Just Simple

A few weeks ago I found this cartoon from the 1970′s explaining design to the public. The film explains the importance of design and how it improves everyday life. It also explains the pitfalls of bad and impractical design.

It’s interesting for me, that the ideas behind design haven’t changed that much since the 1970′s. In fact most of what it is said in the video can be compared to Donald Norman’s “Emotional Design”. Design should be functional but also aesthetically pleasing. It’s a pretty interesting video and worth watching.

On Saturday, Adelaide Fringe announced the competition to the Fringe Festival open. During the years of the Fringe there have been some great designs and anyone can enter!

This year’s entries are allowed (or encouraged) to use a range of mediums such as animation, sculpture, photography etc.

For more details on the Fringe go here: Fringe Poster Competition

I never use this term: Form follows function

- Dieter Rams

Dieter Rams is an industrial designer whose works in closely associated Braun. Rams explains his designs though one term “Less, but better“. While studying at TAFE I had learnt if you could explain your ideas and design philosophy through one sentence, it is a mark of a truly great designer.

Perhaps it is time to break out of the mediocrity shell.

Dieter Rams explains his design philosophy through 10 simple design principals:

1. Good design is innovative
2. Good design makes a product useful
3. Good design is aesthetic
4. Good design makes a product understandable
5. Good design is unobtrusive
6. Good design is honest
7. Good design is long-lasting
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail
9. Good design is environmentally friendly
10. Good design is as little design as possible

More on Dieter Rams:

Design Boom interview

Youtube Video (Much better quality)

More in depth explanation of Ram’s Design Principals

While away in Melbourne a week ago I was fortunate enough to visit the Melbourne Design Market. Although the layout and though are pretty similar to Adelaide’s Bower Bird Bazaar it was interesting to see what is popular in other states.

While there I picked up some business cards with great typographic examples:

The goal of interface design is to get rid of the interface.

- Aza Raskin

I recently found an interesting film about industrial design. It talks about how we have interacted with objects over the years and how it may change within the future as we draw away from archetypes. The documentry is interesting and worth a look if your interested in interaction.

Objectified does bring up some good points about bad design. I often wonder why we put up with bad design in programs such as mircosoft word and excel. Although both programs come from the same family neither follow a pattern I can easily understand. Everytime I have opened the software a new menu always seems to come up instead of the same menu I am use to.

This documentry made me think about the objects I use everyday in my life. Most seem seamless, such as my bag and wallet.

Here’s a small clip from the movie about Apple:

Due to the huge amount of work I have this week I’m unable to do a proper post. However I have found some interesting examples of cities interpreted through type.

Penguin books have adopted this idea in a small ad campaign shown here.

Also there is a flickr set from insect54 that displays some of the work of Herbert Spencer’s “Pioneers of Type”. One book worth getting if you love type. One day I will display my own collection of design books.

Link to the set can be seen here:

Since the announcement of the apple ipad there has been a huge argument over what is better HTML5 or Flash. While the ipad has had it’s fair share of bashing it’s not the real issue. Products improve with time and user testing. The ipad is meant for the average user or designer, not a technology nut. Which is where apple have been very successful, in time the ipad will succeed whether it will be through e books or by some other means.

Apple have announced that they will chose not to support flash and since then numerous blogs have popped up arguing for either side of the debate. Examples of these examples can be seen below.

Don’t want Flash

The Flash Blog

While I believe that it’s fantastic people are showing this type of passion, is this really the right argument or discussion? This argument is coming from a coder’s point of view, rather then the consumers point of view. Which is why I believe this argument is invalid.

As a designer the argument over which is better is irrelevant to me. As a coder the argument is relevant, however I am a designer first, coder second. Design should be all about the end user, not what we prefer to use as coders. I believe the real discussion should not be about HTML5 vs Flash but should be about “Rich Media Content”.

As designers we aim to make interaction easier for the end user. Questions we should be asking ourselves should be:

What does the end user want to interact with?

What does the end user want from their media content?

Design and coding should not be we as developers / designers want. It should always be about the end audience, perhaps if we discussed Rich Media Content instead of arguing about HTML5 vs Flash we could grow as better developers / designers.

“Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.”

- Charles Eames

I’m always interested in other aspects and disciplines of design. Although design as a whole is vast I can see there are similarities between disciplines and process.

The other day I found an interesting review site called Red Letter Media. What sets this review site apart from other is the way the reviewer (with a little bit of humour attached) breaks down the movie stage by stage. He explains why a movie works, through character development, what emotion the movie evokes. What really impresses me is he doesn’t say bad or good things about the movie without reason. This reminds me of what we were taught while learning design.

An example is to do with “Disney Eyes”.  He explains characters with wide eyes are more identifible and gain the audience’s sympathy due to look that they have nothing to hide. Where are characters with beady looking eyes are less likely to gain the audience’s sympathy due to looking like they have something to hide. This is all true and can be backed up in People Watching by Desmond Morris

He explains in one review that sometimes movie makers forget that they should aim to envoke an emotion, an aspect that I have to remember when designing. As designers we sometimes forgot we are trying to get a reaction out of people not to make things look pretty.

I really appreciate the time and effort this person has put into these reviews. Not only are they humourous but go into great detail! I’ve embedded the first part of the review. For the 2nd part if you are still interested go to his website.

For a link to Red Letter Media’s Site:

http://www.redlettermedia.com/