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Short Ones: The Politics Question

2011-01-30T16:51:00.000+11:00

Over the last few days I've wondered how the political spectrum appears in design discourse, and how this applies to designers generally. But I always get stuck on one thing—where are all the conservative designers?

They must exist—it stands to reason that they must be out there, somewhere. The Republicans had designers for the McCain/Palin ticket, the Liberals had them for the 2010 election, and so on back through history—and some of those must have genuinely believed in the causes they were working for. But where are the voices of these designers in the world of design criticism? Why don't we here them more often?

Often as far as this goes is with the critique of the First Things First Manifesto and it's millennial sibling¹Barnbrook et al; 'First Things First 2000 Manifesto' in Adbusters 1999—a critique that labels such a document as elitist. I'm not arguing here for a right wing design discourse; instead, I'm concerned about the lack spectrum within our discussions. Systems of thought can only be developed through constant probing of their fundamental principles.

Design has shifted from a near-amateur craft, with little formal training, to a discipline that is thoroughly embedded in the academy, and it has done so without proper examination of its precepts. This is one of the reasons why design discourse is such a fluid body—magpie like, it steals systems of thought from other disciplines and adapts them to its own ends.

It may well be that designers are, as a whole, simply unable be conservative. Our discipline calls upon us to be forward thinking, to create new solutions to old problems. I don't think someone schooled in conservative thought would be truly able to be a designer of any real note.

Then again, they must be out there. Somewhere.

Comments, queries or objections can be mailed to me.

Neon Tribe: Shamanism in the Digital Age

2010-11-22T14:20:00.002+11:00

One of the things that has fascinated me recently is the re-emergence of the tribal aesthetic, in fashion, design and film. Not tribal as in terrible tattoos, but tribal in the sense of the tribe—be that North and South American, Scandanavian, Celtic...

You get the idea. What is interesting is that this return to the tribal aesthetic ignores Polynesian and Asian tribes, the very groups that are traditionally venerated via their appearance in the aforementioned tattoos. Additionally, this swing towards the tribal seems to focus on the shamanistic, spiritual and mythical elements located within the broader mythologies attached to these tribes.

What is certain is that this trend is a definite homogenisation of tribal culture—by simply appropriating various, discrete aesthetic elements, and combining those with other 'high-tech' artefacts, we remove any implied cultural meanings present within the imagery, replacing them with our own. Inevitably there will be some removal of meaning in this sort of appropriation—I am not attempting to argue that this sort of trend should understand all that it is referencing, for there is little chance of this occurring—but as the aesthetic industries continue their search for inspiration ever backwards, it seems prudent to examine some of those influences, and the reasons for their contemporary use.

I think there's a number of discrete factors that are involved in this revival. Firstly, as the metropolis extends its implacable reach, there is a concern that Western civilisation has become increasingly separated from its tribal roots. This may seem obvious—and is certainly not news to the post-modernists out there, or even our friends, the proto-modernists, with their obsessive musings on the nature of the noble savage. And, of course, it is an incredibly ethnocentric way of viewing the world—what culture is still strongly tied to the traditions it held thousands of years ago and has adopted the technological advancements of our contemporary era?¹I would argue none. For a later post, perhaps. What is interesting is that there seems to be an emergent backswing against rationalism in much of Western culture—and as saddening as that is, it is in part a reality of post-modern thought, whereby we have relative 'truths' instead of a unified, objective 'truth'. Even the need for me to place truth within quotation marks speaks volumes about the impact that this sort of thinking has had on our culture. This neo-tribalism can be seen as a small, emergent part of this broader post-modernist cultural movement.

Secondly, this tribalism follows the oft cited fashion cycle, whereby something once a faux pas is adopted as the height of the current aesthetic. If we look at the way the 'influencers' are adopting this style, we can see the beginnings of the movements that drove the adoption of 70s and 80s aesthetics in the early part of this decade. One may get the sense that, similar to these earlier adoptions, there is little intent or meaning behind this tribal style. It could be argued that, as with all things 'hipster', it is merely surface, a visually engaging façade laid over the cultural, political and economic vacuum in which we find ourselves. We only need to look at the use of transcendent triangles throughout style based design, and their overt reference to the all-seeing-eye, to see the adoption of religious symbolism without the religion. The profusion of Día de los Muertos imagery, with its use of splendid fluorescence and geometries, tied in with it's celebration of the supernatural, is a perfect example.

While there is undoubtedly a limited amount which we can read into this appropriation, there are certain statements which it makes beyond mere fashionability. When the style is worn by someone like Jónsi (of Icelandic band Sigur Rós), it implies that they are more connected with our base humanity, more able to express the raw emotion that they are seeking. This implied connection is really a restatement of the old, and disingenuous, 'noble savage' line of thinking. By implying a greater connection to our 'true' selves, we also imply that our contemporary selves are no longer able to understand our base humanity. This is not to deny the emotional impact of Jónsi's music—it is beautiful, moving and expressive. However the implication presented through his stage wear and associated material is that older human culture was somehow better, closer to our 'true' selves—classic romantic primitivism.

Jónsi, circa 2010

There seems to be a shift, led by the artists, performers and designers amongst them, towards a kind of shamanistic renaissance. I've written here before on artists like Fever Ray, who perhaps embody this trend at its peak. Jónsi can now be added to the list, with the styling for Go centred around a combination of tribal signifiers (feathers, braids, blow-painting) and modernist colour combinations. During their 2010 Australian tour, Karen O, of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, was more direct, sporting a geometrically-patterned poncho and a neon coloured headdress made of dozens of paper hands. The combination of imagery from two native cultures oppressed by white invaders (Native Americans²Interesting to note that the linked Google image searched revealed a decent number of young, white women wearing the headdress. and Aborginies) was perhaps unintentional, but striking nonetheless.

While it is easy to simply dismiss the stage wear of musicians as mere window dressing, the effect of these fashions is not to draw attention to the lead singer or the band—that attention is a given for the position, both physically and socially, that they find themselves in. No, I would argue that the effect of this dress is to heighten the intensity of feeling and drama attached to the music. By doing so, the dress ceases to function as mere signifier, devoid of actual meaning and content, and begins to function in a similar manner to that which it references. Namely, the concert becomes a contemporary ritual—a site of transcendence, where the energy of the group subsumes that of the individual.

"In many ways, the lifestyle promoted by hipsterdom is highly ritualized. Many of the party-goers who are subject to the photoblogger’s snapshots no doubt crawl out of bed the next afternoon and immediately re-experience the previous night’s debauchery."³Haddow, Douglas: 'Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization' in Adbusters, issue 79, July, 2008

Forewarning: the above-quoted article is full of judgements and harshness for the hipster lifestyle, and certainly conforms to that Adbusters stereotype of near cringeworthy cultural critique.⁴"If only we carried rocks instead of cameras, we'd look like revolutionaries." Consider these eyes rolled.

Considering the death of churches—of religion—and the growth of removed personal interaction amongst this demographic, it is little surprise that concerts, fashion and socialising have become the new sites of ritual—they are all that this generation can relate to at a broad level.

This fashion/music/media led aesthetic may be the rendering of subconscious longing for the return of the supernatural. The by-product of our intelligence is that human beings are hard-coded to look for further meanings beyond the physical, day-to-day realities we normally face. In this instance, though they may not even fully be aware of it, the early adopters are in fact members of the neon tribe.

Subcultural Backlash

2010-11-19T13:57:00.003+11:00

Criticism of the hipster is reaching fever pitch. But why? To what do we owe this displeasure?

Brigid Delaney has written article on the wave of hipster critique that appears to be cresting, a nice cap of foam forming, determined to crash down the 21st Century's first sub-cultural trend. As with every fashion-led avant-garde, the hipster is both universal and specific—a combination of imagined stereotypes and social-map anomalies, it has come to represent youth culture at a time when there are a series of questions being asked of cultural movements as a whole.

Most probably brought about by the recent publication of What Was The Hipster?¹Greif, M. et al: What Was The Hipster? A Sociological Investigation; n+1 Foundation (2010) (a brief excerpt is available), the article seeks to briefly open up the sub-culture's intricacies for the world to see. As with every newspaper article, it's light on heavy research or detail. It seems that the writer "hangs around" hipsters, but isn't one herself.

As a brief aside, my moment of hipsterdom revelation came at the markets roughly six months ago, although my involvement (as such a thing can be classified) stems to well before that moment. Walking around the markets is an engrossing activity in and of itself—sights, sounds and smells are constantly entertaining, let alone the additional joy of people watching. My partner and I had spotted a couple of low-grade hipsters wandering the aisles and were remarking on their appearance. And then it happened. The moment of realisation—we were those people. The clothes, the hair, the organic fruit and veg, the off brand Wayfarers, even the fact we were 20-somethings shopping at the markets all led to this single conclusion.

Regular readers, and those who know me, will understand that I am cautious of labels, and prefer sliding scales to black-and-white definitions. With that in mind, it's worth pointing out that although a taxonomist may place my partner and I firmly in the hipster australis melbournean family, we do not go anywhere nearly as far as some of our more esteemed internet colleagues.

To continue, I am wary of any sub-cultural definition, and particular references to the hipster have failed to grasp the full spectrum, as well as the longevity and metamorphoses, of this particular grouping. A hipster from Melbourne in 2010 would be an entirely new species of youth from that of the mid-2000's or earlier. Sure, the clothes have shifted from wifebeaters and aviators (guilty) to skinny-legs and wayfarers (still guilty), but there is a more fundamental difference here.

In particular reference to Australia, the contemporary hipster now fulfill's their role as the alpha subcultural group—that is to say, the most dominant of the vast seas of cultural diaspora that inhabit our metropolitan environments. While they have existed for a decade, their time in the sun is only coming around now. Previously we had emos, punks, goths... all variations on the broad church of the subcultural. And now we have the related backlash.

Hipster critique (of which there has already been a fair amount) has focused on their class, their race, their irony and, most of all, their supposed lack of originality. It is as though those who raise this last point seek to repudiate the nihilism that directly results from post-modernist thought, arguing that their generation was original in it's culture, and so this should be also.

It's hard not to see a little bit of tall poppy syndrome at play here—the particularly bilious critique offered by Burton-Bradley in The Hipster Has No Clothes smacks of someone bitching about a really great party they weren't invited to. Ultimately, as explored by sociologist Georg Simmel, this level of hate fuelled bile cannot be sustained—it is a futile exercise to criticise difference amongst the seemingly endless population of the metropolis.

Where quantitative increase of value and energy has reached its limits, one seizes on qualitative distinctions, so that, through taking advantage of the existing sensitivity to differences, the attention of the social world can, in some way, be won for oneself.²Simmel, George: The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903) p18

To paraphrase; the only way we can maintain our identity in the face of overwhelming numbers is by seizing on the small differences and emphasising them. Along with a long line of other sub-cultural movements, hipsters differentiate themselves with their clothing—perhaps the most visible, easiest to modify part of one's identity.

Critics like Burton-Bradley have focused on their lifestyle choices and apparent lack of originality, conveniently ignoring the lessons learned from the post-modern project. How are those raised in the zenith of post-modernist thought meant to be original—and how is it that those who level this critique at the hipster fail to see the bright neon of post-modernist critique? This leads us to conclude that their distaste for hipster lifestyle choices is merely a front for the real source of their outcry.

To that end, we have both hipsters and hipster-critiques pointing at each other, shouting: "I'm still here."

Regarding Digital Revolutions

2010-10-11T12:43:00.001+11:00

In a piece for the Age, Andrea Carson derides Twitter, at its worst, as little more than "a narcissistic medium of personal updates about nothing of consequence: a 'Daily Me' for a world that is obsessed with the individual and celebrity."¹Carson, Andrea: 'Vacuous, shallow, banal - don't believe the twype' in The Age, Monday, 11th of October, 2010

I think there's a fundamental lack of understanding at the heart of this critique—an element of disappointment in the supposed 'digital-revolution'. Whenever tech commentators say that this changes everything²I'm looking at you, Apple, one should be wary. I certainly haven't been immune from the the luscious refreshment of technology KoolAid—I've early adopted and enthused about a range of technologies over the years. However, there's a difference between being excited about new possibilities and think that those possibilities are going to change human nature.

In all this discussion surrounding Twitter, Facebook and the implications of social networking, it's worth remembering that these are just tools for communication—they change the method in which we communicate and share, but not the content. The real game changer has been the instantaneous nature of the communication, and even then it only allows the dissemination of content to a broader audience more immediately. While Carson is busy admonishing the lack of political commentary present on Twitter and blogs, the real reason for the lack of debate is staring right at us.

I tend to be of the opinion that technology merely replicates human nature, in all its guises. Technology is neutral. So, while there may indeed be a lack of political coverage on Twitter, perhaps this is because most people really aren't that interested in politics? Consider the demographic split of a tool like Twitter: approximately 50% of visitors to the site were aged 35 or under.³Business Insider, 11th of February, 2010 In other words, those whose views, values and opinions are least likely to be represented in political debate are also the least likely to cover political chicanery. Golf clap, indeed.

While Marshall McLuhan may have argued quite convincingly that the "medium is the message", there is a danger in focusing too heavily on the medium, to the detriment of the actual messages being sent. While technology is defined by how it is used, we are the ones who use it. If people are volunteering to spill vacuous, shallow and banal details into the void, don't blame the medium. Blame the people.

The Rise of the Non-Game Game

2010-10-07T16:54:00.009+11:00

I recently purchased a to-do list app for my iPhone. While this may not seem to be a revelation, there was something different about this app. It presented itself as a game.

As some of you have probably guessed by now, the app I'm referring to is the most excellent Epic Win—marketed as a way to "Level-Up Your Life", it takes the lessons learned from Blizzard's World of Warcraft¹For those not in the know (do you exist?), World of Warcraft is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game known for its addictive qualities and extreme popularity. and attempts to transplant the rewards gained grinding away at meaningless tasks to, well, meaningful tasks.

Essentially, each task is given an 'Epicness' rating by you, a completion date and categorised according to Strength, Stamina, Intelligence, Social or Spiritual. From there, once you complete a task, you gain experience points and your slightly camp avatar progresses on its journey, earning gold and delicious loot along the way. It genuinely works, too, adding that little bit of motivation to hustle through all those things that pile up throughout the day. I've tried so many to-do apps in an effort to get my life organised and all have failed bar Epic Win. And I love it for that.

What interests me, though, is this drive towards inserting 'game' elements into our everyday lives, as though we need to be entertained to get through it all. Additionally, most of what are deemed to be game elements are actually RPG elements, a particular sub-class of games "in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting"²From the ever reliable Wikipedia entry on Role Playing Games.—perfect fodder for online communities, where avatars (another borrowed 'gaming' feature) are already prevalent. Foursquare uses badges as a way to entice people to use its location-based services, granting them for obscure and possibly mind-numbing tasks. Gowalla uses a similar feature for a similar service.

Meta-games are an increasingly popular way of getting a 'long-tail' of participation—a loyal and reliant user base that uses the service simply for the secondary rewards it presents. Xbox Live achievements and Playstation Trophies function in this manner, presenting players with awards for completing challenges in their games. At work here is not gaming³As far as gaming can be defined, it requires goals, rules and interaction, either between players or the game itself.—not even close. This is data visualisation wrapped in a nice package. Yes, its possible to compare 'stats', but there can never be a victor. Unlike, say, Milton Bradley's Game of Life, the choices we make cannot be reduced finite values and quantified to decide who is a winner. Game mechanics require a winner, or a solution. These meta-games, as currently imagined, reduce x activity to y amount of points—and yet there is no actual winner from the meta-game, merely an ever increasing bar graph of how many hours spent using the service.

All of these implementations of progressive 'reward' do not actually reward the user beyond bragging rights—unlike actual games, they do not unlock extra functionality or improve the experience. Many are actually no different to the old Scouts' Badges that we've all received at one point or another throughout our childhood—mildly tacky, transitive rewards for real-world progress. Except Scouts is about learning to do things. Many games, and many meta-games, don't actually reward the player for real-world progress. Yes, you just became the mayor of your favourite bar—does this mean you're a better bartender now? Or does it merely show that you like to go to the same place a lot?

This all begs the question, of course, as to where we are headed with game-mechanics in real life. Tara offers this somewhat joking tweet: "Turns out, my motivation is points based. I think universities should adopt a similar system. Loot instead of HDs."⁴Permalink While this may be a ridiculous idea, we need be asking how best to use game-mechanics, and where their function can and should be implemented. Dan Hon, from advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy, argues that "we're here to create strong, provocative relationships between great companies and their customers. Games and new ways of storytelling are a fantastic and incredibly exciting way of doing that."⁵Hon, Dan: 'A Short Rant About Games, Play and Storytelling' in Welcome to Optimism, the Wieden + Kennedy blog: August, 2010 Games Games currently have advertising within them, but they are not, with a few possible exceptions, advertising in and of themselves. They are an entertainment medium—we don't watch TV for the ads. We probably won't play adver-games for the ads, either.

The sort of thinking that says that games are the way to reach millions of disaffected youth—a key demographic for advertising—relies on the idea that interactivity immediately makes things better. I'm still not sure that it does. While narrative gaming has held a number of truly potent moments for me, it has yet to match the storytelling power of some of the great films and novels, nor has it matched the interactive joy of pure game mechanics, that feeling of grinding against the play space. Anyway, got sidetracked.

My point is this—gaming is about pure mechanics. Story is a layer placed upon this mechanic, which is why describe gaming categories by what they do (first-person-shooter, third-person-platformer, role-playing-game, puzzle-game) and not necessarily what they're about. Consider Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption—both are third-person sandbox shooters. Both are from the same publisher. Both rely on the playing being both law-abiding and deviant. One is a contemporary gangster story and the other is a Western. And yet, if you enjoyed playing Grand Theft Auto IV, I'd almost guarantee you'll enjoy playing Red Dead Redemption.

Game mechanics, then, are about they way in which we interact with the world, and not the story that surrounds it.

Epic Win succeeds because it understands, at one level or another, that its purpose is to assist in getting mundane tasks done. It takes the standard RPG rewards for completing mundane tasks and bundles them into a functional and fun application. It is the only implementation of this thinking I have come across where the purpose of the meta-game and the base function are inextricably linked—Foursquare, Xbox Live, et al, don't do this. Instead, they provide a reward that in no way matches the experience. Sure, seeing your friends can seem like grinding, but most of the time its fun. The reward is in actually socialising, going to bars, venues and shops, in playing the games—not in the badges. I don't need motivation to do any of these things.

Epic Win is not designed to get users to compete for bragging rights, as the user is in complete control of how many tasks to place in the app and how much those tasks are worth. The reward to the user is tangible, in the sense that they have accomplished 'real-life' tasks. For this reason alone it is excellent.

Further reading:

Achievement Chore: Feature article from Kotaku on 'gamerscore' addiction.
Impotent Narrative: Extended discussion on two different ways of 'telling' story in games.

Wayshowing and Community Identity Part Three

2010-07-26T11:13:00.004+10:00

This is the final instalment in a series discussing the role of wayfinding in fostering community identity and involvement. Have a read of parts one and two first.

My project, Found, attempts to bridge the divide between wayfinding systems and cultural networks. That is to say, it attempts to view wayfinding systems as a form of community identity, where that identity is created by the interactions of people in various social groups and within a particular geographic area. The idea is that people would contribute their own recommendations for social and cultural activities within a given area, which would then be applied in a system around the project’s target site. Such a system would bypass some of the previously mentioned issues with contemporary wayfinding solutions—it is democratic, private and provides relevant information at the site where it is needed. It is also a direct expression of the community’s identity. There are, of course, problems with this approach. Firstly, wayfinding and sign systems exist for those who cannot find their way, and so a socially focused system would be of little use to, say, someone in desperate need of health care. A socially based, or crowd-sourced, system such as this would not be traditional wayfinding—it is a supplementary layer that sits on top of the already installed systems that exist within the metropolitan environment. In attempting to create such a system, and particularly within the limited amount of time available in an honours degree, there are a number of restrictions that must be placed upon the project.

One of these considerations was the geographical area that was to be used for the system, for which two main sites were considered. The site had to be relatively well populated to ensure a broad range of cultural pursuits, but small enough that it was going to be relatively easy to examine. For this reason, several sites on Melbourne’s inner city fringe were rejected—while suburbs such as St. Kilda, Richmond and Brunswick are cultural centres in their own right, there was concern that these environments are not used often enough for a truly broad data set to be built. Thus, the inner city, from Collins Street to Little Bourke Street across and then from Spring Street to Spencer Street, was chosen as the prospective site for the wayfinding system. There is no reason that such a system, if successful, could not be expanded to include Melbourne’s other suburbs, and the system should be designed in such a way as to take this expansion into account. Allowing anyone to update the information provided removes concerns that such a system would privledge those who dwell in the inner city, which is why an adaptable system that does not rely on expensive installations or kiosks is necessary. The downfall of such a system would be that people often don't understand the best way to navigate built, complex environments—while it may be nice to think that the broader population should become deeply involved in the wayshowing systems of their city, there is little chance of that happening.

At this stage, the system seeks to find a fine balance between control of information design, which has been a speciality of wayshowing, and an 'open source' style system that allows anyone to contribute to the information displayed. The solution—again, this is only a proposal—would involve taking recommendations for locations from the general public and designing those in a site specific manner. This could involve an up-dateable directory of information, small directional signs, postcards to be carried by users. Ultimately, a key part of the system will be the method of collecting data from the public, for which a simple website is a perfect solution. The directory could display the top ten recommended destinations for Summer 2010, Spring 2011, etc. Such a system allows me to find that balance between open source and control, while also granting the ability to have it be updated regularly. Additionally, there is a link here between the way the system works, with regular, community led updates, and the way communal identity shifts and changes over time. The question remains as to whether the posters, stickers and postcards should be left in their environments or removed at the end of the period—a case can be made for leaving evidence of the community's preferences over time, but there is a danger of simply increasing the visual clutter already present within the inner city.

As it currently stands, wayshowing is an expression of communal identity only in the fact that it appears within the community. Its static nature, and focus on providing pure information, means that there is little interaction between users and the wayfinding solution—it is a form of dictation and proclamation. While there have been a number of different approaches to providing users with an intimate experience, reflective of both their surroundings and their cultural activities, there has, as yet, been no solution that accurately reflects all aspects of these. If we add to this the minimalist aesthetic that flows through much of information design, there is little room left for individual cultural expression. And yet, there is potential for a wayfinding system to remove perceived barriers to entry for cultural pursuits and, in so doing, create a more closely knit communal identity. To do so, however, it must move beyond traditional wayfinding methods and embrace community interaction, and actively involve those who traditionally sit outside of wayfinding and information design.

Wayshowing and Community Identity Part Two

2010-07-23T23:54:00.009+10:00

Part One can be viewed here.

Traditional wayfinding, while very good at displaying information about physical space, is very bad at displaying similar information about relatively slowly evolving events, such as sites of social interaction. And although these traditional systems rely on unchanging signs that always point in the same direction, there are examples of wayshowing that make use of live data to guide people through space. A ‘parking guidance system’ that gives dynamic feedback about where to park was recently installed in a number of car parks across Melbourne—essentially, it gives binary feedback on whether or not a space is occupied, preceded by information regarding the number of spaces available in a given row or floor. ¹Indect: Parking Guidance System at Westfield Doncaster (2008) The system works well because it provides fluid information for a fluid use environment, allowing drivers to make decisions that are based on current data, and because it needs to show a very limited set of data—whether the space is empty or occupied. When presented with a larger range of options things become much more difficult. There are a couple of reasons as to why sign systems are traditionally used to display limited sets of data—the foremost being ease of use, but it is worth considering the relatively limited information palette that sign systems have to operate within. Gibson identifies only four types of signs at use within a wayfinding strategy: identification, directional, orientation and regulatory. ²Gibson, David in The Wayfinding Handbook: Information Design for Public Places (Princeton Architectural Press, New York: 2009) Directional signs, such as the parking guidance system, “need to be obvious and recognisable. Message content should be simple, coordinated for easy navigation through an entire facility, and based on a specific wayfinding strategy.” ³Gibson, David in The Wayfinding Handbook: Information Design for Public Places (Princeton Architectural Press, New York: 2009) Given the limitations faced by a stationary sign system, they are best used for directions and orientation in static environments. However, the contemporary city is increasingly fluid not only in structure but in use, where the cultural value of various sites rapidly changes across user groups and through time. A museum that may be relevant one day is reduced to the status of outsider, with the zeitgeist having moved on to another gallery, bar or venue, while a particular cultural or sub-cultural group may retain its peculiar qualities as it moves from one area to another. The installed nature of sign systems—particularly those that identify, orientate or direct—means that they cannot adjust as quickly as the city itself is changing. As previously mentioned, this is not necessarily problematic for the directional action of wayfinding. Architectural spaces do not change as rapidly as social spaces do, and so it only becomes challenging for a socially focused wayshowing system.

There are, of course, numerous examples of systems that attempt to engage with the cultural aspects of cities and society. Legible London is a key example, whereby pedestrians are shown surrounding attractions and how to get there. ⁴AIG London: Legible London: A Wayfinding Study (London: AIG, 2006) The problem with this method is that it falls into the same tropes as other sign systems by dictating to the public what is and what isn’t culturally relevant, neither can it be easily updated should these cultural centres change. The Deck of Secrets ⁵Matthews, Michelle, et al: Deck Of Secrets Series (Melbourne: Shopping Secrets, 2003–) faces a similar problem, although its status as a publication makes it a little easier to update. This dictation, or direction, doesn’t work, not just because of fears that certain cultural activities may be privileged over others, but also because people have different tastes—most of what appears within the guides appeals only to certain aspects of the community. When you assert that you are a voice of that community, it follows that there should be an avenue for that same community to provide feedback on the information contained within the system. Interactive media provides an avenue for just such a dialogue. Google Maps ⁶Rasmussen, L & Rasmussen, J: Google Maps (Google: Silicon Valley, 2005) via http://maps.google.com has developed from a relatively simple digital atlas into an interactive environment, where users can post reviews, recommendations, photos and videos that are then integrated into the maps. While this service is becoming increasingly mobile, full functionality still requires a desktop computer, meaning that the information is placed at a remove from the location. Following a similar path are Foursquare, ⁷Crowley, D and Selvadurai, N: Foursquare (Foursquare: New York, 2009) via http://www.foursquare.com Gowalla ⁶Alamofire: Gowalla (Alamofire: Austin, Texas, 2007) via http://www.gowalla.com and Yelp!, which attempt to leverage social media to build a network of recommended cultural pursuits. These are location based and digitally delivered services—they use the GPS abilities of modern smartphones to pull a user’s location and then provide them with not only surrounding points of interest, as with Google Maps, but allow them to add to, edit and contribute to those points in real-time. On top of that, these systems allow the user to see what other users are doing, and whether any of their close contacts are nearby. This layer of social information is useful in assisting people to find new things to do, and shows it to them in a geographically relevant manner. However, use of the service is restricted to those who have a GPS enabled smartphone that can access the application, and thus presents an expensive barrier to entry for many people. Also, given recent concerns over the way social media companies, in particular Facebook, are handling the private data of their users, there may be reservations about handing over such personal data to a third party. Also worth noting is the iFind Kiosk ⁹Abuzz: iFind Kiosk (installation, various sizes/locations, 2009) system—essentially an interactive directory board that places a map of the surrounding area on a large touch screen, and allows users to interact with it. The kiosk then shows the user’s preferred destination and the best route for them to follow. While the potential for this system to be used to show live updated data on the surrounding cultural landscape is huge, at this stage it has largely been deployed in shopping centres. Additionally, the system as it currently stands requires users to know exactly what they are searching for, and does not truly facilitate the act of discovery.

If a wayfinding system is to become part of, or representative of, a city’s cultural identity, then it is worth looking at the ideas behind relational aesthetics. Part of the functionality of a socially based system would come from the way people interact, rather than the way they move. May I Have Your Attention Please ¹⁰Bark Design: May I Have Your Attention Please (exhibition, London, 2009) started as a collection of phrases spoken in public throughout the United Kingdom—these phrases were then turned into an exhibition that constantly updated and changed, reflecting the nature of public discourse. The designers chose to use the visual language of signage to reduce the complexities of human language and discussion to simple ‘verbal bites’. “Words in private tend to be emotional, subjective, expressive and candid. In contrast, when we are in a public space, most people filter, subdue and moderate language, we become more objective.” ¹¹Bark Design: May I have Your Attention Please (Bark Design: London: 2009) The way people interact in public space is vastly different to private actions—this is important when considering wayfinding and relational aesthetics because of the sway public space holds over the nature of installed signage. If we consider sign systems as a form of discourse and interaction between architecture (and therefore architect), wayshowing (and therefore wayshowing designer) and the public, then the reasons behind the directive language in sign systems become clear. Although interactivity in sign systems holds an ability for a two way discourse—a one-to-many broadcast system, whereby you can select the content you wish to engage with—socially based systems offer a multi-form discourse. A many-to-many system has obvious advantages in increased interaction and relational use. Sensis attempted to use social interaction, and an air of exclusivity, to drum up business for the Yellow Pages, by creating a campaign, and restaurant, called Hidden Pizza. Pamphlets were sent out to houses in the area around the restaurant, located just of Brunswick St, in Fitzroy, that simply stated “Free Pizza... if you can find our restaurant” and to “look us up the way you would any other business.” ¹²Sensis: Free Pizza Pamphlet (2009) While comparisons to Tiravanija’s Untitled (Free) ¹³Tiravanija, R: Untitled (Free) (installation, 303 Gallery, New York, 1992) are inevitable, here the use of free food is more about creating a brand image, about getting people to use a particular service, and less about fostering positive interactions. And while there were undoubtedly some positive interactions, the whole enterprise is stamped with the Yellow Pages branding, meaning that any sense of community identity that could be created from such an event is overshadowed by the brand’s message. In order to participate, the event forced people to forego already established wayfinding systems—the concept is based on its refusal to advertise its location within these systems. There are also perceived barriers to entry with regards to events such as these—examination of the video produced regarding the restaurant reveals that it is largely young, relatively affluent people that attended, and yet one would imagine that the prospect of a free meal would have been quite enticing to the homeless and disadvantaged. This shows that only those with access to the technology required to find the event (essentially, a home, a phone and an internet connection) were able to do so. Wayshowing typically operates as a barrier-free medium—that is, the only thing required to make use of the system is to be able to understand it. What the Free Pizza example indicates quite strongly is that wayshowing is not tied to any one medium—unlike painting or sculpture, the best wayfinding system is one that enables the user to find their way most easily. This post-medium condition ¹⁴Although to refer to it as such is a little inaccurate, for, as mentioned, wayshowing has never been tied to one specific medium. enables the use of a wide variety of solutions to any given wayfinding problem—indeed, almost any element in the environment can, and has been, used for the purposes of wayfinding. What is interesting, however, is that the interaction between users and the system has not been used to facilitate greater interaction between people, and probably goes to the core of wayfinding philosophy. Often systems are developed so that people can find their own way, with minimal assistance from staff or volunteers. A communally focused piece of wayshowing should break from this and encourage users to interact with the people around them. “I’m not really concerned with accuracy. Of course, it’s important to fall back on accurate data, but what interests me most is the storytelling.” ¹⁵Kuo, A in Fresh Dialogue Nine: Graphic Data Revealed

In the next, and final instalment (found here), I will detail how I hope to address some of the concerns raised in the previous two entries.

Wayshowing and Community Identity Part One

2010-07-21T12:28:00.020+10:00

This essay forms part one of a series discussing the impact of wayshowing on community identity. Part two will go up later this week.

Wayfinding design often leaves out social interaction as part of its function, remaining an expression of direction, it does little to inform us of the nature of that destination. This essay will argue that if wayfinding is become an expression of community identity it must move away from its signage and architectural roots and consider social space as part of its brief. It will examine traditional methods of wayfinding, assess whether these methods are still relevant for today’s society, and question whether it can represent the cultural landscape of a city. It will then look at social media as an example of the sort of shift which traditional content delivery has undergone, before considering a series of examples that are relevant to the project. Finally, it will discuss likely directions and problems with specific regard to the project’s proposed goals. Firstly, it is important to distinguish the act of wayfinding, whereby we search for directions and orientate ourselves within a space, from the systems that are design to facilitate such an action. Per Mollerup puts it quite succinctly: “Wayshowing relates to wayfinding as writing relates to reading and as speaking relates to hearing. The purpose of wayshowing is to facilitate wayfinding.” ¹Mollerup, Per from Wayshowing: A Guide To Environmental Signage Principles and Practice (Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2005) This essay will refer to the terms ‘wayshowing’ or ‘wayfinding systems’ throughout, and the two are slightly different. While wayshowing may be as simple as giving directions on the street, wayfinding systems contain a level of designed intent.

Wayfinding springs up wherever it is not clear where we should travel, and becomes particularly important in large, metropolitan environments, where there are little obvious cues as to how to navigate a space. The near magical transport of elevators and underground rail networks (where travel occurs with a disorienting lack of reference to distance, orientation or location) creates an environment that makes it is necessary for experienced travellers to be able to quickly and easily gain their bearings. As a result, wayfinding has necessarily been a static medium—physical environments do not change that often—while its function is to broadly inform as many people as possible of their surroundings. This distance between the organic space and the signed space has come about through the traditional bonds between architecture and wayshowing—both have traditionally been about making statements upon the environment, a plane of intrusion upon ‘natural’ space, and are organised and deployed by those in positions of power.

“The architect is supposed to construct a signifying space wherein form is to function as signifier is to signified; the form, in other words, is supposed to enunciate or proclaim the function.” ²Lefebvre, Henri: ‘The Production of Space’ in Architecture Theory Since 1968, ed. K. Michael Hays. (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The MIT Press, 2000) It follows, then, that wayfinding systems are as much about guidance as control—where architectural space implicitly controls our actions, wayshowing is the explicit rendering of these implicit directions. If we accept architecture as a cultural pursuit, then surely information architecture, of which wayshowing is a subset, must hold a similar position—it is the graphic representation and interpretation of data. The possibility that this sort of information delivery can come to represent a culture was central to the initial explorations for the project. While graphic memes and tropes certainly form part of the cultural landscape, and these are certainly present within sign systems, more interesting is the way that this representation of space contributes to understandings of space. Secondly, the organisation of data often sits at a remove from its graphic interpretation—that this is referred to as the ‘strategy’ is important, for it will become the “functional framework for the system, explaining how it will provide information and directions for a place and how it will address user requirements.” ³Gibson, David in The Wayfinding Handbook: Information Design for Public Places (Princeton Architectural Press, New York: 2009)

This focus on usability before aesthetics has meant that a modernist, utilitarian aesthetic tends to dominate wayfinding systems, where the legibility of the signs is considered far more important than how they look. These systems are more than signs, and it is here that architecture comes into play again—Melbourne’s city grid works remarkably well as a system for finding one’s way around with minimal signage or mapping, relying instead on the artifice of the grid as a guide. As a result, most wayfinding within the built environment of the city is a layer placed on top of a previous, pedestrian focused system. It is in this manner that wayshowing forms an integral part of the urban environment, influencing not only the way we use space but the way in which it appears as well.

Here the static nature of wayshowing comes into play once again, and flies in the face of the migrational nature of the modern metropolis. Approximately one quarter of Australia’s population was born overseas ⁴Australian Bureau of Statistics: 2008 Year Book Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics: Canberra, 2008) Table 7.39, and Melbourne, like the rest of the country, has seen waves of immigration. Although this is reflected in the city’s architecture, culture and lifestyle, it does not flow into the wayfinding system, which maintains the facade of pure information. This policy of reduction that appears to exist within contemporary signage—the reduction of complexity—is useful for those who wish to find their way rapidly and with minimal assistance. Andrew Kuo is an artist and designer who works with information graphics, reducing complex moments in life to the simplified aesthetic popular within wayfinding and information architecture. In particular, Reviewed Text Message Reviews ⁵Kuo, A: Reviewed Text Message Reviews (digital illustration, 2008) in Fresh Dialogue Nine: In/Visible: Graphic Data Revealed (Princeton Architectural Press, New York: 2009) turns tiny moments of joy into rational and joyless information. To borrow from Marxist thinking on politics, an an-aesthetic stance is still an aesthetic. “The city’s cold heart is thus surrounded by the ebb and flow of Mediterranean life.” ⁶Crabbe, Chris W. in Beilharz and Hogan: Sociology: Place, Time & Division (Oxford University Press: Melbourne, 2006

Contributing to this cold heart is the fact that cities have become places that are “increasingly made up of dispersed, low-density developments; the plexus is dominated by an automobile-highway system that connects but simultaneously disconnects us.” ⁷Levinson & Krizek in Planning for Place and Plexus: Metropolitan Land Useand Transport (Routledge: New York, 2008) This dominance of the automobile only serves to reinforce the natural disinclination for members of the metropolis to interact ⁸Simmel, Georg; ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ in The Sociology of Georg Simmel (Free Press: Glencoe, Illinois, 1950)—cars cocoon us from having to engage with the broader community, creating a hermetically sealed environment that allows a break from social interruption. While this may well apply for those who dwell in the outer suburbs, the fact is that the inner city remains a cultural centre, and yet we find the same sign systems installed in both places. This repetition does not allow for differing interpretations of the space—the generalised directions for how to travel through such a space are key to our understanding of it, and to have these directions determined before we even set foot in the space leaves little room for personal exploration.

That wayfinding systems are so resistant to change is not surprising—they are static where culture is fluid, and represent the views of those with the power to have such systems built. “Environmental signs are generally commissioned by those in power. Rulers and owners use signs to inform and regulate society. Signs—as a rule—are signs of authority.” ⁹Mollerup, Per: Wayshowing: A Guide To Environmental Signage Principles & Practice (Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2005) While the standards based design of sign systems attempts to be as inclusive as possible to those with disabilities, it does reinforce the cultural majority. More accurately, in attempting to represent everybody, it ends up representing no one. Is it possible, then, for a wayfinding system to become a form of cultural idenity?

Continued in part two.

Design Precedent

2010-03-09T23:49:00.006+11:00

A precedent may motivate a particular intention in a design process, drive a desire to deviate from norms, or challenge the convention of garment functions. These are precursors to design ideas, for long lasting innovations that change forever we consider the medium of fashion. Often introduced to mixed and sceptical reviews, these precedents hold significance for several decades of fashion; their true influence is never blatantly obvious in the commercial world, but seeps into the culture of fashion academies to inspire future designers.

The impact is far more profound and compelling than a passing style fascination, but alters the way design is understood. Communication of these designs is often through publications that celebrate design ingenuity. In libraries throughout the world, books documenting these innovations show the wear and tear of hundreds of followers who have pored over these quintessential moments transmitting a complex network of inspiration and translation.
¹Didactic panel from The Endless Garment: The New Craft of Machine Knitting, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2010

Precedent is an interesting phenomenon in graphic design—while we may strive to be different at every turn, there is no escaping the fact that your idea has probably been used hundreds of times before. As a result, it feels as though there is little room for true innovation. Think of the impact the modernist works of Josef Müller Brockmann or Jan Tschichold have had on graphic artists over the past century, and is becomes apparent that modernist minimalism has become little more than a style to be replicated with little regard to the content of the work. And though design studios like Experimental Jetset have created truly interesting works that push the boundaries of both the style and of graphic design itself, there is a vast horde of work that simply seeks to replicate that which has gone before it.

It's interesting that we don't see as much replication of the deconstructivist style within design. It may be too soon for such a movement to truly appear, but, for me, looking at the works present within many 1990's textbooks creates a feeling of true revulsion.²Have a look at Ellen Lupton's excellent Mixing Messages for a stronger idea of the sort of design I'm talking about. This is not a reaction against the theories put forward by some of the works presented, but against their particular style. The designer is often told that they should have a process not a style, and yet most of the stuff that we find attractive or interesting is based purely upon the dominant style.

If we are creators of visual language we need to be aware of style as much as substance—it's style that gets the attention, after all. That stylistic design could be much more powerful if it is backed with great substance is not in doubt—the successes and failures of the modernist project were based not upon its style but its goals.

Having talked with people over the last few days, I think it's possible that rather than moving on to the next grand idea, there is a back-swing agains post-modernist style. I'm sceptical that any new movement will spring from the ideas of the Altermodern—it seems as though it's post-modernism for the internet savvy. This is doubly true for designers, whose concerns are perhaps broader than those of artists. Instead, I think we will see designers attempt to find a balance between style and substance—that is, create work with lasting, positive and measurable impact that also embraces the fractured nature of contemporary aesthetics.

Finally, I want to ask why is it that we keep looking for the next revelatory manifesto? It might be part of human nature, but this constant waiting for a post-post-modernism seems a little pathetic. Have we really considered that this might be it? One of the most poetic parts of atheist thought, at least for me, is the acceptance of finality. To quote Richard Dawkins, "...when you say, "Is this it?" How much more do you want? I mean this is wonderful."³Q And A, ABC TV, 09.03.2009, transcript available at http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2831712.htm?show=transcript or by simply clicking this reference number Surely, as designers, artists, et al., we can learn from this. Maybe post-modernism is all that there is. And that's pretty good.

Gaga And The Postmodern Condition

2010-03-07T17:38:00.015+11:00

If you like, you can read a brief ^NOTEI thought long and hard about how to do this first post for the new Convert To Shape. What would it be on? How would I write it? Should it be more formal, and appear as a proper essay, or would it be an extended piece of commentary? Perhaps these questions should have been resolved before beginning writing, but here we are. Inevitably, it is the content that has directed which way the good ship HMAS Convert To Shape will head. on this first piece.

Initially, I wanted this post to be a comparative assessment of the video works of Lady Gaga and Matthew Barney—who is the most post-modern? Although amusing, it turns out that the idea didn't have much legs—it became pretty clear that the latest pop sensation seemed more willing to accept post-modern concepts of identity and originality. However, her acceptance and co-option of consumer capitalism and the multi-faceted identity have combined with all consuming media attention to create something with more mainstream impact than anything Barney has done. To that extent, Gaga is a little less avant-garde, but, as a result, a little happier within the constraints of the commercial realm. Perhaps more than anyone since Madonna, she understands that her fame requires a near constant state of regeneration, and that she needs to be doing something new to keep the eye of the world focused upon her.

While this seems all too familiar for those who take even a passing glance a popular culture, what is interesting about the rise of Gaga is that it seems to be the first time that mass culture has accepted the post-modern aesthetic and identity. Sure, we've had artists who have stage names, and even those who go through a multitude of phases, each with a slightly different bent. But none have captured the imagination of the public as Lady Gaga has. And so we must ask us why—what has changed that the general public now embrace what was once seen as the strange posturing of the social vanguard?

It may be obvious to most, but with the meteoric rise of social media comes a different sort of interaction. We are more used to dealing with people in abstract terms—people with and without avatars, people who flat out pretend to be someone else, and all sorts in between. The idea of someone possessing multiple, somewhat false identities is something that the internet generation has either acclimatised to or grown up with. While the internet offers plenty of room for social deception and split personalities, social media has led the charge towards the unification of offline and online identities. Facebook, preceded by myspace and Friendster, has allowed us to interact with our friends and colleagues in a real way—it allows us to virtually share our experiences, and to talk about those experiences in a lasting and meaningful way.

While this may sound quite utopian, social media differs from physical interaction in a key way: we are still communicating via avatars. We are meant to accept that the image presented to us on the screen is a facsimile not only of the person's image, but of their thoughts and emotions as well—we essentially fool ourselves into thinking of the representation of reality as reality itself. This is a remarkably effective lie—it has been known for a long time that people will behave differently when physically removed from the person they are interacting with. While common knowledge of internet forums may have clued you in to this factor of human psychology, we've actually known about it since the sixties. The Milgram ExperimentsDefinitely worth looking up. Don't worry—I'll wait. Also worth noting, but not mentioned in the wiki, is that subjects were more likely to shock when the learner was removed from the subject. show that people are more likely to commit acts of violence to those who are physically removed from them.

So what does this have to do with Gaga? I have a theory that Gaga is, essentially, the virtual avatar rendered physical. The outlandish clothing, strange pronouncements and hyper-real performances are all part of Stefani Germanotta's avatar. While we may know of her background, much in the way we might someone in online forum, the way the public interacts with her is analogous to they way we interact with an avatar. Even compared to the vast mental distances we are required to travel in order to relate to, say, Beyoncé, we are still able to do it because we view her as a person. With Gaga, we are essentially, and forcibly, removed from her humanity. The clips below illustrate my point pretty well—the first is for Beyoncé, undoubtedly a pop superstar, the second for Lady Gaga. Look at the way each of them is portrayed, with particular reference to the way the world is constructed around them.

We can immediately see that the way Bad Romance treats Lady Gaga's identity is much more surreal. She is portrayed not only as something wholly unnatural, but as a fractured personality—throughout the video, each emotion is given a different form. When we compare that to Beyoncé's clip, we can see that the different physical manifestations are given a grounded base, that of the dream world. We are told not to worry, that this is merely the expression of her subconscious thought, and assume that at the end of it she will wake and continue on with her day to day life. This is not the case with Gaga. Her identity is constructed wholly within the reality of the video clip—there is no rational reason given within the video for the disintegrated personality present. We must assume, then, that these are representations of a larger self. They are avatars. And so it is with Gaga's public identity—it follows the path laid out for it within the video clips.

That she constructs for herself an alternate reality for the public is no different to other performers, but she has done it early and wholly. David Bowie springs to mind as a good example of this, but, even though Ziggy Stardust was an amazing performance, we had already met the man behind the curtain. Gaga has risen to fame as an alternate identity, and the public hasn't (yet) met the controller behind it, and so we cannot associate the strangeness of her actions with a real person. Gaga has become a person in her own right, even if she is just a shell.

What all of this points to is the long accepted reality that post-modernity is no more avant-garde. While the works of Barney still have the potential to shock, the public has accepted the fractured nature of identity to the extent that we are able to comfortably consume, and relate to, the products of a multifaceted shell. We could say, then, that post-modern thought has integrated itself into society in such a way that it is no longer a discernible part of the larger whole. And that's a good thing, because it means that the next wave should be on it's way very soon. Fingers crossed, it's already here.

New Look New Purpose

2010-03-02T20:30:00.006+11:00

The past week has seen sweeping changes on the inside and out of Convert To Shape. Emboldened with a new look, courtesy of an unfortunate pilot error, this blog sets sail in a new direction.

With the painful creation of my website, there was no reason (nor motivation) for posting about new work on this page. So, what to do with it? There was no real reason to keep the blog if I wasn't going to put anything on it, and it seemed a shame to waste all the time and effort put into it. The solution is simple—this blog will do what blogs do best. It will present writing. On graphic design. On art. On interesting things.

There are a couple of new features coming, too. Just wait for the new post.

In the meantime, read the archives, get comfy, and enjoy reading. On the internet.

Gallery Review: The August Shows at Platform

2009-09-06T17:08:00.042+10:00

Platform, the artist run initiative situated underneath Flinders Street Station, is a gallery that lives in the subconscious — most people know that there’s something there, they just don’t acknowledge it.

In this state it lingers, updating its work regularly, but never really becoming a place to go to. It is a transitory and temporal space. Accordingly, any review of a show at Platform requires a discussion of its location and format. This is not a typical gallery — it was part of Melbourne’s public transport hub long before it was an art space, and is primarily an easy way for commuters to travel from Flinders Street Station to the rest of the city. It is also a small shopping arcade, comprised of small boutiques for fashion, music, zines and, oddly, a barber; only after passing through the sterility of the train station and the underground shops that you reach the gallery itself. While most galleries remove themselves from the public space, Platform is different. What occurs here is a breakdown of the traditional gallery format, a challenge to conventional curatorship and common ways of viewing art.

The exposure for artists exhibiting here is theoretically enormous, with thousands of people ‘visiting’ the gallery each week. However, those who visit Platform are not necessarily there to view art — many are on their way to work, and, on my observation, spend an average of 30 seconds traversing the entire space. Roughly half of those passing through look at the art directly, and only a few of those will stop to examine at a particular piece. The success or failure of exhibitions at Platform therefore rests on their ability to break through the joint barriers of a challenging space and the blasé attitude of the modern metropolis. This attitude is an inherent part of the metropolitan environment — writing at the turn of the last century, sociologist Georg Simmel argued that the metropolis has created an environment which forces the individual to become immune to “the rapid telescoping of changing images, pronounced differences within what is grasped at a single glance, and the unexpectedness of violent stimuli.” ¹Simmel, Georg; 'The Metropolis and Mental Life' in The Sociology of Georg Simmel(Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois, 1950), p. 414 While it could be argued that all art has to overcome this reflexive attitude, Platform’s peculiar location makes it all the more likely to be ignored — for art to be noticed here it must force itself, almost violently, upon the viewer.

Additionally, the method of display at the gallery places yet another hurdle in the way of successful art — each piece is displayed in a window, much as an expensive item would be displayed in a gift shop. These cabinets not only limit the scale of the works that can be shown, they change the nature of those works. The most successful pieces have become installations that engage with not only the odd gallery space, but the window in which they are placed as well. With all these limitations, one would expect that art displayed at Platform is doomed to failure, and yet nothing could be further from the truth — these oddities create a space that is intriguing and unique amongst Melbourne’s galleries. The soft pink walls and dingy concrete floor at first seem lack lustre and inappropriate, but soon become quite charming, counter balancing the contemporary nature of the work with a run down art-deco aesthetic. This collision of styles lends weight to the idea that Platform is an intrinsically post-modern gallery — it is not just the work that “uses and abuses, installs and then subverts, the very concepts it challenges.” ²Hutcheon, Linda; Theorising The Postmodern Towards A Poetics, in Jencks, Charles (editor) The Post-Modern Reader (Academy Editions, London, 1992) p. 76 Here the gallery appropriates the surrounding architecture and uses it for its own gain, relying on the public transport network to supply visitors, while at the same time it separates itself from and critiques the system that creates such a network. Most work on display is heavily context driven, and, as with the latest iteration of Matt Shaw’s semi-permanent installation Underground Garden III,³Shaw, Matt; The Underground Garden III (2009), installation of plants (grevillia), soil, rocks, burnt logs; it often functions as a comment on the commercial and metropolitan environment that surrounds it. In this case, the gallery becomes a host to a tiny garden, “a slice of forest recently burned in the Black Saturday bushfires.” ⁴Shaw, Matt; The Underground Garden III (2009), didactic panel That the garden is contained by the window that surrounds it highlights the way in which the city’s suburban fringe, now readily accessible via public transport, has grown and impacted heavily on the environment around it.

Matt Shaw — Underground Garden III

A similar notion is explored in Claire Gallagher’s Absence Of The Inner ⁵Gallagher, Claire; Absence Of The Inner (2009), installation of glass tank, potted plants, taxidermy birds, taxidermy fox, animal bones, wire, string, fluorescent tubes, dirt; 200 cm x 90 cm & various sizes installation for Sample, a cabinet at Platform dedicated to showing the work of artists under the age of 25. In this piece life flows around the man-made glass tank, a constant struggle between order and chaos. While the piece attempts to illustrate the human desire to control our environment,⁶Gallagher, Claire; Absence Of The Inner (2009), didactic panel Gallagher’s assemblage of living plants and dead animals is, due partially to their taxidermic state, a simulacrum. It becomes monument to the destruction of an ecosystem that not only never existed in Australia, it never truly existed anywhere in the world. To quote Derrida, it is “the copy of a copy. With the exception that there is no longer any model, and hence no copy.” ⁷Derrida, Jacques; Dissemination (1972), quoted in Ulmer, Gregory; The Object of Post-Criticism, in Foster, Hal (editor) The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (The New Press, New York, 1998), p. 104 This idea is explored further in The Myth by Dominic Kavanagh, an installation of a supposed fossil uncovered in the Morrocan desert that points to an extinct race of giant wooden bipeds. ⁸Kavanagh, Dominic; The Myth (2009) installation of acrylic paint, wood, sticks, sand, mdf board, rope, plants, curtains; 400 cm x 150 cm Here Kavanagh plays with the concept of the simulacrum, creating a fake history for ‘Perkin’s Leg’ and the professor behind its discovery — it attempts to question the way in which we view museum pieces as exact and true histories, and reinforces post-modernist ideas about truth and narratives. While The Myth is visually stunning, it also offers a scathing epistemological attack on the museum — it reminds the viewer that “should the fiction disappear, there is nothing left of the Museum but ‘bric-a-brac,’ a heap of meaningless and valueless fragments of objects which are incapable of substituting themselves … for their representations.” ⁹Donato, Eugenio; The Museum’s Furnace: Notes Towards a Contextual Reading of ‘Bouvard and Pécuchet’ (1979), quoted in Crimp, Douglas; On the Museum’s Ruins, in Foster, Hal (editor) The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (The New Press, New York, 1998), p. 57 In other words, the objects in museums are nothing without the histories ascribed to them, and that these histories which we rely on are little more than short fictions.

Dominic Kavanagh — The Myth

There is a strong sense of anachronism present throughout the entirety of The August Shows, and is particularly apparent in Repeat Repeat, a group show which examines the ideas of repetition and lack of originality. “Everywhere simulation builds upon simulation, everything we do has been done before. Leaving a mark and making ourselves visible takes on slightly humorous tones in amidst the sheer amount of stuff. Any attempt is bound to be futile, redundant and perverse.” ¹⁰Cruickshank, Adam, et al; Repeat Repeat (Platform, 2009), didactic panel This harshness of this nihilistic approach to art is lessened through the way in which this group of artists approach their work — each piece is a testament to the near obsessive process of each artist in this show, and, while the style of their responses varies wildly, there is a strong sense of cohesion between the works. Rachel Hooper’s One Ham Sandwich ,¹¹Hooper, Rachel; One Ham Sandwich (2009) twelve panels, acrylic on canvas; complete set 220 cm x 90 cm and its placement opposite Hooper’s own One Landscape,¹²Hooper, Rachel; One Landscape (2009) twelve panels, acrylic on canvas; complete set 220 cm x 90 cm recalls the work of Gustave Courbet — specifically The Trout ¹³Courbet, Gustave; The Trout (1873) oil on canvas; 87 cm x 54 cm — in its glorification of the everyday. Not content with merely reiterating what has gone before, Hooper breaks up the image into smaller panels, and, in doing so, she not only shows off her process (each panel would have to be painted individually) but also hints at the way in which each image is a simulation and repetition of another. This reduction continues in Annika Koops’s Mixed Mythologies ¹⁴Koops, Annika; Mixed Mythologies (2009) acrylic on canvas, sgraffito with black acrylic on board; various sizes partially a re-imagining of traditional religious icons through a wireframe aesthetic, partially a transformation of videogame items into traditional, academic paintings. According to Koops “there is an inherent paradox to these images, a cyclical redundancy”, ¹⁵Koops, Annika; Mixed Mythologies (2009) didactic panel whereby meaning is constantly stripped away, and the imagery quickly loses its religious overtones, reducing itself to surface.

Anna Koops — Mixed Mythologies

With names like “Triple Power Push Pop” and “New Year Resolutions (To The Death)”, Adam Cruikshank's Enhanced Awareness Campaign ¹⁶Cruikshank, Adam; Enhanced Awareness Campaign (2009) discarded trophy pieces and assorted consumer detritus; various sizes is an eclectic celebratory offering to the lords of consumer-capitalism. By using the discarded objects of mass-production, Cruikshank attempts to critique the society of consumption that brought about the latest recession — in one, the dismembered corpses of the figures that traditionally adorn such trophies (the trophy proletariat?) lie scattered about, covered in fake blood, tossed aside and forgotten. While these objects are captivating, one cannot help but escape the feeling that they have seen all of this before. These trophies, then, are emblematic of the problems that face a show like Repeat Repeat — when the subject of your work is an examination of the lack of originality in art, the overwhelming impression is that you are merely another artist who has “maneuvered themselves into this particular position of paradox — where they are condemned to repeating, as if by compulsion, the logically fraudulent original.” ¹⁷Krauss, Rosalind; The Originality Of The Avant-Garde in Wallis, Brian; Art After Modernism (The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1984) p. 21 The artists in Repeat Repeat appear to have struck on a way around this — their ironic brand of humour is directed not just against the traditional bogeymen of the art world, but at themselves and their process. While this is apparent in all of the works presented in the show, it is perhaps best shown in the work of Carly Fischer. You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth ¹⁸Fischer, Carly; You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (2009) paper, foamcore and adhesives; various sizes is a whirlwind of perfect built destruction, a papercraft homage to the commodification of dysfunction. Here, even cigarette butts and maple leaves, in all their bent and burnt glory, are painstakingly recreated out of paper — the work becomes schizophrenic, in one moment accepting mass-produced culture and its icons, in the other rejecting it.

Carly Fischer — You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth

This dual identity is what makes Repeat Repeat such a suitable show for Platform to host — both are caught between a need to accept the dominant social order and a desire to reject it wholeheartedly. As mentioned earlier, the most successful pieces at this gallery are those which integrate strongly with their environment. As is the case with Repeat Repeat, this integration is more than a simple physical melding of work and space — it forges is a psychical link with gallery, accepting its philosophy and its limitations, and works with them to great effect.

Frillsplosion

2009-09-05T15:19:00.007+10:00

Just finished a new banner for Ellen & Tara's lovely little recipe blog, A Whistle And A Milkshake.

They've got some really nice home-style cooking up on there, so I wanted to make their new banner reflect their particular taste in food and music. The solution? Gill Sans with some Art Nouveau leanings.

It's an... M

2009-07-24T11:00:00.009+10:00

The City of Melbourne unveiled a new logo this week, and it's already being described as the Yellow Peril's second coming—perhaps appropriate given the stylistic similarities. It's been labelled by one local talkback radio station as 'logogate'. The public, apparently, hates it.

Writing in the Age yesterday, Anson Cameron made some jokes based around it's cost—namely that, as a writer, the most you could hope to get paid for a word $3. This, then, was a letter for $240,000. Coverage extended onto Brand New and the AGDA member's site—a small internet survey on Brand New suggests the support for the logo amongst graphic designer's was overwhelmingly positive.

So where does the level of disconnection between the public and the design profession occur? Why do we have two such vastly differing opinions for one single logo? I think it can be put down to two things.

Firstly, the general public has little interest in graphic design—any designer could hardly count number of times they've had to explain what it is we actually do. This lack of interest comes from the natural design inclination to hide the process behind the result—a magic trick is always more impressive if you don't tell someone how you did it—and the closed loop nature of design communication. We talk to each other in such a way that discourages exterior critique, and we commit this exclusion because we feel that the public is not qualified to have an opinion on our work, or that their opinion is not as important as that of our peers.

It's a two way street, though: at least some of this disinterest comes from the fact that what we do is seen as 'surface' work. We are the icing on the cake—pretty and sweet, but ultimately unsatisfying. If we accept this as the standard public attitude, it's no wonder we get articles like this in the Herald Sun or, horrifyingly, public competition and disparaging comments about the cost of design. It's clear from these articles that we need a way of improving the visual language of the public, but, perhaps more importantly, we also need a clear way of telling them how much it costs to get something designed.

The $240,000 fee is the real sticking point in the debate. All the public sees is a quarter of a million spent on a fat, blocky M with some lines drawn on it. They'll say things like 'my 4yr old could've done that' and then ask about ratepayers and arts funding. They don't realise that more goes on behind the scenes than a simple fat, blocky M, and, yes, someone actually tries to make a living off doing this. I'm not sure how many people Landor had working on this, but $240,000 for a complete rebranding doesn't seem astronomical to me.

Secondly, for designers in Melbourne, there's the Sydney issue. As we continue to face the effects of the economic downturn (and will do so for some time), design business is struggling. Smaller, local studios have barely enough work to get by and are simply not replacing the staff that leave, while many more are turning to self-directed projects just so they can have something to do. To see a big, local contract go to a multi-national located in Sydney, of all places, hurts. It hurts even more when you realise that Melbourne has built something of a reputation for being the design capital of Australia.

A study by Design Victoria showed the amazing strength of the design industry in Victoria, and the benefits of using those resources. It's sad to see Melbourne City Council ignore the recommendations of this report and ship out their design to Landor when there are so many talented firms in Melbourne that could have done a logo that truly represented us a city, rather than us as Federation Square.

Fever

2009-07-09T12:01:00.009+10:00

I still didn't post the other day as promised, and I don't really want to turn this into a video blog, but I'm going to share a couple of videos with you instead of showing some new work. This partially a result of visiting family in Canberra, but is mostly due to laziness on my part.

I've been attempting to come up with a personal identity regime, which is proving surprisingly difficult and time-consuming. It's very hard to define yourself in a clear and simple way, which is why it seems that many designers choose simple sans serif identities that have little personality of their own. I've set out to try something different and it's not going too well so far.

At the same time I've been really enjoying Fever Ray's self-titled debut album (better known as Karin Dreijer Andersson, one half of Swedish duo The Knife)—it really deserves a good listen to, particularly if you enjoy M83's more atmospheric work from Before the Dawn Heals Us.

The construction of an alternate identity seems like an engaging exercise—it basically allows you free reign to do what if you like without worrying about how it reflects on you. With that, I'd like to show you the first three videos from her album, because I think they show a very strong sense of identity that comes from separating your public identity from your private one. Oh, I recommend watching them in order. Enjoy!

Deadline

2009-06-23T23:38:00.004+10:00

So I know I haven't posted for a while—the end of semester has seen to me in a big way and I've been enjoying some time off from all things design. Tomorrow, though, is another day! Folios are due for collection, which means grades, hopes dashed or created and also Transformers. And a return to designing things. Come back Thursday for a look at what I've been doing.

Hopefully this video will make up for my posting tardiness. Bonus points for picking who the music is by.

via swissmiss

Last Week of Classes

2009-06-07T13:05:00.007+10:00

The last week of classes has been interesting—not as stressed as I was last year, and yet have more work to do. I was part of a group show at uni that was organised by the most affable Tristan Main. Tristan gave us a phrase—"Typography Is..."—and asked us to respond with a single word on an A0 black and white poster. Here's the low quality iPhone photo: I also finished off a subject at uni with a mock presentation. It involved creating a studio brand identity. The chosen name was Studio Mongoose, and my initial approach was to create an identity that simply had a mongoose as it's image. While I was doing my research, however, I found that they move in a very particular way while hunting, and so I attempted to recreate that sense of movement and speed. Following on from that, the presentation required a series of slide titles, which I created following the branding guidelines set out for Mongoose. They were nice enough to create a background of, so here we go—Motivational Desktop Background: So there we go. Enjoy!

Vendor Client Relationship

2009-06-01T12:55:00.001+10:00

Google Waves at users

2009-05-31T22:11:00.007+10:00

Google have just announced an amazing new... thing—Google wave. Developed in Australia, it's a web tool that, even in it's early stages, promises to revolutionise the way that we communicate. Watch this video (I warn you, it's 1 hour 20 minutes) to learn more. Watch even just a little bit to get the idea. Basically it works by using APIs that send XML data to a central server and onwards to those viewing the 'wave'. Seems pretty unremarkable? What's great about it is that it allows you to add users, robots and extensions to regular communication. For those who didn't watch the video, think about live editing by more than one person, live drag and drop attachments (using Gears), live updates of Google Maps, and being able to have an almost instant messenger style chats with almost anyone. It's kind of like a highly editable chatroom. This could become an incredibly useful tool for graphic designers. Apart from the obvious ease with which it enables things like project management, imagine being able to share reference material with Wave users without having to worry about file compatibility or waiting for them to receive the file and then reply. Perhaps the most exciting propostion would be combining a Wave with something like a Phixr extension—thereby creating collaborative design across the web. Instantly. I'm very keen for this. You should be too. This is the sort of thing Richard Seymour was talking about: "When anything new comes in ‘big time’, we think of it as an ‘it’. An entity. And you are going through this right now, with ‘the’ internet. The internet is not a thing at all, it’s a [gigantic, global] ‘how’, not an it." Google Wave is the logical extension of this—it is much more about the way in which we communicate than what is actually being said.

Home Branding

2009-05-24T17:15:00.005+10:00

In what is undoubtedly a response to the recession, Australian groceries giant Woolworths has recently started advertising its cheaper in house brand, Home Brand. It appears as though the campaign is trying to counter a general perception of it being cheap and, as a result, low quality. I've been thinking for some time that Home Brand has one of the best pieces of branding going round. It may not be attractive or particularly stylish, but it is consistent and effective. Every single items is branded in exactly the same way, with clear and concise labels. In addition, it stands out from every other item on the shelf because of its ample whitespace. While other brands may be concerned with getting their product to look fresh or tasty, Home Brand has been freed from that need. Woolworths have acknowledged their customer base—someone whose looking for basic ingredients, and, according to their own advertisment, doesn't want to pay for fancy packaging. But I wonder at how effective their attempt to increase market share will be—people who are recquired to buy Home Brand do so out of need, not choice.

Tweet Tweet

2009-05-20T20:56:00.009+10:00

Methods of communication have rapidly changed with the advent of digital technologies and, while this may seem to be stating the obvious, it goes beyond mere media distribution. A fundamental shift has occurred in the way that information is created and disseminated, a shift that could not have been predicted only a few years previously. But what, exactly, has changed? Basically, users have become creators. It started with blogging—sites such as Live Journal allowed users to upload their own content to a public page. In quick succession came Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, creating a series of site that users could effectively create and view their own content without turning to a traditional source. And now we have Twitter. At two years old, it’s still a relative baby compared to the other social networking giants, but it’s growth has been massive (600% over the last 12 months). It combines both the appeal of text messaging and social networking by forcing users to only 140 characters per message, and becomes one of the first with true mobile integration. What results is a glut of content—millions of people all uploading their smallest and largest of moments. For this brief, I decided to look at the way Twitter works as a public document. People are prepared, and are almost eager, to share their life to the faceless crowds of the internet. I wondered how they would react to having these personal stories shared in print. Printing something has an added impact—a level of perceived permanency that an internet document does not possess. In addition, by placing it on a large format poster, I hoped to replicate the public nature of posting on the internet by confronting viewers with a literal wall of text, while the typeface was chosen to reflect the origins of the content. Most of the people I asked were initially reluctant to participate, until it was pointed out that their posts were already up for public viewing—by a larger audience. Overall I'm happy with how it turned out—thanks to all of those who let me plunder their precious Twitter archives!

Super Stimuli

2009-05-13T20:00:00.002+10:00

With the recent release of We Love Typography I've been thinking about the shift in the way that we receive design content (and content more generally). It's something that has been going on for some time, and is becoming more prevalent with the expansion of Web 2.0 I'm talking about cloud content. Gone are the days of a single author or 'blogger' deciding what users would like to read or see—now we can use sites like Buamai to channel our image searches into something more to our tastes. It also categorises according to colour, theme and shape. Add to that WLT, Tumblr and Twitter streams and we have an absolute abundance of content available for designer's to look at and enjoy. All of this sounds great in theory, but I think that we're missing something—a critical view. While blogging is a relatively new practice, it did allow for specialised content to flourish, and is why we have valuable resources like I Love Typography and The Strange Attractor, and gave designers a background on the pieces that passed before their eyes. I feel that for design to be successful it has to have context, otherwise it deviates from solution becomes mere image. That's why I worry about this shift—the amount of stuff I've learned about design over the internet is amazing, and it's a vital resource for Australian designers. If we lose this critical content on the net through our race to please all viewers, where will it come from? Certainly not from print, whose death has been long foretold and does not have the reach or impact of internet communication. Before we all jump on the bandwagon to user dictated content, I think we need to consider how we provide context and critique for the images that we choose to display.

Sketchy Speakers

2009-05-10T12:29:00.009+10:00

I've decided to post my sketchbook from AGideas 2009. It's basically an attempt at visualising what each speaker was talking about, what I found interesting and what was... less interesting. Here it is in its glorious entirety. Stefan Sagmeister was really very good. He spoke mostly on how design can make us happy—not just represent or visualise happiness. I also attended his masterclass on Monday, which was really great. You can view a similar speech of his over at TED. Presented some interesting ideas on food, but I'm left wondering how much of it is about spectacle and how much is about producing really great food. For example, he used a combination of edible bubbles and liquid nitrogen to present mango. It really was just mango, too. Oh, he's from Vue de Monde. Not much to say here—I find this sort of photography quite lacking in depth. Kate Cullity's work was very interesting, if only for it being so strongly tied to the Australian landscape. I struggled with Jill's piece. It was essentially a film studies lecture and didn't really bring any ideas to the table. I think that Etienne was truly the surprise hit of the entire week. His work is really quite innovative and his thoughts on web design are very interesting. Loved his philosophy on clicking. Also, totally got his signature! Bit of a convert, I must say. John Marsden can really tell a story. He was softly spoken, sat on a chair, didn't use any graphics and yet he managed to keep the crowd engaged throughout his presentation. To understand why I was excited for a boat designer you need only look at this clip (strong language). Apologies to Garson Yu—his work is truly incredible. Some of the best titles for films I've ever seen (including the Watchmen & 300) but I had to leave early to attend Studio Access night with Studio Round (lovely people doing lovely work). Marina had some really nice work to display, but I thought that the best part of her presentation was her ideas, including an all too brief discussion of the brand as it stands in modern culture. Dinosaurs are really very cool. Go watch Jurrassic Park. As always, the curator struggled to capture the attention of the crowd. This was despite his talking about some really interesting work and the role of a curator as designer. Who would've thought that designers were bored by art? Also, a very boring presentation from the Sartorialist... Sean Cummins was very entertaining and presented a strong argument for drawing from local sources for our creativity. He's also responsible for creating the 'Best Job In The World' campaign. Tobias was amazing. To even get a glimpse of the thoroughness of approach that typifies H&FJ was a great experience, let alone a detailed breakdown of two of their most popular typefaces (Gotham & Archer). Although I've heard similar talks before, Stephen Banham's was a great insight into the promotion of design. This is the section in which I won free beer from Soap. It was good beer, too, and a nice talk about the culture at Soap that they so obviously put a lot of thought into. Harry Pearce does some really great stuff, and his devotion to pro bono work is really great. It was no Richard Seymour moment though—something I'm coming to realise was a true once in a lifetime thing. Here's a review of that particular speech from DesignVictoria.

AGideas: Is Design Difference?

2009-05-06T22:34:00.006+10:00

This week I attended the AGideas conference in Melbourne. For those who don't know, AGideas is a three day conference that attempts to bring various luminaries from the world of design (and beyond) to talk to Australian designers. It's a really great conference to be able to attend, especially if you are at all curious about the process that goes in to creating a piece of design. The speaker list for this year was impressive: Stefan Sagmeister and Tobias Frere-Jones were definite highlights, along with a broad range of others (including writer John Marsden). What I wanted to talk about today was not so much the individual speakers, but the theme for the event. We are told that "Design is Difference" — a fine statement that, given the current economic climate, makes a certain amount of business sense. The tagline is structured in such a way that it doesn't define anything (even though it tries to say that design = difference) — both of the key terms are so broad that the phrase could come to mean anything. When you're putting a conference together and trying to help speakers out with their presentations, I'm sure it is helpful to have a broad topic. But when you are one of the premier design event on the Australian calendar, your tag line should mean something. Let's start by defining some terms. To quote Sagmeister; 'I hate to answer "what is design?" It's a stupid question.' — but I think it needs doing anyway. For now, design will be defined as something created or done with intent. Difference can be said to be a change in state. We're still no closer to cracking this little nut, though. Design may well be different, but different from what? A state of un-design? That seems too simplistic. It cannot be that design is different from any other human pursuit — most others are designed, to some degree. I would argue that design is, in fact, sameness. Design brings order and form to an otherwise chaotic environment. It is this ordered beauty that makes design so great. To call general design difference is to deny what it does. Maybe they are referring to 'good' design? In a world where truly shitty design is the norm, the three days of AGideas were a truly different experience. While there was no real 'Richard Seymour' moment (something I am now sure was a once in a lifetime thing) the quality of design and, perhaps more importantly, thought on display was truly inspiring and intimidating. It wasn't so much that design was difference, it was more that it was different design.

Poster Sunday

2009-04-26T23:58:00.001+10:00

It seems so inevitable. The arrival of asylum seekers in Australia has once again spun into a political frenzy. Throughout the whole saga surrounding the latest of the arrivals, I kept thinking about the relative numbers of these refugees in comparison to the population, physical size and wealth of Australia. It's a staggering difference. And, to quote David Marr, they are refugees. 90% of those who seek asylum are granted refugee status. Michelle Grattan in the Age:

April 17, 2009
A DISASTER has catapulted border protection into a risky issue for the Government.

While boat arrivals are increasing, we are talking hundreds, not the thousands of earlier years. And the rise reflects a worldwide trend. It's a long bow to make too much of Kevin Rudd's limited changes removing the harsher edges of earlier policy. But this has been a hot-button issue that worked against Labor in 2001 — although it turned against the Coalition later.
The Government is taking great care in its public handling of the tragedy. It refused to speculate on the origin of the fire. But it wanted to appear open and so promised to release any visual material.

The mistakes and misinformation of the "children overboard" affair drove this approach. The caution was sensible, even if it did mean a torrid news conference for Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus and the head of Border Protection Command, Allan du Toit.

The Government will be under pressure to examine whether its policy needs change. It should resist being spooked, just as the Opposition should be wary of letting self-interest compromise national interest.

Sunday Is Poster Day

2009-04-20T21:13:00.003+10:00

From now on, Sunday will be poster day. It will mean a new poster from me tackling some of the issues of the week. Or none of them. I'm taking suggestions now on content, form or styles for the first few, so drop me a line at the regular contact points. Maybe a guide could be developed for categorising them? Thoughts, followed by yet more thoughts.

Mambo Manifesto

2009-04-14T08:10:00.005+10:00

Reg Mombassa

I was reading through the Mambo book Art Irritates Life, which is a really great look at the graphic foundations of the surf fashion brand. It's interesting how the style of one clothing company (and, to an extent, one artist) can define the style for almost a decade. A shame to see that they have shifted from their roots, then. Where are the loud shirts? They also produced a manifesto of sorts, which I'll reproduce here:

Revere the past only where profitable.
Sell to Satanists only for as long as they pay their accounts.
Directors should avoid driving cars costing in excess of creative staffs' average annual income.
Use metaphors only when wanting to be thought ironic.
Use irony when drawing big jugs.
Know how to hold a grudge.
An office relationship should involve no more than two members of staff at a time.
Only plagiarise the corporate logos of companies unlikely to be able to afford legal action.
Invoke principle only where profitable.
Only staff of exceptional talent are permitted to be surly and indifferent to personal hygiene.
Nicotine patches and stairwells have their place in the creative process.
React vengefully when condemned by a spokesperson for an organised religion or the gun lobby.
Vulgarity finds its own context when helping to shift some big units.
All good T-shirt prints should follow the viewer around the room.
Be referential if you can't think of anything original.
Create within the context of coherent self-referentiality to cut down overheads.
Don't offend the rich until they've bought something.
Good taste is fine for some.

I wonder how truly Mambo have stuck to this in the intervening years...

You Might Know Dick

2009-04-03T23:44:00.001+11:00

Just a quickie—my review of the Dick Smith rebrand is up over on Brand New. Thanks must go to Armin for giving me the opportunity to write it.

Topographical Typography

2009-03-31T17:38:00.006+11:00

This character set used information from topographic maps as its basis, creating a selection of glyphs that are effectively a second generation interpretation of the natural world. Using maps from Samoa, letters were traced following contours, terrain, vegetation variation and man made structures, such as roads, fences and buildings. While the process that was used to create the letters and numerals is important, a larger factor was the act of finding and distinguishing typography from a graphic representation of data. This interpretation is a key part of reading and legibility, which both rely heavily on cultural heritage and upbringing. To quote Zuzana Licko: "You read best what you read most." If we accept that this statement applies to legibility, we must also accept that it applies to type design, in its many and varied forms. The act of finding and creating these typographic forms is strongly influenced by their creator's background—it can be assumed that if anyone else were to attempt to create a similar character set the result would be entirely different. This could be said of almost any typeface, but is especially the case with incidental typography. Given that this act of finding is central to the glyphs, I crafted a book that would attempt to recreate the split second of realisation that comes with finding a new form within nature. To this end, I cut the letter-forms out of paper, french folded each sheet and bound them into a book. This creates a multi layered, textural effect that makes it, at least initially, difficult to distinguish the form from the background noise. In addition, I provided the reader with the rough latitude and longitude coordinates of each form with the hope that the reader would be able to view the landscape from which the glyphs are drawn.

Laputa Looms Ever Closer

2009-03-26T23:11:00.002+11:00

Amazing how it's possible to create something that so closely homages a wonderful film without even referencing it on your website... Good one, Jud Turner!

Bytesplosion

2009-03-25T19:48:00.004+11:00

Just installed a new terabyte drive in my MacPro—it was the easiest hard drive install I've ever done. Open Mac, pull out hard drive tray, swap drives, replace tray, close Mac. No cables. No fiddling. Those who know me understand my love of both puns and dinosaurs—I couldn't pass up to opportunity to combine the two... Having a new HDD prompted me to update the system icons. For this I used a couple of ready made icon sets: White Leopard 1.1 and Ive Drives 1.0. Both are high quality, free icon replacement sets. To change the system icons over I used a program called LiteIcon (OSX) that is a very simple, effective and free way to freshen up your computer. Also, a productivity tip! If you're very forgetful (like me) and you tend to leave your thumb drive behind when you leave, just name it your mobile number. That way, if someone finds it they have a way of contacting you without needing to open up your (hopefully) password protected files. I've recovered mine at least three times with this method. (It's also why it's name is blurred out in the image above.)

Geeking Great

2009-03-22T22:49:00.004+11:00

Recently downloaded and set up GeekTools. It's a program for Mac that displays system data on your desktop as text, which doesn't sound particularly useful until you realise that you can use AppleScript to create custom data layouts. At this stage I've got mine to display what's playing in iTunes, the current temperature and weather conditions, and a desktop calendar. As you can see, you can craft some really nice typographic arrangements from it all. It does take a little perseverance with the coding side of it (unless you're an absolute coding maestro, in which case you're probably all over this) but there are some great tutorials out there for getting a good looking result.

Audi Facelift

2009-03-21T10:53:00.004+11:00

Audi just unveiled a new corporate typeface. That's right. Typeface. So, what does it look like? This: It looks good, I think. There's enough hinting of the old design, while enough changes are made that this wasn't a pointless face lift. This is a thoroughly contemporary looking typeface, right down to the bowls on the 'd' and 'p', the critical point on the 'S' and the wider characteristics more broadly. It reflects Audi's newer designs and moves away from the very static previous look, a style that was far too similar to any number of European car manufacturers. You can look at a more detailed analysis of the design here.

Pen But No Paper?

2009-03-18T11:10:00.002+11:00

Ever found yourself struggling to find a suitable writing surface? Lacking in the necessary clean space to managed a few little words? I do. All the time. I find myself loathe to use the paper in my printer (what if it runs out? It's Envirocare and a little tricky to replace!) and yet I don't want to write on stuff that's already been used. Enter the School of Visual Arts: Solution found!

Sagmeister Says

2009-03-13T08:43:00.005+11:00

Nice quote I found in Stefan Sagmeister's Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far: According to the previously mentioned experts, happiness has been designed by evolution as a compass, as a tool to show us the way. We are made to pursue the things that make us happy, like fat and sugar and warmth and sex, in order to help us stay alive as individuals and as a species. Permanent happiness, however, is not achievable—if we were able to reach a state of prolonged happiness, it simply would not work as a compass anymore, and we would wind up lying about, doing nothing, and getting fat. Evolution designed us to seek happiness but has no interest in our achieving it over a sustained period of time. Although I take issue with the idea of evolution designing anything it's still a good quote. And not that I'm given to quoting a large number of things. Anyway, I thought that it was nice.

T-Shirt Time

2009-03-10T07:18:00.007+11:00

Just received a couple of photos of my ANU Debating shirt design in its natural habitat. Really happy with how they look. Less enthused by their close relationship with Christopher Pyne MP and Senator Barnaby Joyce...

Logotypical

2009-03-09T16:23:00.007+11:00

Assignment o'clock! First up is Typography 3: the "most advanced typography course offered at Monash" according to my lecturer, although I would argue that type design is more advanced, but whatever. The point is that the assignments are pretty cool. First one is a logotype design. For those not in the know, a logotype is separate from a logo. For instance, Telstra has a logo: And a logotype:

So, we were tasked with creating two logotypes for different, imaginary companies. Part of this involved creating the fictional brand — what do they do? What is their target market? What is their history? I created Gazelle, a relatively small shoe company that makes fashionable sneakers, and a record label called Mu that specialises in ambient and electronica. Here's the results!

This is based off a modified version of The Sans.

Wholly constructed letter forms, visual reference to the Greek letter μ.

I Watched The Watchmen

2009-03-08T17:22:00.001+11:00

And it was great. As a fan of the original book, I was worried that the film would fail to capture the broad themes and depth of characterisation present within the novel — a worry, I'm glad to say, that was well and truly put to rest. Zach Snyder should be congratulated on creating a movie that is not only loyal to the original but that also captures the essence of comics. His use of slow motion, multiple viewpoints and his framing of various scenes all help to create a sense of viewing something large, operatic and all together beautiful. Alan Moore deserves most of the credit, though. The themes are what carry this film beyond the usual black/white superhero fare and into the grey realms that the last half of the film occupies. No one in this film is truly good, and there's no knight in shining armour to save the day. Perhaps the most impressive thing was the opening titles, which neatly integrate all the photographic stills from the book into the first three minutes. Also, Bob Dylan was a surprisingly good choice.

Common Sense Prevails

2009-03-02T20:04:00.006+11:00

So I was in Border's the other day, looking at various books and whatnot, when I discovered that this: For those who don't know, the Commonsense Cookery Book is one of greatest cookbooks of all time, if only for the fact that it tells you how to make really basic stuff. Like toast. If you're a young bachelor looking to improve your skills in the kitchen I can't recommend it enough. But, this is a design blog, so let's look at the design, and not the recipes. As a reference point, here's my copy: Excusing the general grime that's appeared in it's nigh on nine years of existence, the design is plain ugly and outdated even for the 90s. Too many different elements compete for your attention, much like Gordon Ramsay's crazy wrinkles on the covers of his books, while the food photography seems out of place and too basic to be enticing. Given that the food is so basic, I'm glad the the redesign doesn't show any of it. Even on the insides. Margaret Fulton and Stephanie Alexander have both gone down the path of not having any photography in their books, a decision that has given them a reputation in cooking circles for not 'talking down' to their readers. How effective, then, is the lack of photos in the Commonsense Cookery Book, given that some of the readers for this are likely to be people who need to know how to cook an egg, boil water or make tea? I think it may have something to do with this book being comprehensive — it encompasses a larger audience than cooking novices. In addition to the basics, it tells you how to fillet a fish, cook a pie from scratch and make lasagna. None of which is especially complex, but the sheer breadth of material dictates a compact approach to the recipes. This is an effective redesign that updates the style while keeping what made the original so popular. Also, it has some faux letterpress!

Time For A Change

2009-02-24T17:54:00.002+11:00

So I'm back at Uni next week. Which means, shock to end all shocks, I'll not be a free man for much longer. It also means I get a timetable. Mondays are off, as are Wednesdays. The rest of the time it's full days. Sweet deal. Don't know if I'm in with many of my friends yet, but we shall see.

Clusters Last Stand

2009-02-23T21:33:00.004+11:00

Just came across the work of Michael Steele over on Design Is Kinky. His stuff is nicely painted, but I can't help but wonder about the depth of his rationale — he creates 'clusters', a series of objects portrayed as part of a larger whole. To quote: 'I feel this gives images or objects a stronger presence rather then being displayed by themselves, creating a much more dynamic experience for the viewer.' The street art style lessens the impact of these objects, while the juxtaposition of elements fails to create any true meaning within the painting. They seem put together haphazardly, with little thought to their final meaning as a cluster, rather than a collection of somewhat related elements.

Proof of Youth

2009-02-22T20:43:00.004+11:00

Meta has officially been through it's first proof! We finished the design on Friday and went on over to the book binders in Nunawading. It was only $15 to get it trimmed and perfect bound, which is way cheap for a single run. Here are the results! The cover is a pattern by Kumiko Michishita, who I've featured here before. Now we just need to come up with $3100 to print it... Thanks to Vincent for some fierce modelling!

Give Me Your Badge

2009-02-18T12:23:00.004+11:00

Made a whole heap of badges for Meta yesterday — 130 to be exact. My arms were very tired and also very sore, mostly from cutting the circles out. It took a very long time! Overall I'm happy with the results, I think they're nice and varied. I used the bad press at Sticky — you can make badges for 50c each, and you can then sell them for whatever price you want at the store. Last time I made an edition I netted a grand total of $9.80. Yep.

Stefan's Stories

2009-02-16T21:39:00.002+11:00

Just borrowed a copy of Stefan Sagmeister's Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far. It really is a very nice book, composed of several small booklets, each with an item from Sagmeister's list of Things. His honesty and commitment to his work is refreshing, I think, and so far I've found it interesting reading. It's quite a strange reaction I have to him, as though I should feel passionately about him one way or another, and yet I find myself strangely unmoved by work I know to be great design. Is this the part where design fails to reach art, where we see the designer's hand at work, crafting something for a specific need? I find myself asking; "What if this was art? What would you think?" And I would argue that some, if not most, of it is art, such as his six page spread that started it all. The brief was to fill six pages with anything he wanted, and while that may be considered enough to render it design, I've seen enough art commissions to know that they often have more complex criteria. What is striking about these maxims (quotes seems inaccurate) is that they stay away from the classic stuff you find printed on a mug, or calendar, or inspirational poster. They are more subtle, and their application seems much more heartfelt and thoughtful.

Meat Meta

2009-02-14T02:59:00.007+11:00

The other day the Meta team tasked themselves with creating some stickers to either go on the front of the journal or to be used as promotional items. There were some nice results, with Vincent's being chosen as the official sticker for issue one. Mine was OK, and I decided to try and take the idea a little further. This is what came from that, and I think it goes to show that if you have a good idea, you get good results.

Got Milk!

2009-02-13T09:55:00.004+11:00

This is not a photo. It's a painting by Diego Gravinese. The first time I saw this I thought it was a very strange photograph. I still think it's strange subject matter, but Gravinese is one of the first photo-realistic painters I've seen that really captures the ideals behind the genre, and his works are astounding technical accomplishments. However, as will all such works, once the glow of amazement has passed, we must question the content and themes of the work. There's little substance here — they seem introspective, relying on interpretation from the artist himself. Unlike others that have gone before him, Gravinese does not appear to question or probe the world around him, and does not use this style to critique the reality in which the painter finds himself. Instead, we get painted polaroids. Beautiful polaroids, though. I almost prefer this process shot to the finished work — imagine it with the line work removed. There's something intriguing about the way she fades into the canvas.

Read Design

2009-02-11T19:55:00.001+11:00

Just finalised the redesign of this glorious little home — it's a pretty happy place right now. Header is still set in Trade Gothic, while the bones of the site are based off a great little Blogger template that I've reworked some. The theme was inspired by Electric Light Orchestra, namely a sense of romantic drama, probably lurking somewhere in space. In other news, I've been working on Meta, which is very nearly finished. Hopefully by the end of Friday we'll have some solid results to go home with. Our interview subjects have been great, and their chat was interesting (to me at least) — I can only hope that others will be as engaged by them as I am.

Sunday Debate

2009-02-08T13:20:00.001+11:00

Didn't really do much today. Worked mostly on getting a t-shirt design finished for the ANU debating society. Needs to be at the printer tomorrow morning. I decided to work with the design some more, changing the plain red into a red, green and blue. Gave me an idea for their spring tournament promotional poster — it would probably need refinement before final production, but at this stage it's visually strong.

Paper Plate

2009-02-07T21:50:00.003+11:00

Came across this awesome plate at Metropolis today. Really great find — especially as I'd been thinking about doing something with paper dolls all day. I find the illustrations a little heavy in their line work, but otherwise they're quite sweet. At Safeway I found Disney's publication of Wall-E as a picture book. It's a little odd seeing such a wordless film rendered in images and written words — I'm not sure that it captures that particular feeling the film has, but the drawing work within its pages is very nice. iPhone photos don't quite do it justice.

Alley Invader

2009-02-06T10:41:00.005+11:00

Found this in an alley off Flinders Lane. I forget who does them — they may be international? But there's been a real wave of them lately.

Shit Just Got Real

2009-02-05T01:09:00.006+11:00

Just found the work of Augustine Kofie. Does abstract street art. Nice stuff. I like the strong use of colour and awareness of the medium, particularly this use of the cube canvas. I've always found it odd viewing street art on a 2D plane — this makes more sense, I think. Also found this awesome picture. Science is great, but geology rocks! That's right, it's a photo of a thunderstorm over an erupting volcano. Just incredible.

Patternological

2009-01-29T12:48:00.004+11:00

Been meaning to put this up for a while. Kumiko Michishita has created a series of really stunning patterns for her Honours degree at Monash. The idea behind them is to have patterns that use colour and shape theories to therapeutic effect. Great stuff! Oh, and it's called Patternology. Created from watercolour samples, digitally edited to create the pattern, each one is meant to reflect a particular mood.

Halftone Entertainment

2008-11-04T23:16:00.004+11:00

I've been working on perfecting my halftone effects — it's actually quite tricky, recquiring a fine balance of detail and abstraction. Also, you need dots that are big enough to show off your halftone screen. I think its pretty neat!

Welcome Wacom

2008-10-28T16:16:00.002+11:00

Just got a new (read: second-hand) Wacom Tablet. It's huge. And awesome. Don't think that it's that big? Here's one of it in front of my 24" Dell monitor (which is also awesome and that I heartily recommend to anyone in the market for a high-quality display).

Postography

2008-10-27T17:25:00.005+11:00

Here are some typographic posters that I did for Studio 4. I think they are pretty nice ... We had to pick two typefaces and create two responses; one a formal type exercise, designed to show the typeface to full effect. The other could be anything we liked. I chose to do Hoefler & Frere-Jones' awesome face, Archer, and a random Korean font called Cursive.

Formal Response

The formal response was designed to be both dynamic and solid, thus representing the feel of both typefaces within the layout itself. This was alot trickier than I first anticipated, as getting the balance of white-space vs. typographic detail was the key to the success or failure of the design. I think I got it in the end, though.

Informal Response

The informal design was alot of fun — I extended the look and feel of Cursive and Archer into a 1950's style advertising design. I wanted viewers to be able to pull the poster apart and examine each advert on their own, so I perforated the final A0 print along the lines of each section. All of the products on the right hand side of the poster are real, while all images used in the poster are featured in advertising from the era. For those paying attention, the third face used in the posters (a sans-serif) is Trade Gothic Condensed 18, in both regular, bold and italic.

Dairy Problems

2008-10-23T13:51:00.003+11:00

Just finished the final piece of assessment for Digital Imaging. Namely, a 28-second piece of kinetic typography set to the Go! Team's Milk Crisis. Lucky I picked a great song, because I'm sick of it; taking a three month break from this song. I'm pretty happy with the way that it turned out, although it would've been good to get to do the chorus as originally planned. Maybe over the break. Also, the line around the 'dial' at 0:21 was done twice; the first time, it took two hours of moving a mask around so that it would all match up nicely. The second took three minutes, simply through using the generate line tool. Which I knew was there all along. Made with Adobe Illustrator CS3 and After Effects CS3.

Bloomage

2008-10-15T15:25:00.000+11:00

Wonderful looking stuff here — the new identity spot for Studio 37. Really.

Type Set

2008-10-05T19:11:00.000+11:00

Bob Partington's three-dimensional type makes the regular stuff seem irrelevant. Guess I should just give up now. This sort of type always interests me — it goes againt every function that typography is supposed to fulfill, only ticking the aesthetics box. Why do people keep trying it? It just seems downright odd; very impressive to look at, but ultimately pointless.

In Cognito

2008-10-01T11:24:00.006+10:00

For the past couple of months I've been working on a typeface - very exciting stuff... Tentatively titled Cognition, it's designed to be useful across a broad range of media, is easily legible down to 7pt and will have a display face as well. My main influences for this one are Century Gothic (most visible in the upper case letters) and Myriad Pro (particularly the lower case n, g and b). My favourite characters are the lower and upper case G's - they typify the ideas behind the font: legibility with a quirk. I also really like the upper Q - I think it's a neat solution to such a charismatic letter.

Sounds Delicious

2008-09-30T15:39:00.001+10:00

The weird and wonderful work of Rutger de Vries.

Works on Paper...

2008-09-23T13:24:00.003+10:00

Just stumbled across the work of Shaz Madani — he has some really nice work. Sure likes his Helvetica, but he combines it with interesting visuals to create very cool pieces.

Arctic Paper

This is for a paper comanpy's exhibition of... well, paper. I can just see this being stop animated; there's just a charm present within this image, mainly due to its hand-done nature, that is missing from a large swathe of work being produced currently.

Met a Yeti

2008-09-09T09:28:00.004+10:00

A group of friends and I are starting a publication. Called Meta, it will (hopefully) straddle the divide between academic journal and student publication. First issue is out January, 2009 - if you have any essays lying around that focus on art & design, send them to metajournal@gmail.com

In other news, I've finished work on an After Effects piece. The interface is really confronting, but once you get acclimatised it becomes really quite easy. Friendly, almost. I've posted what I've done.

Cat vs. Building (who will win?)

2008-08-26T18:02:00.005+10:00

I've been working on a composition in Photoshop for the next Digital Imaging assignment, which was to respond to one of the expired contests on Worth 1000. I chose to do the Bizzarchitecture challenge, whereby you place buildings where they ain't meant to be. This was good fun - the real challenge was getting the background to look right. I'm happy with the way the clouds turned out; there's a nice depth to them, which probably comes from using photos of real clouds, rather than painting them in. I've posted a before and after below.

Normal

!!!

Acronym Broth

2008-08-22T08:54:00.003+10:00

Busy week this week - handed the BIA assignment in, which was a really painful process. Woke up late (09:15, due at 10:00), left half the rationale at home, wasn't happy with the stationery aspect. I think it might be partially due to the way that Studio is structured this year. Group A had amazing stationery, but some really average logos, while Group B had better logos, but comparatively weak stationery. I think this may become even more of an issue with the next brief (a redesign of an existing journal) due to run times for printing and binding.

Got put on to a great comic this week. Its by a former DC artist - Karl Kerschl - and it's really quite amazing. Called Abominable Charles Christopher, it's set in a forest that seems inspired by the earlier films of Hayao Miyazaki (particularly Princess Mononoke). It's really a very nice, touching web-comic.

As far as Digital Processes goes, I've been working on creating a cat-house in Photoshop. More news as it happens.

This Guy

2008-08-21T11:21:00.000+10:00

Now we know who to blame — Jeff Ludes. His photography is well lit, nicely composed. It's the subject matter I object to; this is where all these heroic automobiles come from.

Vinylisation

2008-08-17T18:27:00.000+10:00

This is the work of Sanna Annukka — I think it's indicative of popular illustration at the moment. Using very simple, clean shapes, along with strong colours (and lots of black) creates interesting illustrations, but they feel just a little too fashionable. As another example, she did the cover for Keane's Under The Sea. While Annukka's work is visually stimulating at first glance, there is little beyond that first impression. Compared to the work of Christoph Niemann (below), it lacks personality. As much as illustration is fashion driven, and there are particular styles that become more or less popular, nothing beats a good concept.

Some Kind of Rorschach

2008-08-11T11:10:00.004+10:00

So this is the first post that has some actual work for Digital Imaging in it. We were tasked with creating an abstract image in Illustrator using techniques that we weren't that familiar with. Tricky for me, mainly because I taught myself how to use Illustrator by going around and clicking on everything and figuring out what did what. I also came up with a composition that broke my computer. Yep. It took eight hours to export this as a jpeg image. Here it is.

Brain Injury Housing

2008-08-05T18:17:00.007+10:00

Found a great new blog just now - called It's Lovely, I'll Take It!, and includes photos of just... well, go have a look! You will enjoy.

In terms of design, I've been working on some logos for Brain Injury Australia. It's an organisation that advocates on behalf of those with acquired brain injuries (ABIs). An ABI is any physical damage to the brain that occurs after birth, and its symptoms range from almost nothing to full blown amnesia. Scary stuff.

Anyway, their website is (currently!) very, very ugly. It can only get better from here!

So - we're recquired to have three concepts to present tomorrow. The first two came fairly easily:

This one is based on PET scans of an active brain.

This is based on those block puzzles you probably did as a small child.
They are uses as a therapeutic and diagnostic tool for people with ABIs.

The last one was a real struggle! I'd run out of ideas to work on; some were funny, some were distasteful, most of them were terrible. And then I came up with this:

This is bases around the idea of BIA being an advocacy group. The basis is a
human head, rendered to look somewhat like a speech bubble. Pretty neat!

Presenting these tomorrow. Should be good - particularly happy with the last one. It was such an effort to get it done.

Abstract Thoughts

2008-07-20T15:01:00.009+10:00

Found this over at Art MoCo - it's an image by artist Sehwon Min, formerly of South Korea and now of San Fransisco. Her work has a very natural feel which offsets the strong, vibrant colour. Like many abstract artists before her, Min's work is of the large and un-named variety; this particular piece is five feet tall.

Untitled

There's a strong sense of depth here, with what looks like paperbark layered finely on top of itself. This depth adds to the organic feel - it's as though the viewer could crawl inside and go to sleep in it's warm, hyper colour folds.

The colours remind me of Kandinsky's 1911 piece Improvisation No. 19 - while more muted than Kandinsky's primary-based palette, there is a combination of conflict and cooperation between the reds and blues, which adds a strong dynamic to the composition.

Improvisation No. 19

It's also interesting to compare the state of abstract painting from how it was at the beginning and as it is now, almost 100 years on. There is a strong refinement of the aesthetic, the quality of line and colour work now is amazing, while the pieces of the early 20th century seem almost childish. Perhaps this is because there is no longer a need for the abstract to be explored, refined, and painters can focus on creating works of beauty rather than works of progress.

One may ask why abstract painting need continue - surely it is summed up by this:

Black Suprematist Square

Kasimir Malevich's defining work, Black Suprematist Square (1914-15), is as far as you can go from subject based painting and still place the paint on the canvas. And this was finished nearly a century ago. So, one may ask, what is the point of abstract painting? Surely no artist can hope to match the refinement of power found within the black square - it obliterates all before it, and we are forced to realise that this is what painting is. So what is the point?

I would argue that it is the pursuit of aesthetic beauty - some would say truth. The cynic in me wants to say that it's because artists need something to paint, regardless of whether there's any point to it. That's unfair. This pursuit of aesthetic beauty/truth is what drives us to keep trying to better our designs, our illustrations, our paintings. If we were not driven, works like Min's untitled would not exist, and the world would be a poorer place for it.

Ditka Would Be Proud

2008-07-18T09:45:00.007+10:00

My good friend Vincent has put me onto a nice little illustrator - Andrew Gordon. Some quite nice illustrations - mainly featuring bears.

This Love

Our Journey

That, combined with some of his more line based drawings, reminds me of this.

It's A Trap!

2008-07-16T19:20:00.008+10:00

I was digging around in a draw today and found this old flyer for UK electro band Hot Chip. It didn't make me buy the album, but I did think that the central illustration was kind of cool.

Flyer

It's got a nice, slightly unfinished feel to it. A really simple, effective illustration - although I have no idea what it is. A globe of some sort? Coruscant?

Detail

Bear O'Clock

2008-07-15T18:16:00.004+10:00

Found a really lovely graphic novel today - it's called Bear Hour, by Melbourne illustrator Jennifer Tyers. There are no words, just nice illustrations that come together to tell an extremely odd, wonderful story. It's the first book published by Blabbermouth, in an edition of 250.

Front cover.

Second to last page.

It's currently available at the Sticky Institute for $12, although there were only a few copies, you can pick up some postcards of Tyers's illustrations for $0.50 - well worth it!

Double Identity

2008-07-14T16:08:00.020+10:00

Logo design is a poisoned chalice. It can be really great - you get to craft the face of a company or organisation, giving it an identity, a presence. It can also be really hard - the identity has to be just so, the presence has to be strong. You really need to use semiotics well, otherwise it all falls apart. Below are two logo designs. Do they work?

This is the logo for ANU debating. I had a little help for this; thanks to the un-named graphic designer(s) who created the original logo and identity, which gave me the colours, the 'ANU' (it's pretty much a customised Lucida Grande, which I've used for the 'debating') and the layout.

The illustration is mine; I tried to get it to reflect what most people think of when they think 'debating'. This is now used for all of the ANU Debating Society's official correspondence, in both colour and black.

This second one is part of an assignment - we were tasked with creating the identity for an independent Australian record label, of which I chose Spunk Records. This was a really hard one to do - their current logo is so good that it's hard to come up with something new and fresh that communicates the company.

In the end I settled on this design, using a base grid of triangles for letters. This grid was carried across to the whole identity, creating a series of geometric abstracts that could be used to tie the identity together.

Good Day

2008-07-14T14:19:00.019+10:00

Welcome to Convert to Shape.

I'll be posting all sorts of things on here. Mainly my work, but also some influences, cool things and other design stuff. To start, I'll put some of my older work up.

This is an image I created about two years ago - it's pretty nice. I started by hand drawing all the small figures in the foreground, then scanned these sketches into my Mac, traced and coloured in Illustrator and then textured in Photoshop. I then drew both the clouds and background creatures in Illustrator, and again textured in Photoshop, before putting the final composition together.

This illustration was used for the cover of issue number five of Block, a literary magazine published by the Australian National University writer's association.