Notes
One of the objectives of the designer who deals with type matter involves readability. Unfortunately, however, this function is often taken too literally and overemphasized at the expense of style, individuality, and the very effectiveness of the printed piece itself.
By carefully arranging type areas, spacing, size, and color, the typographer is able to impart to the printed page a quality that helps to dramatize the contents. He is able to translate type matter into tactile patterns. By concentrating the type area and emphasizing the margin (white space), he can reinforce, by contrast, the textural quality of the type. The resulting effect on the reader may be properly compared to the sensation produced by physical contact with metal type.
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The source of the creative impulse is a mystery. Where do ideas come from?
Any theory about inspiration must be offered with certain reservations. Ideas may come from anywhere, anything, any time, any place. For the most part, however, I believe that they spring from rather unromantic, sometimes unexpected, or even unsavory sources.
The artist is a collector of things imaginary or real. He accumulates things with the same enthusiasm that a little boy stuffs his pockets. The scrap heap and the museum are embraced with equal curiosity. He takes snapshots, makes notes, records impressions on tablecloths or newspapers, on backs of envelopes or matchbooks. Why one thing and not another is part of the mystery, but he is omnivorous.
Wildly heterogeneous as his inspirational treasures appear, curiosity is the common denominator and the pleasure of discovery an important by-product.
The artist takes note of that which jolts him into visual awareness. Without the harvest of visual experience he would be unable to cope with the plethora of problems, mundane or otherwise, that confronts him in his daily work.
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“I demand of art,” says Le Corbusier, “the role of the challenger… of play and inter-play, play being the very manifestation of the spirit.”
The absence in art of a well-formulated and systematized body of literature makes the problem of teaching a perplexing one. The subject is further complicated by the elusive and personal nature of art. Granted that a student’s ultimate success will depend largely on his natural talents, the problem still remains how best to arouse his curiosity, hold his attention, and engage his creative faculties.
Through trial and error, I have found that the solution to this enigma rests, to a large extent, on two factors: the kind of problem chosen for study, and the way it is posed. I believe that if undue emphasis is placed on freedom and self-expression in the statement of a problem, the result is apt to be an indifferent student and a meaningless solution.
Conversely, a problem with defined limits, with an implied or stated discipline (system of rules) that in turn is conducive to the instinct of play, will most likely yield an interested student and, very often, a meaningful and novel solution.
Without the basic rules or disciplines, however, there is no motivation, test of skill, or ultimate reward—in short, no game. The rules are the means to the end, the conditions the player must understand thoroughly and work with in order to participate. For the student, the limits of a well-stated problem operate in much the same way. “Limited means,” says Braque, “beget new forms, invite creation, make the style. Progress in art does not lie in extending its limits, but in knowing them better.”
Without specific formal limitations and without the challenge of play, both teacher and student cannot help but be bored. The product may take the form of a superficial (but sometimes “professional looking”) literal translation of the problem, or of a meaningless abstract pattern or shape, which, incidentally, may be justified with enthusiasm but often with specious reasoning.
Similarly, there are badly stated problems in basic design that stress pure aesthetics and free expression without any restraints or practical goals. Such a problem may be posed in this fashion: arrange a group of geometric shapes in any manner you see fit, using any number of colors, to make a pleasing pattern. The results of such vagaries are sometimes pretty, but mostly meaningless or monotonous.
The student has the illusion of creating great art in an atmosphere of freedom, when in fact he is handicapped by the absence of certain disciplines which would evoke ideas and make playing with those ideas possible, work absorbing, and results interesting.
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“The Bouquet. During a walk in the garden, I pick flower after flower to massage them in the crook of my arm, one after the other, as I pick them. I return home with the idea of painting these flowers. After having arranged them in my own way, what a disappointment: all their charm is lost in this arrangement. What happened? The unconscious assembly made during the picking with the taste that made me go from one flower to another is replaced by a voluntary arrangement born of reminiscences of bouquets long dead, which have left in my memory their charm of the time, with which I have charged this new bouquet.” Renoir told me: “When I have arranged a bouquet for the purpose of painting it, I always turn to the side I did not plan.”
Henri Matisse
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One of the more common problems which tends to create doubt and confusion is caused by the inexperienced and anxious executive who innocently expects, or even demands, to see not one but many solutions to a problem. These may include a number of visual and/or verbal concepts, an assortment of layouts, a variety of pictures and color schemes, as well as a choice of type styles. He needs the reassurance of numbers and the opportunity to exercise his personal preferences.
He is also most likely to be the one to insist on endless revisions with unrealistic deadlines, adding to an already wasteful and time-consuming ritual.
Theoretically, a great number of ideas assures a great number of choices, but such choices are essentially quantitative. This practice is as bewildering as it is wasteful. It discourages spontaneity, encourages indifference, and more often than not produces results which are neither distinguished, interesting, nor effective. In short, good ideas rarely come in bunches.
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The lament of the graphic designer that he is not permitted to do good work because good work is neither wanted nor understood by his employers is universal. It is indeed very often true.
But if the artist honestly evaluates his work he will frequently find that the “good work” the businessman has rejected is really not so good.
Many times when the “square” client says, “it’s too far out,” he may be unconsciously reacting to inappropriate symbolism, obscure interpretation of an idea, poor typography, an inadequate display of his product, or simply bad communication.
Graphic design which fulfills aesthetic needs, complies with the laws of form and the exigencies of two-dimensional space; which speaks in semiotics, sans-serifs, and geometrics; which abstracts, transforms, translates, rotates, dilates, repeats, mirrors, groups, and regroups is not good design if it is irrelevant.
Graphic design which evokes the symmetria of Vitruvius, the dynamic symmetry of Hambidge, the asymmetry of Mondrian; which is a good gestalt, generated by intuition or by computer, by invention or by a system of coordinates is not good design if it does not communicate.
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