Crossing Diciplines

Many graphic designers are content to design beautiful lettering, splendid pages and packages, or smart logos for the course of their entire careers. Developing such skills over time is both personally rewarding and professionally satisfying, to be sure. But others are not content about having only a single specialty. Some view specialization as offering too few challenges and therefore explore numerous options as a matter of personal pride and preference. Still others believe that specialization equals limitation, and limitation in this expanding field is professional suicide.

Well, suicide may be too gruesome, but variety informs longevity. And the secret to longevity is not a marketable style but, rather, keeping abreast of shifts in all media and incorporating as many of these as possible into your own repertoire.

Crossing disciplines is not an exception to the rule—it is the rule. If one is unable to solve problems in more than one discipline, a client will eventually go to someone who can. Survival of the fittest demands versatility. Crossing disciplines means that a graphic designer must be something of a chameleon. Today, crossover disciplines are woven into the graphic designer's education or daily routine, yet they also must be sought out, learned, and practiced.

The most common crossovers involve aspects of all forms of digital media for television, film, video, and exhibitions, requiring both interest and skill in complementary media, including music, lighting, and editing, for example. Graphic designers have also become more proactive in the process of conception and management in a variety of areas. The quintessential cross-disciplinary graphic designer is not merely a subcontractor serving the needs of so-called higher-echelon designers but is an active participant in an overarching planning and design scheme, a valued member of a team that integrates several media into one entity.

Petrula Vrontikis

Creating Interactions

c02f007 — UCLA Extension Fall Quarter Poster

Designer: Petrula Vrontikis

2013

Why is Southern California a great place to practice design?

Los Angeles has been primarily an entertainment industry town, but designing for that sector has become intolerable and no longer lucrative. However, fresh, dynamic tech companies have created Silicon Beach in the Santa Monica and Venice areas. Pasadena is aggressively fostering innovative companies and venture capitalists. This has cultivated a start-up culture that's energizing young entrepreneurs to create their own products and services. It's a very exciting time to be a designer here. It's been terrific to see so many pioneering firms flourish here.

How has the culture of Los Angeles influenced your design sensibility?

To some, it may sound trivial, but the great weather here helps me keep a sunny disposition and a clear outlook. I'm a seriously happy person in a seriously lovely place. Plus, Los Angeles attracts wildly talented young people who choose to start their careers in graphic design. It's made teaching at Art Center College of Design so deeply meaningful.

You are a teacher, a lecturer, and a writer as well as a graphic designer. Is your love of words related to your love of typography?

Yes, absolutely. I love the power that letterforms have to both clarify and abstract messages and meaning. I love the play of words in both writing and design.

In your spare time, you are an underwater photographer. Back on dry land, you “swim” between various design cultures. Is transmedia graphic design a little bit like scuba diving?

Scuba diving is certainly a cross-media multisensorial experience! To survive, you must be agile—equipped with everything required in an ever-changing environment. An accomplished diver attains something called neutral buoyancy—a kind of mastery of the underwater “formal skills” where you float weightlessly without effort, neither sinking nor rising. The equivalent for a transmedia graphic designer could be called “creative ambidexterity,” which combines the skills, equipment, and mind-set for her/him to swim confidently between print, digital, dimensional, interactive, motion, and environmental media.

For both the designer and the diver, this toggling becomes second nature, so we no longer have to think about barriers anymore. We become free to make left turns, travel upside down and sideways—becoming fearless and playful. Interacting with a well-crafted Transmedia project feels spontaneous and delightful.

Processing—the software—can generate incredible visuals. It's critical for students to immerse themselves in it (the underwater metaphor is unintended). In your evaluation, is generative design an important new discipline—and why?

Generative design is so powerful that I believe it will enable an entire generation of young designers to create motivations and circumstances that could never have been imagined. Its power as a medium to engage and interact with both individuals and communities is only in its infancy. Graphic designers are at the forefront of this unique expressive science experiment. It's an entirely new language that transcends cultural and communication boundaries.

What would you say is the main advantage of being a woman in the design field?

I believe women have greater access to empathy—which is the successful designer's secret weapon. Empathy energizes the design process, builds trust, and connects people to ideas emotionally.

Many women designers and educators I know inspire others and bring meaning to what they do personally and professionally. It pleases me to see women in more leadership positions than ever before. Attributes considered “female” seem to be the emerging keys to effective creative leadership.

Erik Adigard des Gautries

The Experience of the Information

I think of you as someone who “curates” projects at the boundaries between emerging medias. But how do you describe what you do?

Our profession is full of ambiguities, and that is perhaps where the notion of “curating” might often be more relevant than a mere focus on typography, imagery, and other core graphic design functions. At the end of the day, our job is to help bring the ventures of others into specific parts of the world. These specificities demand that we be adaptive, accurate, and relevant to cultural and technological conditions. For the last two centuries, technology has been the driver of culture, with designers as tentative catalysts to keep it on a constructive track.

You relish projects involving complexity, like branding IBM software and redesigning their icon systems. Only two or three people on the planet really understand what you are trying to explain. Is it fun?

Branding IBM software was an epic and extremely interesting assignment, and a puzzle to tackle in that we had to create a cohesive system for five software initiatives that thousands of IBM designers could easily apply to communications, ranging from websites to packaging and exhibits. The original brand architecture of IBM software was dated, messy, full of meaningless brand gestures, and expensive to maintain. We had written a short letter to raise our concern: It influenced them to include M-A-D in the competition for the rebrand campaign.

You are a maven when it comes to abstract thought. What's your secret?

I don't buy the pretense of “design thinking” but do believe that thinking is inherently a part of design, as abstraction is part of thinking, even if necessarily complemented with context and objectives. My time studying semiotics and linguistics in Paris did help to develop an analytical mind, but I also am inspired by and learn from others with critical thinking skills: architects, sociologists, journalists, philosophers, theorists, and so on. Much of my thinking is the outcome of due process observations and interpretations. In that sense, it is more a craft than an art and more a matter of influences than one of instinct.

You said once that graphic design can help us “reframe the information that matters most.” In your work, the information that matters most is often the experience of the information. Do you agree?

That is such a great way to put it! I am beginning to surrender to the idea that in this world, “experience” matters more than information. I mean this in two ways. First, experience can be a meaningful sensorium of ideas, some poetic and others empirical, but mostly this is an artistic point of view, and second, with interface design user experience factors are at the core of our practice yet are meant to be transparent and at the service of information.

There is a striking difference between your 2008 and your 2012 Venice Architectural Biennale installations. The first one was highly technological, while the second one only used paper shades and pulleys. Were you trying to make a point?

My 2008 Venice Biennale installation was a creative commission—an experimental design exploration about media and the environment in all its dimensions. It was conceived as a physical and emotive sensorium, with sounds, sensors, lights, rhythms, flows, and even an atmosphere. The use of sensors, fog, a strobe, and a vertical projection gave the whole a peculiar sculptural quality.

In contrast, the 2012 U.S. Pavilion installation was a commission from the State Department, whose concern was information more than formal expressions. The curator, Cathy Lang Ho, the Guggheneim's David Van Leer, and Freecell architects also played a role in the interactive analog approach. One of my key contributions was to set the massive contextual information on the floor below the visitors and the 124 projects hanging from the ceiling. The simple interaction, combined with the idea of displaying the entire body of information, was a gamble enthusiastically embraced by the visitors and the Biennale judges.

You always work in network, with designers, architects, researchers, editors, programmers, and so on. Is your role in the team that of a “cultural mediator”?

Architects, writers, programmers, composers, theorists, curators, and other experts have played an important role in M-A-D's evolution in bringing their distinct perspectives. These are usually complementary, but sometimes they introduce creative disconnects, which is when the big questions are raised. Regardless, the outcome is sure to be surprisingly interesting. The grass is always greener on the other side, yet learning from others can result in ending back on your own turf!

Véronique Marrier

Graphic Design as a Cause

Véronique Marrier is graphic design project manager for the CNAP (Centre National des Arts Plastiques), the French national center for visual arts. After graduating in literature in Bordeaux, she opened in 1996 the first gallery in France that was exclusively dedicated to graphic design. She then moved to Paris in 2000 and worked freelance for the Chaumont Poster Festival, the Graphic Design conferences at Echirolles, and a number of other cultural institutions before getting a job at the Ministry of Culture. “On top of my day job, I have always been involved in a half-dozen other projects,” she says, “a newsletter for an Italian paper company; the launch of B42, a small publishing venture; plus all the events, juries, initiatives, and conferences I organize, assist or attend.”

Can you tell us about your work so far?

Right out of graduate school, I worked in a gallery in Bordeaux, Galerie 90 degrés, an art space specializing in graphic design. I was creating exhibitions and events, doing everything from finding sponsors, curating collections, booking speakers, and supervising the design of catalogues. In 2002, I worked in the press office of the contemporary art museum of Rochechouart, a chateau in the Southwest of France that is home to an important archive of the work Raoul Haussmann—about 700 pieces, including collages, photograms, and experimental films. Two years later, I got an assistant position at the Ministry of Culture, where I had an opportunity to develop a series of cultural publications on the theme of graphic design.

Do you now have an opportunity to help shape government policies toward graphic design?

In France, graphic design is not a profession as much as it is a form of social, political, or philosophical engagement. The concept of official “policies” doesn't exist. The way I can help shape the future of graphic design in France is by being “engaged” myself on a number of fronts. My “causes,” if you want, include issues of language, the role of the new digital tools in defining how we communicate, the history of graphic design, and contemporary French typography.

Were you ever tempted to become a practicing graphic designer?

I am not a “practicing” graphic designer; however, “practicing” graphic design is exactly what I do! I “practice” by being an actor in the field, by creating opportunities for events, conferences, publications, acquisitions, proposals, and research projects. My “practice” consists in developing, analyzing, decrypting, interpreting, curating, art directing, managing, and promoting. All those different activities are what most graphic designers do today on a daily basis. The profession is no longer just about communicating specific ideas or messages—it is the coming together of various strategic pursuits having to do with visual expression.

From your point of view, what is the main contribution of graphic designers to the digital culture?

I am glad you asked this question because graphic designers have a very special talent: They think from the top down rather than from the bottom up. They come up with ideas that are all-inclusive rather than deductive. In other words, they have a capacity for integrated thinking.

That's why the digital age is the age of graphic designers! The merging together of experimental techniques involving visualizing, processing, computing, coding, scaling, and modeling comes naturally to them. If I give a graphic designer a brief for a publishing project, for instance, he'll turn it around on its head and come up with something totally unexpected. The technological component is just one of the many factors a graphic designer will incorporate in order to be truly creative. By “creative” I mean inventive, uninhibited, willing to propose a different world altogether.

How do you define your mission as a government-appointed advocate for graphic design?

I want to help define graphic design as a “practice.” I want clients, patrons, and users to think of it as a discipline for taking advantage of new opportunities and technologies, but also as a chance to reimagine how society functions. Because of the phenomenal number of innovations today, graphic designers are no longer limited by technology. Their unique experience, their personal vision, and their particular history are just as much part of their métier as their proficiency when using this or that software. Today, you experiment—for better or for worse. You take chances. You come up with hybrid solutions. You collaborate with unlikely partners. You work without safety nets.

It sounds exciting—but how do you keep it all together?

Paradoxically, the new generation is incredibly disciplined, intellectually. As I mentioned earlier, the credit for this renaissance goes to French design schools. In the last decade, they have required that all students write elaborate research papers before they can graduate. Design history and criticism are now part of the curriculum. By the time they hit the job market, young graphic designers are not only creatively mature and technologically savvy; they are also better informed than their potential employers and less isolated culturally. I love working with them: They are a very articulate group.

Making Transitions: Returning to School with Barbara DeWilde

Barbara DeWilde is a former book cover and magazine art director/ designer. These days she says, “I'm a designer. Period.” After many successful years in print design, she returned to school, the SVA MFA Interaction Program. She deliberately left her comfort zone, feeling that otherwise she would stagnate: The print business was narrowing, physical books were selling in smaller quantities compared to digital editions, printed magazines were losing ad revenues. The creative opportunities were narrowing. But figuring out her next professional step, and how to go about it, hadn't been easy.

AIGA Exhibition

Designer: Barbara DeWilde

Client: AIGA

She saw User Interaction Experience (UIX) as an opportunity, but returning to school after 25 years of professional experience was incredibly hard. “I was concerned that the learning curves would be steep and that I wouldn't have the digital chops to keep up with my classmates,” she said. “I was concerned that I would embarrass myself with my knowledge gap. I worried about what my peers would think. And, finally, returning to graduate school would not guarantee anything in my future creative life. It was a leap of faith.”

Leap she did, and what she learned was critical to her future: “In interaction design, you're not designing to communicate; you're designing for human behavior,” she explained. “The designer needs to do research, make observations, design, and iterate. More often than not you are working in teams. With the exception of typography for magazines and book interiors, which has information design at its core, the cover design work I had been doing was largely emotional and intuitive. Now, I've learned to alternate these two approaches, methodical and intuitive, and to articulate my ideas more through models, diagrams, and writing.” She learned how code works, about business, entrepreneurship, and the Internet. She learned that to create a new digital product or service, it's essential to develop an online persona, to be known on the Web, and to network throughout the community. Interaction design is an open-hearted, open-source environment. People share. In the graphic design world, there's a lot of finger-pointing about who made what first, credit, and ownership. In the digital world, everyone can make a photo-sharing service and users can flock to the one that appeals to them. First to market or first to have an idea does not mean the best or the one-and-only.

DeWilde would like to launch a digital product and bring it to market, to contribute to a team that makes digital product designs, and to shift away from print unless it is the best medium for a design project. “To use a David Foster Wallace descriptive,” she said. “I no longer want print design to be my default setting. I'm sorry I didn't make the switch sooner. I'm so anxious to clock in my 10,000 hours and to become an expert. I may not have enough time to reach that goal.”

NY Times Mobile Opinion App

Designer: Barbara de Wilde

Photographer: Creative Time

Client: NY Times

Chapter 11
Understanding Change