Graphic Design: The New Basics Intro

Graphic Design: The New Basics by Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips is the core reading for the Communication Design module.

This week we were instructed to read the first two chapters of this book, as an introduction to the course and graphic design itself. Below are my notes on each chapter.

Back to the Bauhaus - Ellen Lupton

Lupton introduces the Bauhaus movement as one that "continues to shape design education today, around the world".

The Bauhaus Legacy, in the 1920s, anaylised form in terms of basic geometric elements. The general concept was to create a design, or design style that would be "understandable to everyone" and grounded in the "universal instrument of the eye".

Lupton continues to speak about the Bauhaus Faculty. Albus and Moholy-Nagy are noted to have forged the use of new materials and new media in the era. They "saw that art and design were being transformed" by technology, photography, film and mass production. However Lupton states that their ideas remained profoundly humanistic. representing an individual, and their role rather than a system, company or method. "Design, they argued, is never reducible to its function or to a technical description".

Since the 1940s the Bauhaus movement has been used, defined and interpreted by many well-known and celebrated designers. Each of which engaged in the "postmodern rejection for universal communication". According to postmodernism, which emerged in the 1960s, it is futile to look for the inherent meaning in an object to or image, as viewers bring their own personal experiences, personality and cultural biases to the process of interpretation.

Visual form should be able to be universally described, but should always carry significance. Lupton describes how the text book recognises a difference between "description and interpretation, between a potentially universal language of making and the universality of meaning".

Other questions posed from this chapter:

What is basic design?

What does transparency mean?

Does layering have a universal importance?

Is it the designers task to produce works that are socially relevant?

Beyond the Basics - Jennifer Cole Phillips

Phillips talks of graphic design before the development of the Macintosh. How every stage of design used to be a thought out, handmade process and now, in the technological era, we can design with "powerful, off-the-shelf software".

She speaks of the pros and cons of this new process. Anyone can now be a designer. But not everyone has the right eye, or creative concept development, to produce original works. College students are said to be at a higher advantage to those with years of experience in the graphic design field, having been raised surrounded by technology and the software older designers are now having to learn how to use.

The internet is mentioned often in this short chapter. Phillips speaks of it as "the distillation zone that unfolds beyond the average appetite for testing the waters and exploring alternatives." She views the internet as a repetitive case of ideas, that takes a lot of shifting before you can find original sparks of creativity.

Phillips finally addresses the books intention. How it should inspire the reader to experiment. "By focusing attention to particular aspects of visual form, we encourage readers to recognise the forces at play behind strong graphic solutions"