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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.

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