Jun

30

Brand Wagon: Part Four, Final Part.

Filed Under Told You So | Leave a Comment

Moholy Nagy Mass Psychosis

PART 4 FINAL PART I accept that, depending on who you talk to, to be an artist in this day and age is basically understood as someone who lives and works below the poverty line–spending time making amusing cartoons for family and friends’ enjoyment. These are the people designers should keep watch. These people, are the ones who will question an artists worth, mainly because it so often is completely opposite to their living and working world, and most likely makes them uncomfortable (in its unfamiliarity) of how artists, and designers, function. These are the same people who may have initially pressured designers to succumb to a new kind of title or categorization (rebranding) in the first place. When it comes to selling these people on ideas, service and opinion, no doubt, they will require the most amount of education and instruction. These people will have to be reminded how artists are a contributing member of society and that together, through collaboration, will generate works beyond any individual effort. These people can be assured that working visually and intelligently is the only way to access an audience, globally, and that meticulous strategy (or design for those staunch pragmatists) will be the difference between confusion or communication. These people will appreciate how the multiplication of the work generated, will not diminish its artistic integrity, but instead, establish it as an affordable, accessible commodity (because of its artistry!) These people must accept their role, not as critic, or client, but as patron–a Patron of the arts.

If designers can maintain to individuals outside of the agency or community that they are practising artists, utilizing time-honoured traditions and techniques, with old and new technologies at their dispense, in an effort to realize a shared goal (which by the way, is not always communication) then rebranding (and all its paperwork and frequent flyer points) can be put to rest. In this case, rebranding isn’t necessary to change an outsider’s perspective or attitude. It will only confuse the issue more while simultaneously (and needlessly) creating a hierarchy within design and designers and separating them and their field further away from the arts (it’s called creative thinking people, and it takes on many shapes and forms)–the very thing that designers are being compensated for in providing their work. Read more

Jun

25

Brand Wagon: Part Three.

Filed Under Told You So | 1 Comment

Joseph Cornell Hotel Eden

PART 3 Essentially, when “design” transitioned from “art” to “graphic,” sadly, it did not evolve; it conformed. Conformity is what has caused designers to bow to others impressions of their own discipline, skill, trade, craft, knowledge and, yes, I’m going to say it, artistry. Conformity is what is still killing designers now to rebrand themselves into a title or industry that I don’t think will truly ever reflect what designers do, and actually, degrade designers and the community further than the reduction they assumed when they initially decided to hold a distinction against Art, but used it as its foundation in an attempt to raise its platform. (Huh? How did you think that was going to work?) Rebranding design’s identity won’t work. Taking up the role of the artist, will. Read more

Jun

20

Brand Wagon: Part Two.

Filed Under Told You So | Leave a Comment

Willi Kunz Montage

PART 2 Educating a client has always been the job of the graphic designer (so, for all you designers out there, you could probably add “communication teacher” to the list of titles already proposed.) Education justifies the cost of service while it sells the client on professional opinion. My understanding of the rebranding of designers is that a name change can better describe the evolution (more on this later) of the designer and may, hopefully, be commonly understood among designers and clients alike. As much as I would love for a new change in title to get around numerous explanations of why all the white space on the page shouldn’t be filled, and really, why the type should be set smaller is really just a joke. A designer can never do away with informing his client on how the design process works regardless of the name change. Nor will it guarantee a client’s willingness to accept what a designer’s job entails, and to hold that job into great esteem. Yes, in part, this is because the tech age has brought much accessibility, pirated software, and lots of so-called experts in the field. (Designers, I’m begging you, quit your whining! Every field in arts and culture has been impacted with all the new directors, illustrators, industrial designers, writers, authors, playwrights, poets, musicians and so on who can get their hands on Adobe Creative Suite, Pro Tools, and a whole other host of “icreate” software.) But the real reason, is actually much older than that; a problem that in all its stages and players has never experienced a resolution, even to this day. It’s what Saldanha briefly touches upon in his quandary in Evolution. It is the way in which the arts and artists are perceived by the general public, as a whole.

Saldanha begins his missive in Evolution with how designers arrived at design in the first place. “ ‘Design’ once replaced the term ‘art’. The term ‘design’ communicated that the work we did was more than artistic. Now it is time to replace ‘graphic’.” And therein lies the problem. The terminology designers are identified with now actually is just another way of reducing the very foundation that design, and all of the arts, arguably, is fundamentally based on. (Tsk, tsk, tsk. Certainly I thought designers were better at solving problems than with layering one on top of the other.) Guess what designers? Instead of using “design” to inflate importance and title an emerging role in the creative realm, you oversimplified what is at the very heart of good design, namely, art, and with it, reduced your worth along with your good name, minus the hourly wage and portfolio of handsome print advertising. (Good on you!) And really does a couple of bucks and a lot of magazine tear sheets garner bragging rights? Read more

Jun

17

Enough Already. Get off the Brand Wagon!

Filed Under Told You So | 2 Comments

Doesburg Counter Composition VI 1925 Tate Gallery London

Designers worried about industry nomenclature? How about Babbitt?

Last year, an article in Design Edge (DE) really upset me. The article made a case (I’m over-simplifying here) that graphic designers are not artists. I wrote a big rant about my point of contention (oh yes they are, and why is their a need to distinguish that point anyway?) and thought to get it published, but I was too wordy for Design Edge, (understandably; my piece was about four times the word length of DE’s original article) and didn’t know where else to put my view into print.

So, for you lucky readers who have discovered my blog, I’m posting my response to what I thought was an absurd issue to be hung up on. I’m publishing the article in parts, as it is long, so as not to overwhelm the reader. (How I feel with online articles from The New Yorker.) I’d love to know your thoughts, after your review.

PART 1 Design Edge has proven to be a strong, forward-thinking publication containing interesting and vital industry news. However, the May/June 2007 issue, to me, had resorted to some backward beliefs I thought designers, and the design community at large, had abandoned. I was wrong. Editor Ann Meredith Brown’s letter, about designers and an identity crisis, and the following article by Winnie Czulinski, “Rebranding Designers,” is what changed my point of view. The article? Designers worried about what to call themselves (and thus how they will be received in society.) The debate, it seems, has attracted many new players in the design community, repeating longstanding arguments, and resulting in needless confusion and compromise. I hope in my response, to how rebranding will only degrade and isolate designers and the design industry, that I can also demonstrate, why this argument is an issue to begin with–and how by treating the problem–offer a solution that could satisfy, designers, and society as a whole. Read more

Jun

13

The Souvenir Shop: Eh! Candy.

Filed Under New Obsession | 2 Comments

Nate Archer Timpins

Last year, I was completely disappointed in myself for missing out on the Gladstone Hotel’s annual Come Up to My Room (CUTMR) show. The 3-day event, which features Canadian designers and artists exhibiting works that are interior or lifestyle based, had many items reproduced for sale, one of which I coveted immensely. Nate Archer’s Timpins, to me, was the best example of taking a Canadian legacy, Tim Hortons, to a whole new level in pop culture.

Nate cleverly converted the Tim Hortons, timbits, into small buttons. So genius! This is art meets commercialism at its best! But it’s so much more! It’s like franchising on the franchise, and the franchise is a comment on who Canadians are and what Canadians are like. It’s about how the Canadian identity is rooted in a very humble history – a hockey player, his hometown roots, a coffee and donut being a reward for an honest days’ work – and how the thing that carved Canadians into their own, was not really the donut, but the donut hole. The negative space. The thing that is usually discarded. The “sweet nuthins” as other donut chains have coined.

Canadians as sweet nuthins. Does that not say it all? Read more

Jun

12

NYC Festivittles

Filed Under This Just In | Leave a Comment

Kenny Scharf Cruller 2007 Oil on Linen

New York City Food Film Fest starts this weekend. Yum!

(I know, the graphic is a stretch, but who doesn’t like a donut? Especially one that looks like it’s a ferris wheel in the sky? More on all things donut in the following post.)

Jun

10

Long Last Looks: A Shift in Women

Filed Under Vogue Rogue | 2 Comments

Suzy Kendall School Dance To Sir With Love

To Sir With Love is one of my all-time favourite movies. I love the colour and texture of the film; the relationships among the characters, but more so the ones that are open-ended and undefined (more on this later); and the range of emotion the story packs in without being trite or uncharacteristic.

Sidney Poitier makes the film. He is amazing as Mark Thackeray, or “Sir.” As a teacher to some of the troubled youth from the slums of East London, Poitier’s character provides incredible honesty in depicting the complex layers of his role with subtlety and natural finesse, I have yet to witness anyone else on celluloid possesses like him.

“Sir,” like any great teacher, is a mentor, a parent, an adviser and a friend, but one with authority, who commands a certain amount of respect. His demonstration of care among his students wins them over and engages the interest of his colleagues, in particular, teacher Gillian Blanchard, played by Suzy Kendall. Read more

Jun

6

Life’s a Beach and Then You Spy

Filed Under Art Fart | Leave a Comment

The Raft 2007 Eric Fischl Oil on Linen

Impasto. Light. Colour. When combined, these elements add dimension and depth to a work of art, to painting. The brush stroke provides the pacing in which the work was made. The light provides the life force the image beholds; a sliver for a glimmer, bathed for dazzling. Colour provides the weight or intensity of the emotion depicted, including the artist’s own in creation.

American painter, Eric Fischl, is all these things; impasto, light, colour. He is pacing, living, dazzling, observant and authentic. He is the outsider looking in, and maybe even enjoying things he shouldn’t; private situations others are unaware of his intrusion. The voyeur who blends in with his content, and thus, turns the painting’s audience into part of the meaning of the painting.

Fischl’s newest works of the Beach Scenes are of people-watching. Small bodies, big bodies, naked bodies, tanned bodies, pasty bodies; swimmers and bathers. There are the young and the old. The bikini clad; the sailing attire. Wispy wraps and surfer shorts. Sun hats and glasses. Read more

Jun

3

The Relationsham Menu: Now Serving Jerk Chicken

Filed Under Relationsham | Leave a Comment

Lion Piven

I gotta commend the Cowardly Lion. It knew it didn’t stack up to much, but it wanted to change that. Get a spine and a have no fear. Maybe stand-up to a person or two. Improve upon its quality of life. Seek professional help even.

Who cares if it was a wizard! It’s a start, right?! Right!

Not today’s new man. Today’s new man is yesterday’s Cowardly Lion. Today’s new man is Jerk Chicken. Read more