Author Archives: zvezdana

Convergence of GD and programming

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programming_and_design

THE CONVERGENCE OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING AND GRAPHIC DESIGN
A paper by two professors from Creighton University:
David Reed, Chair, Department of Computer Science Creighton University davereed@creighton.edu, and
Joel Davies Director, Graphic Design Program Creighton University joel@creighton.edu
Published in the Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, Volume 21 Issue 3, February 2006 

The conclusion of the paper states:
As the computer science and graphic design disciplines converge, it is inevitable that cross-pollination between the two result in a blurring of the lines of professional practices. Computer scientists increasingly need exposure to design trends and principles, so that they might take advantage of lessons learned by graphic designers. Likewise, designers will require the computer science experience to accurately and efficiently code projects, in addition to the ability to comprehend new technologies as they emerge. Collaboration between computer science and graphic design educators is imperative to ensure that each discipline learns from the other and is prepared for future developments.

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This is an interesting scientific paper that argues for skilling the programmer with design basics.

Wayne White

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“My mission is to bring humor into fine art” 

“I want to take this painting idea and see if I can do a puppet version of it. I want to take cartooning and turn it into a set. I want to take a set and turn it back into a painting.”

“Do what you love. It’s going to lead to where you want to go.”
— All three quotes by Wayne White, from the trailer to “Beauty is Embarrasing”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xQsN1zhRUjU#!  

waynewhiteart.com
Link to his monograph by Todd Oldham, on Amazon
Another example of a fluid thinker, like Andrew Byrom, is Wayne White, a puppeteer, art director, illustrator, painter and sculptor. He’s been a production designer (?) for Pee Wee’s Playhouse, and has designed videos for Peter Gabriel and the Smashing Pumpkins. I’m drawn to how he works with type, particularly how easily he works in both two and three dimensions. For example, “The Sound of Cutting Slack” is executed both as a sculpture and a painting.

When White fuses monumental lettering and thrift store painting, he creates a new idea and hence pushes both disciplines further. Sure, his precedents are Ed Ruscha and Jim Shaw, but I don’t think Ruscha embraced the figurative the same way, while Shaw doesn’t share White’s lettering skill. White did this for the 2000 cover of Lambchop’s album, Nixon, as well as in many other paintings of his.

 

 

 

Chapter — Method_003

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The only new section is UNDER the dashed rule, titled “That Can’t Be Done. Can It?”

INTERDISCIPLINARY METHOD

We live in a compartmentalized mind frame. Home is different from office, fun is separated from work, science lives apart from art. We’ve been trained to specialize in one thing and call that our profession, pushing our other interests down to lesser importance. Many of us, however, have several seemingly unrelated passions simmering within us, waiting to be manifested with the right method.

Interdisciplinary thinking turns compartmentalization on its head by encouraging the coming together of disparate interests. As designers, we are schooled to develop techniques and apply them to content in order to make form. What if techniques and content stem from radically different fields? In her map painting series, designer Paula Scher, partner in the eminent studio, Pentagram, combined her passion for lettering, maps and painting to create a series cross-disciplinary works. Similarly, designer Andrew Byrom merged his love of typography and furniture to create typographic furniture, while the ceramicist Stephanie Dearmond cast letterforms in porcelain to make new and unexpected form. These are but a few examples of what can happen when we choose to combine our interests instead of segregating them.

Passions are fluid. They change shape and intensity. Introduce yourself to a new subject matter. Prod into a new discipline in order to give yourself a new perspective. Conversations fuel passions and can lead to new ways of thinking. This is precisely why designer James Victore holds The Dinner Series, an annual week-long workshop where each day culminates in a lavish dinner party, meant to stimulate creative conversation. (Get Victore quote here).

Give another example of stimulating conversation here. 

Conversations can lead to striking collaborations between experts from different fields. Longtime collaborators  Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak of MM/Paris and photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin have produced hybrid photo/text works. (Show alphabet here). Likewise, designer Stephen Farrell has worked closely with writer Steve Tomasula to publish novels that bestow equal value on the design and the text. (Need example of designer working with a no-artistic collaborator). 

Add a paragraph on working with community — larger, social issues

How does this work get done? In this chapter, we give you some leads. We attempt here to break down the method of interdsiciplinary design into useful tools—charts and diagrams, tips on inter-personal relations, and tips for testing the work as you go along.

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That Can’t Be Done. Can It?
Most of us have pulled the cord to flip venetian blinds open or closed hundreds of times, without giving it a second thought. But to designer Andrew Byrom, this commonplace instance led to a burst of inspiration, as he envisioned letterforms made of blinds, switching from bold to regular to light with the pull of the cord. This notion has led him to build a series of letters out of venetian blinds, and further, to draw a striking flat typeface based on the idea of the window blind. (show images)

Byrom thinks in an unrestricted way, seeing the magical in the mundane by asking “what if?” His thoughts move fluidly from paper to screen, to metal work, kite construction and neon signage. In doing so, he constantly subverts existing parameters and pushes his way into other disciplines to nourish his creative needs. Byrom’s thinking is effective only because it is backed up by his eagerness to learn, to renounce the comfort of his mastery to for the thorny work of the beginner, failing again and again until a new skill has been learned.

Fluid thinking allows us to see old things in a new way. Find inspiration and possibilities by combining existing knowledge in unexpected ways. Apply an old process to a new material, or inversely, a new process to a well-known material. And when you move from thinking to making, expect obstacles and find ways to overcome them. Experts will insist that it cannot be done, but if you trust your idea and show both your passion and persistence, they may eventually move over to your side and share skills with you. When the level of investment is high, interdisciplinary work comes alive.

 

Type Fluid

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Amazing studio of brothers Ali and Hussain Almossawi. Ali is a computer scientist, and Hussain a graphic designer. Here’s a great example of design collaborating with computer science and 3d modelling.
here’s the link to all the letters:
http://www.skyrill.com/blog/2011/07/03/type-fluid-complete-set/ 

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from Designboom:
designed by hussain almossawi of bahraini studio skyrill design, ‘fluid type’ is conceptualized as a dynamic typeface, in which each character in addition to being usable as a static letter has its own exploding animation.

 

the three-dimensional letters were first created in 3D max and then filled with virtual fluid in the realflow fluid dynamics simulator. while the character was filling, almossawi adjusted the gravity and pressure level. afterwards, he released the original shape holding the fluid, allowing the letter to explode and splash around. once almossawi achieved a look he liked for each animation, he adjusted the letter mesh and imported it back to 3D max to shade and render.

almossawi elaborates:
‘each letter required its own process based on what it looked like, [including] a lot of trial and error, sometimes using more that one emitter, at different directions and speeds, and experimenting with how they would collide with each other.‘

Here’s a videoclip showing the fluidity of the letter S, in motion!

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M/M Paris Interview

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From a published interview with M/M Paris (Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak) (Design and Art, Alex Coles editor, Whitechapel and MIT, 2007):

Mathias Augustyniak: “…the more you are a specialist in your field, the closer you get to the essence of things. Only then can you start to have a possible relationship with another field — and this is where things start to become interesting. Being specialists gives us a point of entry — a keyhole through which we can look onto the world. It is in this spirit of specialism that we meet and work with artists.” (188)

On their collaboration with artists Huyghe, Parreno, Gillick: “As graphic design is situated at the crossroads between many different activities it seemed the perfect place from which to establish this kind of fulfilling exchange with practitioners from other disciplines.” (190)

Augustyniak: “From one field to another, there should be respect.” (190)

Augustyniak: “We are interested in dialogue between specialists” (191)

On p. 191, Augustyniak describes a collaboration they did with artists Pierre Huyghe, Phillipe Parreno and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster for the Venice Biennale 1999. Each of the three artists was given a room, but when the artists decided to band together and project a single film in one room, the other two rooms were left empty to the dismay of the curators. M/M jumped in and created title sequences as paintings on the walls in the flanking two rooms, so the public would have a pre- and post-viewing experience, while seeing the film in the middle. This is such a nice and concrete explanation of the collaborative process. Designers are concrete, we speak in terms of things and actions!

Designers seem to constantly worry about whether they are equal to artists, or simply their “butlers,” as M/M say. They argue that true interdisciplinarity can only happen when designers are elevated to become equals, and not subordinates. That’s another theme of the profession, moving from service to autonomy.

Groupthink by Jonah Lehrer

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Here’s the pdf of the article: groupthink_lehrer

Groupthink, by Jonah Lehrer, Article in the New Yorker, Jan 30, 2012  pp. 22 — 27

“The most creative spaces are those which hurl us together. It is the human friction that makes the sparks.” (27)

Article in this week’s New Yorker discusses ways of encouraging creativity in the workplace. Citing scientific studies, Lehrer argues that brainstorming does not work because its cardinal “rule” of reserving criticism is prescribed, and therefore unrealistic. Creativity is messy, he says, and it thrives in the tense reality of human relations. Data has shown that brainstorming sessions are not nearly as productive as we have come to think. People are more effective, in fact, when they work alone as well as together, but mostly if they cross paths with other creatives in unexpected ways.

Brainstorming was invented by Alex Osborn, an ad exec. Osborn defined it in Chapter 33 of his book “Your Creative Power,” published in 1948, as “using the brain to storm a creative problem—and doing so in commando fashion, with each stormer attacking the same objective.” It presupposed an absence of criticism and negative feedback. This, Lehrer says, doesn’t always work, as group dynamics cannot be prescribed. Instead, “…when the composition of the group is right—enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpredictable ways—the group dynamic will take care of itself.” (27)

Further, Lehrer writes about the importance of the “place” of creativity. The cubicle paradigm has led to isolation, depriving people of productive, cross-disciplinary encounters. He writes about how when Steve Jobs was building Pixar’s headquarters, he purposefully placed office space around a central atrium where people would be forced to walk to to get to their mailboxes, conferences and bathrooms. He did this to encourage chance meetings in corridors.

His biggest point is the importance of flexible workspace that, through its very architecture, encourages a meeting of the minds. A prime example is “Building 20” on the MIT campus, built as a temporary structure for WWII radar research. Meant to be demolished at the end of the war, through a set of circumstances the building was left standing and over the years housed a hodge-podge of departments. Since it wasn’t pristine, its tenants were free to tear down and build walls, and even floors. They could customize their spaces as they saw fit. Over the years the building has given seen some the most creative output this country has produced — Noam Chomsky’s linguistics, the Bose speaker company founded by grad student Amar Bose, and a slew of engineering discoveries.

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This is right up our alley for the SPACE chapter. It’s great to read scientific confirmation that schools need to have flexible spaces and that departments should be housed in such a way to encourage cross-disciplinary chance encounters. It also makes me wonder how to make such “chance encounters” happen within the structure of a class.

Andrew Byrom

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Here’s a tedx video of Andrew Byrom, who makes awesome interdisciplinary typography:

http://tedxucla.org/2011/05/12/andrew-byrom-if-h-is-a-chair-mapping-new-forms-in-typography-through-experimentation-collaboration-and-a-shifting-view-point/ accessed January 31, 2012.

Notes while watching the video:
Face recognition
Color blind test
Typeface recognition — type made of drinking straws
seeing letters everywhere — in bandaids, searching out typographic forms, then digitizing them; finding something in 3d and bringing it back into flatness.
“if h is a chair, what do the other letters look like?”
His thinking process leads him to collaborations. He envisions physical form for his letters, such as metal furniture, neon, kites, rails, blinds…and seeks out the craftsmen/factories to make his visions come alive. Sometimes he has a 3d idea, such as flipping blinds, and then envisions the typographic form to go with it.

What’s neat here is the back and forth he has with the manufacturer — an old school relationship to make new form. Breaking into other disciplines and bending them to suit his needs — persisting until the neon guy is hooked and wants to make his complicated forms.

Sample Chapter: Method — 002

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INTERDISCIPLINARY METHOD

We live in a compartmentalized mind frame. Home is different from office, fun is separated from work, science lives apart from art. We’ve been trained to specialize in one thing and call that our profession, pushing our other interests down to lesser importance. Many of us, however, have several seemingly unrelated passions simmering within us, waiting to be manifested with the right method.

Interdisciplinary thinking turns compartmentalization on its head encouraging the coming together of disparate interests. In her map painting series, designer Paula Scher, partner in the eminent studio, Pentagram, combined her passion for lettering, maps and painting to create a series cross-disciplinary works. Similarly, designer Andrew Byrom merged his love of typography and furniture to create typographic furniture, while the ceramicist Stephanie Dearmond cast letterforms in porcelain to make new and unexpected form. These are but a few examples of what can happen when we choose to combine our interests instead of segregating them.

Passions are fluid. They change shape and intensity. Introduce yourself to a new subject matter. Prod into a new discipline in order to give yourself a new perspective. Conversations fuel passions and can lead to new ways of thinking. This is precisely why designer James Victore holds The Dinner Series, an annual week-long workshop where each day culminates in a lavish dinner party, meant to stimulate creative conversation. (Get Victore quote here). Give another example of stimulating conversation here. 

Conversations can lead to striking collaborations between experts from disparate fields. Longtime collaborators  ______ of MM/Paris and photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin have produced hybrid photo/text works. (Show alphabet here). Likewise, designer Stephen Farrell has worked closely with writer Steve Tomasula to publish novels that bestow equal value on the design and the text. (Need example of designer working with a no-artistic collaborator). 

How does this work get done? In this chapter, we give you some leads. We attempt here to break down the method of interdsiciplinary design into useful tools—charts and diagrams, tips on inter-personal relations, and rules for testing the work as you go along.


 


 

Paula Scher: Map Paintings

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Scher combined her love of painting, lettering and maps in these interdisciplinary works that reflect on our information-centered society.

From the Pentagram website:
“In her paintings, Scher renders information and data culled from headlines, maps and diagrams in madcap fields of hand-drawn typography. Obsessive, opinionated and more than a little personal, the maps provide an exuberant portrait of contemporary information in all its complexity and subjectivity. Scher’s new book of her paintings, MAPS, was published last fall and recently went into its second printing.”
http://pentagram.com/en/new/2012/01/paula-schers-maps-exhibition-o.php 

Antartctica, 2011