reading 4 notes

“On (Design) Bullshit”

Michael Bierut

What is the relationship of bullshit and design?

Harry G Frankfurt distinguished bullshit from lies, pointing out that bullshit is "not designed primarily to give its audience a false belief about whatever state of affairs may be the topic, but that its primary intention is rather to give its audience a false impression concerning what is going on in the mind of the speaker."

The design process always combines the pursuit of functional goals with countless intuitive, even irrational decisions.

Example: The functional requirements- the house needs a bathroom, the headlines have to be legible, the toothbrush has to fit in your mouth — are concrete and often measurable.

The intuitive decisions, I just like to set my headlines in Bodoni, or I just like to make my products blobby.

As Frankfurt points out, it's beside the point whether bullshit is true or false: "It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction." There must only be the desire to conceal one's private intentions in the service of a larger goal: getting your client it to do it the way you like it.

Calling bullshit on a designer, then, stings all the more because it contains an element of accuracy.

"Wonders Revealed: Design and Faux Science"

Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel from Michael Bierut, William Drenttel, and Steven Heller

Science is the connective tissue linking past to present to future, and in this context, its relationship to visual communication is critical. It is through graphic design that the complexities and wonders of science are revealed.

why are there so few designers participating in the articulation, expression and dissemination of these new ideas? Why isn’t there a more central, intellectually relevant, and creatively meaningful role for designers—one that revolves less around aestheticizing preexisting content and is based, instead, on inventing new ways to visualize these new ideas?

This new seeking after scientific style- Faux Science—is the antithesis of Modernism: it’s form awaiting content, or worse, serious form retrofitted with interchangeable Helfand Drenttel 2 content.

Filtered through design’s brutally neutralizing style engine, contemporary design is anesthetized and stripped of its indigenous qualities: Science, in this context, is a graphic placebo. Meanwhile, designers conceal their intellectual weightlessness and flex their stylistic muscle, producing work that strikes just the right tone of Lab Chic.

Science is hygienic and objective, rational and finite, grounded in numerical certain and cosmological reason. Science is all about clarity and specificity and rationalism, about charting DNA strands and analyzing chemical compounds, about physical density and gravitational pull and a reality that is anything but virtual.

The appeal of information design is that it offers instant credibility.

Information design is rational and authoritative, classified and controlled to within an inch of its life: everything in its place and a place for everything. Label it information design and it looks serious. Number it and it looks scientific. But it’s a false authority, particularly because we buy into the form so unquestioningly.

Faux Science is the new vernacular, a methodology that, while highly disciplined in a formal sense, is still all about appropriation.

"The thesis proposal"

Michael Vanderbyl

A clear, well-written proposal will direct research, the form of thesis project, and its design.

1. Start with what interests you.

2. Make sure you have a point.

3. Do not base your proposal on the obvious.

4. Think through your claims.

5. Do not make sweeping statements for dramatic effect or without supporting them with documentation. Define your terms.

6. Do not claim what you will prove anything-we are designers, not cold-fusion scientists.

7. Do not claim that you will prove anything.

8. Be aware that you will revise your proposal as your research dictates and your process evolves.

Research tips:

Reading, visual audits, interviews and bibliography.

1. Let your topic dictate the type of research you do, and have an idea of what you are looking for.

2. Maintain a level of cynicism. Be critical of your sources, and do not merely adopt a point of view without reading competing sources.

3. Consult with an expert mentor in your chosen field of study.

4. Develop a system for note-taking as you read. Tansnscribe salient thoughts and quotes as you encounter.

5. Footnote your sources.

6. Avoid reading pseudo-science.

7. Interviewing all your friends about your topic is not research of intellectual merit.

The thesis project tips:

1. Do not have preconceived ideas about what form your project will take. Let the form the determined by your proposal and content.

2. Create a written outline of your narrative/argument diagramming your core and secondary messages. This outline, when paired with visuals and select research, will serve as a guide to the realization of your thesis project.

3. Give your audience “multiple access points” to your content. Deliver your information on several levels: the “quick read.” Or overview, as well as the elaborations. The overview will allow you to hook them and then lead them deeper into your content.

4. The visual language of your thesis should be appropriate to your subject/content.

5. If you are unfamiliar with your chosen medium, don’t assume you will successfully accomplish your project in ten weeks. Make realistic time allowances for the inevitable learning curve.

6. Approach the idea of creating an installation with some trepidation.