Graphic Design in the Modern Age

Written by Louise Evans

When Morph asked the members of 9D design collective a few questions, they were graduating from university and on the brink of the collaborative exhibition. We asked these fresh young designers about what graphic design means to them and to shed some light on their craft and everything that goes into it.

How have your views on design changed since you began studying to where you are today?

Renee Lam: Fresh out of high school I was one of those students that had an interest in design but was naïve in most aspects of the subject. David Carson and Neville Brody were hackneyed names in my ‘well rounded’ knowledge of designers.
Fortunately throughout my course I have had tutors who care about educating their students beyond the ‘standard’, who introduced us to people who pushed the traditional boundaries of ‘design’. Since studying, key aspects I’ve come to value are the importance of meaning and functionality in design. I enjoy a beautiful image as much as the next person, however what takes that image beyond a glorified shell, for me, is the idea behind it and how each part of the design contributes to the communication of that message. Today websites like FFFFound are incredibly rich sources of information and inspiring. But a vast number appear superficial and lack substance, reflecting only the current aesthetic trend of the time. Donald Judd the American minimalist succinctly speaks my mind when he said “Design has to work. Art does not.”

How has being a designer influenced the way you live, from what you buy to your perspective on the world?

Ralph Matthews: Being a designer influences the way I am, how I look at things when I walk down the road, what computer and beer I buy and how I chew my cereal in the morning.

Good design to me is 20% cool, 80% geek. I'd be more inclined to get kicks out of watching a doco on the typeface 'Helvetica' than the latest James Bond flick. Often when looking at a sign on the street, instead of reading the text, I see the typeface first. How geeky is that!

For me creative design is based around my personal experiences. The more I've had, the better I design. What do I mean by experience? Everything. The things I see, touch, smell and hear; ideas that make my mind buzz.

Being creative requires an adventurous spirit. I like getting out and seeing things, meeting new people, living freely and experiencing life fully. I travel as often as I can and consciously go out of my way to scare myself. As the actor Alan Alda once said: "The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition."


What do you do balance the commercial and creative elements of design, maintaining identity and integrity whilst creating work for others?

Jannis Gundermann: I feel like commercial aspects in design are rarely working against creativity. Most of the constrains and restrictions imposed on the designer force you to not rely on ‘trendy’ things or expensive finishes but rather to find a new way of
tackling the problem. As such it is a fertile ground for true innovation and creative thinking.
As a designer my identity lies in the details, as styles and trends are constantly evolving, so does my style. Something I do constantly however is to put an emphasis on efficiency, a well defined grid, typography and cohesion. If I want to re-brand something to be cutting edge then use a recent typeface, not just an old but contemporary looking one. My integrity is not defined by the final product but rather by its process and the social interactions along the way. Civil discussions and good work ethics will go a long way. In my eyes, the balance occurs naturally when contemplating form and function as well as the client/designer relationship. So far I have never struggled to find this balance.

What are the positive and negative sides to working within a collective, and what made you commit to it?

Emily Williamson: Working in a collective definitely has ups and downs, but more ups! The negatives were only small things, such as having too many opinions on something small and simple. There were times when we were working on something such as the stamp design, and because we all have our opinions, decisions took a lot longer than they should. We used a voting system in the end to just get things done. Making sure everyone was equally putting in their time was an issue too, as we all had personal projects as well as the 9D design work and promotional material. Some members had to take on more work, which took away time from their individual projects, so balancing this well was something we had to be aware of.
 
The positives I could list forever! Working together was definitely to our advantage. As something like this had never been done before at AUT we  had to push authority into going with what we wanted to do. As there were nine of us we had a big range of skills, from print, moving image, promotional material and tactics and financial handling. Working closely had a positive effect on our actual design work, each member has very different working styles and 'look' to their work, so a bit of inspiration or motivation was always there. Also have nine of us really created a good support system, we all became close and like a family! This venture taught us so much not just in design terms, but also the promotion of the exhibition and collective. we had to approach and work alongside sponsors which was a skill which was vital in us having the exhibition.
 
I committed to this collective because it was the perfect opportunity to make a bang in the design community just as we completed our degrees. There are rarely graphic design exhibitions in NZ so this was our chance to do something different and really push ourselves. We knew the collective was going to be a lot of work, but every bit of hard work was rewarding once we finally got to the exhibition opening night, where we had such a good response.

Describe your typical process, from the idea to the finished product, and how you make it unique.

Sai Promsri: What is my typical process? I guess the only typical thing for my 'design process' is stress. For me design doesn't just come as an idea, all ready to be made into some final product. It's more just getting into environments and looking around for little bits of inspiration. Sometimes I call it research, but it's more than just reading manuals and studying design. Usually this goes on for a while; ideas form a little bit and I start developing them and then I get pissed off and chuck them away. Then I stress out more. There is a lot of walking away involved.

As a designer I also find myself falling into boring, cliches without even realising it. Often I'll spend days or even weeks making something up then just realise it is overdone and boring and end up starting again. A lot of the ideas that make it through to the final design come when I stop trying to start designing and just do random things.

I guess that's it. Just get out there and see what happens. Every project, every design, is a different process and it usually isn't any kind of straight line. It's back and forth between lame and okay ideas. It's frustration, stress, and even just giving up for a few days and doing something completely different. What makes a design unique for me is forgetting about process and pattern. Design is a more organic type of thing; It just happens.

If you were to describe what design is, what taste is, how would you put it?

Vincent Thornhill: For me, the description of 'design' and 'taste' would be almost opposite. For some "[t]aste is what you do with your tongue" (Promsri, 2008), and for some it might have to do with the family pet. Taste is subjective. A product of a design process can be approved, or disapproved of based on taste, but it should not determine the production method itself. The design process should show an attempt to remain objective.

So I guess I would described 'design' as the use of systems that incorporate objective production methods that are determined somewhat by the content or context. The selecting of parameters or inclusion of external influences by a designer is obviously unavoidable, but evidence of a designer's voice or taste in the work should not constitute what 'design' is.

This may be getting a bit heavy. Design is really just about getting off your ass and engaging with the world, and letting the results of that engagement inform the design output. Design should treat the content or context with integrity, and that is not going to happen when designers pull ideas or aesthetics out of thin air or from what is fashionable.

Would you say being a designer is a result of nature or nurture? Is it a gift or can it be learnt?

Cassidy Dodge: I'd sure like to see what a graphic designer looks like fresh from the womb... I don't know of any really young children who want to be graphic designers or typographers when they grow up.

No, I don't think 'being a designer' is the direct result of nature or simply a 'gift', three years studying design have taught me otherwise. Design is a craft and a skill, much like writing or drawing. I am convinced that the majority of graphic design disciplines can be learned or taught. However, in saying that I also think that there are elements to design, the most obvious being composition or color-choice, that are much harder for some to master. Flair or original-thinking is something which is very hard to learn and probably even harder to teach. But on the whole, I think that good designers should always be learning and developing new skills and should never rely wholly on natural ability.

What is it that inspires you to create work and keep creating it?

Andy Bamford: I create to inform, I create to learn, I create to live. Information inspires me.
Information is knowledge and knowledge is a privilege.
Knowledge educates a decision. Life is a series of decisions.
I enjoy the challenge of learning,
I am inspired to learn new knowledge in the hope of informing others.
The process of learning forms tasks, skills, journeys, encounters. Learning forms my life.
I create to live and I live to create.
This is what inspires me to create work and continue doing so.

What kind of evolution do you think needs to take place in the design world? How is your work going to contribute to this?

Anzac Tasker: Personally I think that evolution is just the thing the design world doesn't need. Our tools are forever evolving from the traditional letterpress to the 24-inch Macs, making our job as a designer forever easier. Before the 1980's design was a more hands on trade and was produced through a long procedure of complicated processes. These traditional methods to designing, such as letterpress, screen-printing, cut and paste, lithography and others, is what exposed us to a more serendipitous exploration and forced us to view design at angles we no longer do now. With today's influence of the computer we exclude the need to experiment with alternative approaches to creating graphic content. The computer is such a sophisticated tool that can create any shape and form, why should we? By embracing this 'all in one machine' we are simply sacrificing process. I believe that In order to take a step forward, we need to take a step back and rediscover the importance of process.

My work discusses and explains the importance of this topic. To argue it, I first researched it. Using string as my medium and typography as my vehicle, I designed a 2nd, 3rd and even 4th dimensional typeface in an attempt to encourage this idea of an 'alternative approach' to designing opposed to just relying on the computer. I have done this by first designing the typeface using nothing but string in a 3-Dimensional form, then taking this form into the computer and converting it into a more flat and finished design. Learning that the computer should only be used as a finishing tool to design and not a process tool.

There is a more beautiful form of design out there, which will never be located within the format of a computer screen. A lazy designer won't search. A gifted designer will.