Graphic Design: The New Basics - Back to the Bauhaus, Beyond the Basics, Formstorming

Back to the Bauhaus

• 1920s - institutions such as the Bauhaus in Germany explored design as a universal "language of vision - continues today.
• Bauhaus promoted rational solutions (planning & standardisation) but today the focus is more on unique, idiosyncratic and customised designs. 
• Modernism as well as systems that produce unexpected results. 
• “Design is never reducible to its function or to a technical description.”
• Postmodernism - don’t look for meaning in an image/object as people will cloud their interpretation with cultural biases and personal experiences.
• Postmodernism emerged in 1960s but became a dominant ideology between the '80s and ‘90s.
• Software designers describe the language of vision in a universal way.
• Software organises visual material into menus to create tools that are universal e.g. InDesign is a software machine for controlling leading, alignment, spacing, column structures, image placement and page layout.
• Transparency is used a lot more today than it used to be as well as layering.

Beyond the Basics

• Technology now allows designers to control & create complex work flows from almost anywhere compared to the constant outsourcing that has to be done before the Macintosh.

Formstorming

• "Formstorming is an act of visual thinking.”
• To dig deeper & get fresher ideas, a classic exercise is to choose one subject and represent it visually 100 times.
• Another exercise is to create a design-a-day for at least two weeks - time management.
• Process verbs - turn verbs into design processes & outcomes e.g. touch, tear, turn, etc.