fda visual communication: professional project

Showing posts with label professional project. Show all posts

Monday, 12 April 2010

Simon Johnston (8vo) - Design writing

art center graduate program. 1990. introduction written for a booklet to announce the new art center graduate program in graphic design, initiated by ramon munoz, which later became the media design program.

See the full text and more essays here.

Words and images permeate every aspect of our daily lives and play an increasingly important role in our information-hungry society. Advances in information technology are changing the way we communicate with one another; global communication is now commonplace. We have become an image-conscious and even an image-dependent society. The written or printed word has been displaced by the flickering televisual word and image. Desktop publishing has made it possible for anyone to play at being a designer.
These and other recent developments have had a significant effect on the field of graphic design. In many ways it can be said to have come of age as a profession. The general public is much more conscious of design. The use of the words “design” and “designer” as product- or image-enhancing adjectives also testifies to the profession’s higher profile and increased prestige. Designers are now promoted as stars, and design is now perceived as a fashionable profession, and often as fashion itself. The danger is that design will become nothing more than an insular style contest, fueled by a plethora of awards, annuals and magazines, further evidence of a contemporary triumph of style and form over content: design for, of, and about itself, divorced from the realities of the world at large.
Recently, however, new political moods, coupled with increasing environmental awareness, have raised pertinent questions about graphic design practice, bringing the issue of the designer’s social responsibilities to the fore. There is a need for the profession to be less self-conscious, to involve itself with the “real world”, to recognize the designer’s potential to be not merely a service for industry and a vehicle for self-expression but also an instrument for social good, to be concerned not only with economic and aesthetic issues but with social, moral, and political ones as well. Along with the increased recognition of the power of design and advertising to change people’s lives, manipulate opinion and influence society, must come awareness of the responsibility that such empowerment brings. Design should function not merely as a vehicle for profit and persuasion but as a means of influencing the general public toward the common good. Now that it has had its fifteen minutes in the spotlight, it is time for design to become more than a passive reflection of our culture; it must take an active role in formulating and shaping it.
The graduate program in Graphic Design at Art Center offers a new curriculum designed to provide students and professionals with the opportunity to pursue original research into a particular design-related field of study. The program enables students to broaden their practical, conceptual, and analytical skills in graphic design, and provide a balance between professional and theoretical approaches to design practice. The program also recognizes that many students pursue graduate studies with a view to teaching at some point in their careers and consequently addresses issues relating to design education. The program combines a rigorous and invigorating intellectual atmosphere with the thorough pragmatic professionalism for which Art Center is known.

Sunday, 7 March 2010

Polish film posters

Link.

Monday, 1 March 2010

More good blogs

Just a few more blogs for you to read over:

Form Fifty Five

For Print Only

Book Design

Materialicious (products, furniture)

Pica Pica Mag (craft)

Centripetal Notion (Motion graphics, animation, web)

Swiss Miss

Subtraction

Sunday, 21 February 2010

The Crystal Goblet, or Printing Should Be Invisible, by Beatrice Warde

Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favorite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a deep shimmering crimson in color. You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine.

For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than to hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain.

Read the rest here, or here, here, download the PDF here.

Saturday, 20 February 2010

Letter Press Site

Have a look at this site for some great reference and how to videos.

Friday, 12 February 2010

World Map

View more here.

Deck of cards

Great packaging for a deck of cards, see more here.

A toast to...

J Hill design have created a series of prints in a "Toast to" various countries/places. You can see the collection here.

Monday, 8 February 2010

Letterpress studio

A bit of inspiration for your Professional Projects.

Ministry of Type recently blogged about the Hatch Show Print letterpress studio in Nashville, Tennessee - you can see the video below: