symmetrically ordered.” Description of processes give the reader an interesting insight into and a greater understanding of the design. Wayne Attoe, Methods of Criticism and Response to Criticism also discusses this theory: “Another conviction is that criticism should display process as much as products.... What is the chain of events that caused the built environment [or design] to be the way it is?”

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

Heeler's contribution to design criticism is twofold. On one had his writings are formal, sophisticated and use evidence and data to back-up claims - all of which combine to raise the conversations around visual communication to an intelligent, academic level. Yet his criticism lacks just that - criticism. If not about the product then at least the design process or related issues to encourage

Taste Regime Reponses...

2006-06-26T19:56:00.000-07:00

Answers were almost spot on ... thanks for the interest in my little ol' blog.

Mad made the comment that it is likely I hardly watch any t.v., and from reading about Madeline's taste regime answers it seems both she and I can relate to having very little spare time. Mad is spot on in saying that I watch an hour or so of tv., only when I procrastinating and don’t feel like doing much else. I assume she got this impression from other aspects of my taste regime implying that I value fitness and regular physical activity (correct!), that I’m often busy dancing among other things (also correct!) and because I prefer to get my news from radio sources as I’m not home often enough to watch tv. news at conventional times.

Mad also has a concern for the environment and I’m guessing she guessed I watch SBS programs because she found elements of my travel destination choices that she related to and assumes I also value to environment - which would be correct also. Although, I never keep the tv. guide. If I do occasionally buy a Sunday paper those sort of inserts head directly for the recycling bin. I assume Mad gathered from my taste regime that as I’m busy I would have to schedule any tv watching, from which I assume as Mad is also busy shoes does use the guide to efficiently plan her tv. watching time.

Justin and I share similarities in that we both primarily listen to news on the radio. I usually only watch tv. to chill out/procrastinate and watch dinner later at night when I get home. And Dancing with the stars!? I admit I did watch it with interest if I was in front of the tv. at that time yet I was turned off when Darryl Sommer's sang...

Marianne values tv. as her primary news source (approx. 7hrs/wk). I am assuming that she would find it slightly unusual that my primary news source is the radio and from this sensibly conclude that i don’t have time to watch tv. news and interestingly not that I choose not to watch tv. news (it is a combination of both reasons).

Marianne is also correct in saying that I have a high regard for fitness and health which could be grasped form my other taste regime answers. Marianne left her sport/fitness questions unanswered and makes no reference to sport in her tv. show preferences so I’m assuming that she makes this comment from a position of playing only a little sport herself.

Marianne doesn’t play a musical instrument but seems to have a good appreciation of a variety of music, which is probably why she can recognise this quality in me.

Task 2 - Design Criticism

2006-06-26T07:08:00.000-07:00

To a provide a stage for emerging, talented young female artists to present their design, photographic, illustrative, artistic, graffiti, digital and animation skills to a public audience: this is the aim of Curvy, a publication produced in conjunction with an exhibition held as part of semi-permanent. The line-up of talent includes “invitees [who] are all extremely talented and at the top of their various fields... Deanne Cheuk, Rilla Alexander and Yasmin Majidi from Liness (Ausralia/USA), Etsu Meusy (Canada), Fai (France), Fiffany Bizic (USA), Von Dekker (Australia) plus many, many others.” Big promises. Some of which, one could say, are delivered.

Interestingly, the book is published in conjunction Yen which, for those of you who don’t know, is a magazine which makes a departure from mainstream and popular women's print publications. Inside to the covers of Yen issues such as diets, boys and celebrity gossip take to the wings and “fashion, style, serious issues [and the celebration of] the achievements of inspiring women making their mark and shaping the world we live in” take centre stage. And thus, this is the stage that is set for Curvy.

The baby pink embossed cover conceals the true nature of the contents and gives only subtle clues to the visual contents that lie beneath, much like the curtains masking the stage from the audience pre-performance. As lighting in a theatre can, paper stock can also seriously detract or add to the atmosphere created by the work being presented to the audience. Matt card stock used for the cover implies that this book is to be treated as a high-quality art piece in itself and in that distances itself from more ephemeral tabloid magazines. The choice of paper inside provides a well-suited and complimentary backdrop to the artworks, in the context of a printed publication as opposed to a gallery space. Possibly, the design problem of this piece was in the creation of a unified whole, whilst still retaining the individuality of each artists’ works. The solution was obviously found in the combination of colourful pages chosen to compliment the contents on each and which only rarely detract attention from the piece being presented. The treatment of typography throughout the book is neat and sets a distinct hierarchy. The unusual yet logical placement of the page numbers sit comfortable above the readers thumb as they flick through the pages.

While the focus of much of the publicity and press surrounding the Curvy book is on shining light on the emerging artists themselves, consequently an array of issues these artists believe in and feel inspired to create works about such as Feminism, politics, war, indigenous rights and homosexuality are also thrust into this spotlight.

That a culture of superficial publications aimed at young women even exists and for a group of people to decide to make a conscious move away from, not only highlights this widely accepted culture of diets, boys and celebrities but also draws attention to the collective of people disagree with this culture and who (thankfully) worked to print a publication and curate an exhibition that presents an opposing or different set of values. In this context (that the creators themselves and much of the press-hype proudly boast about), it is disappointing that many works chosen could be interpreted as a chorus line of cheap visual thrills, educating the reader more about female raunch culture than issues of any real substance.

Yet despite this the book, at $35 a pop, is bound to inspire creative types with an array of techniques, the general public with a visual performance of depth, emotion and the entire audience with, at the very least, downright aesthetic beauty.

My Taste Regime

2006-06-19T05:14:00.000-07:00

2. I have three cameras. I use my little automatic digital camera quite often and it is almost always in my bag. During the day I snap photos of places, and lovely moments (like sunsets), family occasions, and I also take photos of my friends and I when we go out on the weekend. My SLR and digital SLR I use for more artistic endeavours like design/uni projects or to take photos of my [dance] students for their website. I love the aesthetic of film, yet unfortunately I find I use it less and less as the price and inconvieience add up too quickly.

3. I don't really mind what sort of car I drive, as long as it gets me from A to B. I am driving a Toyota Echo at the moment, but up until a few weeks ago I drove THE BIGGEST bomb so the Echo is an absolute pleasure to drive. I'd be happy driving it for a long time. I like to know the (very) basics of how cars work so I plan on getting under the bonnet maybe once every few months...

5. I like a wide variety of music. I teach dance so I'm always looking for unique/instrumental/acoustic/alternative/chill-out music. I also like some Aussie hip hop/breaks if I'm in the mood. I have never really been drawn to trance or heavy metal. Or country either.

6. I'd visit art galleries, mueseums, public lectures and libraries at least twice a year.

8. Well I know dance isn't strictly a sport, as the type of [contemporary/ballet] dance I do has a strong arts approach but it does keep me fit so I would say dance is my favourite sport! I like running too but I am not co-ordinated at ball sports!

9. I'd like to travel to India, Nepal, Cambodia, Indonesia, Italy, Spain, Prague and the Maldives to name a few!

10. My primary source of news would probably be radio and my secondary source would be newspapers, as I'm just not home often to watch news on the tv at the conventional times. My primary source of current affairs would be podcasts that listen to on my iPod when I'm on the run.

11. Oh please stop spending my hard-earned money on soo much sport! Although I do strongly agree with spending money on programs encouraging fitness, especialy those aimed at children. But it would be excellent to see greater coverage and support for the arts in Australia, especially exposure and education about contemporary Indigeous art in Australia and contemporary dance.

12. I'm from Australia. I could live temporarily in another country, but I think I would always be drawn back here to where my family and friends are. If I did live away from Australia I could not possibly live in a cool climate - Sydney winters are bad enough!

13. I meet my friends at their homes, cafes or out at pubs and clubs. We also often meet in parks or to exercise together.