By Lucia, Miao, Ashley, and Noelle
In our graphic design Studio course, Professor James Grady introduced us to a new project, Design in Question. Our class read chapters 2 and 4 of The Graphic Design Reader that brought to light a lot of insider issues and problems and constraints of design and design education. As a response to this reading, we were each asked to create 25 questions that touched on different aspects of design. They ranged from bigger conceptual questions to simpler questions. As designers, we are given a part of a brief and asked to create a solution or respond to a “problem” about design and design education. These questions helped us have a better understanding of these problems and as a team, it initiated really good conversations and points about our careers.
Each team was asked to create iterations of our questions and ultimately create an installation that combined all of our work together. Our constraints were to print on tabloid-size paper with the RISO printer or cut on the vinyl cutter.
Iterations
Noelle:
My iterations were focused on three questions: “Can designers separate work and personal life?” “Why don’t design programs have an application class to learn about real-world situations?” and “Should designers be graded on how well they can talk about their work?”. I tried to explore different visual languages using gradients that represented a designer’s inability to separate work and personal life. I also tapped back into my love for illustration and typography and merged them to create a story. I created illustrations to evoke playfulness and worry around the two questions of “Can you talk about your work?” and “How much do I charge?” because it seems like for many, design education is so fun until we are put in real-life situations no one taught us about.
Ashley:
My iterations were focused on the question, “Does education limit creativity and innovation”? I used organic squiggly lines to represent creativity and had them either being contained by a box or breaking out of a structure. The box or structure represented education or knowledge and how depending on the education one acquires it can inhibit or encourage creativity and innovation. I also used a realistic rendering of a human brain to reference knowledge and where one’s creativity and innovation are based.
Miao:
My iterations focused on the questions such as: “Is talent important?”, “Does education limit innovation and creativity?” I used abstract lines and shapes to demonstrate the complexity of the questions and the diversity of the answers. The yarn on top of the illustrations is faintly visible, which implies that there’s no final solution to a lot of the design questions.
Lucia:
I wanted to analyze the way in which design education is currently approached and question how it should be approached. I considered topics such as inclusion and authorship in design, and how graphic design can make social change realized beyond the theoretical, which is one of my goals as a designer. My iterations use compositions of type, abstract forms, and gradients to symbolize questions on graphic design.
Beginning Stages
When our group decided how to present our work, we thought of making a gradient of posters to indicate the endlessly changing nature of graphic design and to put together a presentation in which each of our sets of iterations was part of a unified composition.
We came up with a diagram to determine where our works would be positioned in the installation, which we would be taped to the wall.
Process
We experimented with the Riso printer and arranged our iterations in specific colors so that our installation has a gradual shift in color, from blue to red to yellow. The fun thing about Riso printing was that it might create completely different visual effects of the works that we created on screen. The creative possibilities with color are endless and we can always create something beyond our expectations. During the printing process, we encountered a series of problems, including color washed out, paper jam, and ink running out. The process of figuring out all kinds of problems made us gradually become familiar with the function of the Riso printer.
To add another layer of our installation, we also rented a projector, intended to show all our installing questions on top of our iterations. However, unexpectedly technical problems made us reconsider the way of adding the layer. We completely reframed the problem and finally decided to use yarn attached on top of our iterations to demonstrate our design.
Final Installation
In our final installation, we wanted our varying visual languages to meld into one larger composition. The best way we could think of doing that was by using a gradient of the colors used in the Riso printer. Due to the way we all designed our twenty-five iteration we were able to easily change the colors to which every color sequence we needed for each design. Our gradient went from black and blue on the left side, then blue red, black-red, red yellow, and then yellow and black on the right side. We used a grid system to place our iterations on a wall in the form of a larger poster. It was made out of 4 rows and ten columns. There were two columns of each color combination right next to each other. Each column had four posters, one from each member of the group. To further meld our composition together we used the theme of defining and dissecting. We wanted to emphasize and dissect the elements of design that we all used in our iterations. Those elements were line, shape, and typography. We decided to use yarn and pins to portray this idea because it gave the installation a tactile layer and pins and thread are often used to define or dissect things in other occupations.
We assigned each element color of yarn, red, yellow, or blue. Red was assigned to lines. Yellow was given to typography and blue was used to define shapes. Each color of yarn was used in a different way to emphasize each element. The red yarn followed the lines of the designs and grid of the installation. We used the yellow yarn to create boxes around the words or phrases we wanted to stick out. Then for the blue yarn, we wove it around the pins in order to fill in the important shapes in our iterations. One of our favorite parts of our final installation was the shadows that the yarn created on our work and the small beautiful moments that were created in sections of the larger installation.
