Image & word-Brian Fies

Last Tuesday, we had a special guest speaker, Brian Fies, in Design 1 class. Brian Fies is a late booming graphic novelist who has published two graphic novels: Mom’s Cancer and Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? Throughout his lecture, he talked about the reason that he made his two graphic novels, about the design process when making comic books, and about the importance of words and images come together it will produce a good connection to audience.
During his lecture, Fies first talked about his first graphic novel, Mom’s Cancer, published in 2006. It is a graphic novel that depicts how Fies’ mom’s fight against lung cancer, and how his family reacts to his mother’s illness. For this comic, Fies is telling a real story to others from his personal experience. Moreover, Fies talked about a very important topic that words and image combined together produces good communication. To explain this statement, Fies made an analogy comparing rock music and comic . Comics are a combination of words and pictures in a way of rock music is a combination of music and lyrics. Fies also stated that “The music is just repetitive, and the lyrics of rock music are just bad poetry. However, if these two put together, it all of a sudden became a song that define an era.” In here, Brian is trying to tell us that both images and words are essential to each other especially in comic strip. Fies’s goal pose in comic is that “Neither words and images has meaning without the other. It fully tells a story if two of them come together.”

In his lecture, he used one of the pages in Mom’s Cancer to illustrate that words and images are both important in comic strip. The page shows that his mom was literally drawing in medical jargon. It simply tries to say his mother was overwhelmed with all the new information. It is a really good example to show the importance of combining words and images together, because the message will not convey effectively with only his mom’s image but without all the medical jargon written in the background. From this illustration, it has changed my perspective toward comic books that images cannot perfectly communicate without words.
The illustration below is another good example on how words and images works together and the time space relationship of comics. It is a scene that Fies’ mother was getting an illness. By looking at the pictures, we can tell his mother is getting bold and sick; however, if we see the words together with the picture, we can understand that it has a further meaning, which Fies’ mother is debating her responsibility for her illness.

                            

After listening to Fies’s lecture, I believe there is a strong relationship between words and images. Images are important because it allow readers to imagine; however, words are more essential because it helps audience to fully understand a story.

Image source: http://www.helenjaques.co.uk/blog/2010/comic-books-medicine-patient-education/)

Mass-production object-Dyson

Industrial designers design an object with two basic elements in mind: functionality and aesthetic. Industrial designed objects, such as cell-phones, cars, and household gadgets, are often design to tend the needs of general audiences, and are mass produced most of the time to meet that goal.

Vacuum cleaner is a machine that fits in the category of industrial designed object. The main function of a vacuum cleaner is to people sanitize his or her nearby environment without the need to call for specialists. Being said, in the past decades, people started to pay more attention on not only the function of a vacuum but also its appearance.

(http://www.uncrate.com/men/home/appliances/dyson-dc-25-animal/)

Dyson Vacuum is one of the most famous vacuums in the world. It claims that the design has both form and content, meaning the vacuum is well designed in both appearance and function. When looking at the shape of the Dyson vacuum, its slick, streamlined wheel design is the most noteworthy, and the design delivers a message of cleanliness and efficiency. When I glance at the vacuum, the most remarkable feature that caught my eyes is “the ball” design in the bottom of the vacuum. Using “the ball” to replace the standard wheels that traditional vacuum used, “the ball” design makes the vacuum move smoother and easier like you are rolling a ball. Other then the fact that “the ball” maneuvers better than a standard wheel, the appearance of “the ball” compare to that of a standard wheel is more attractive to audiences, and this feature differentiates the Dyson from all the other vacuums.  

Dyson vacuum, a good industrial design, holds both content and form. This design truly improves the appearance and function of standard vacuums. As Dieter Rams said, “Good design should be innovative, useful aesthetic and understandable. Also good design is honest, unobtrusive, long-lived and consistent in every detail.” 

Green Design

(image resource:http://www.iainclaridge.co.uk/blog/?p=1153)

As of now in the 21^st century, people are constantly trying to fix the problems they had brought to the surrounding environment. Designers these days emphasize more on the use of used or recyclable materials and tried to fit their designs with nature. Therefore, environmental friendly designs has brought up as an important issue these years. Looking back to one of my architecture books, I have found the Lot-ek MDU House can be an example for the green building.

The Lot-ek Modular Dwelling Unit was made in 2002 and it was made of shipping-container prefabricate. This construction depicts the simplicity and outdoor of green living. The simplicity of the structure is a well representation that blends in with the surrounding nature. Moreover, Lot-ek MDU house is a functional constructed; it includes everything that a house would need. For example, it has bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room and dinning room. All of these are filled with built-in furniture. Moreover, the space is divided into three parts, which accommodate social, entertainment, and private functions. Another famous feature of this green building is its multiple system. The multiple MDU system is “The vertical harbor is in constant transformation as MDUs are loaded and unloaded from the permanent rack. Like pixels in a digital image, temporary patterns are generated by the presence or absence of MDUs in different locations along the rack, reflecting the ever-changing composition of these colonies scattered around the globe,” says by Emily Pilloton. Furthermore, MDU can easily be transported from one spot to the next, with all the live and work amenitie.

Lot-ek MDU is an eco-friendly building that has the same function as the other normal houses. Unlike other houses, Lot-ek MDU house is made from used material, it is one of the original pioneers of shipping-container prefab. Despite its function, the design shows its aesthetics sense by using bright colors, clean lines, glass, and other used industrial materials to make the ugly shopping-container looks more beautiful. And it is how a good design should has which are good appearance (form) and functional (content).

Nowadays, green design is getting more and more essential in our society, although many debate that prefabricated house are not architecture, MDU house is still one of a good examples that eco-designers should think about when it comes to green design.   
image resource:
http://www.iainclaridge.co.uk/blog/?p=1153) 
http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/04/13/lot-ek-shipping-container-house/

Objectified

After watching the film Objectified, I believe that design is truly everywhere in our society. Objectified is a documentary film made by Gary Hustwit. In the film, many industrial designers were interviewed. Designers talked about many valuable concepts and ideas, and especially their views on the interaction between content and form in design. It is an intriguing film about what goes on beneath the surface of our everyday objects we take for granted.

Early in the film, it showed that Japanese toothpick is not just a toothpick, but with its own meaning behind the surface.  The toothpick actually includes many design elements, it not only has the basic function for people to pick their teeth, but also has designs at the end of the toothpick that include two noteworthy elements, which function as an indication that the toothpick has been used and as a toothpick holder.

In the film, it also tells audiences that a good design is not only about its appearance (form) but also about its function (content). The film makes audiences think of why and how a design looks the way it does. A Japanese designer, Takahama Kyoshi, says that design is “dissolving the behavior,” meaning designer design things in order to make people live better and more naturally. Take the modern potato peeler from Smart Design company in San Francisco as an example, the peeler was first designed for people who have arthritis. In order to make the peeler more comfortable to hold, the company re-designed the traditional potato peeler by changing the peel holder to bicycle rubber holder. In a more ergonomics way, people may feel more comfortable when using the peeler.

Later in the film, car designers tell us how they design a car, and every car has a face of its own. When a car designer is designing a car, he or she thinks about the customers, whether customers use cars only when customers need the cars or when the customers need to represent themselves. Car designers have to consider all these elements and put them into one emotional energy, which is the audience needs to see others expressions.   

Henry Ford has mentioned, “Every object tells a story if you know how to read it.” And this idea has been spread over the entire film. From the Japanese toothpick to the car design, it is true that every object tells a story. And the job of designers is to improve our daily lives without us knowing it.

Unity

Gestalt theory was mentioned in the class as an important theory for designers to understand, because this theory helps designers to predict how the viewers comprehend a design. Gestalt is a Germany word for “form”, and "unified whole," and is also used in visual psychology of how our minds seek unity. According to the book Design Basic, they define unity as “a congruity or agreement exists among the element s in a design.” And how we look for unity is to understand the concept of perception as a process of pattern making, and self-organizing.

When we look at an image, our brain will seek out the unity naturally, such as the picture above that was shown in class and can be perceived as two different images. When professor Housefield first asked what can we see from the picture, I saw a duck, but then realized the image could also be seen as a rabbit. Regardless if we saw a rabbit or a duck, these two images cannot be seen at the same moment since our brain tends to find unity. 

Unity is always one of the main principles to apply in designing process, because it can assist viewer in understanding more about the design by pulling all the elements together. Take the famous children’s character Hello Kitty as another example. In this character, there are ears, eyes, nose, whiskers and a red ribbon, but no mouth. However, because of the unity, self-organizing, it is enough information for our eye to complete the shape, which is a cat, though it does not have a mouth. Unity help viewer to receive message correctly, thus it is essential for designers to understand unity and how unity works.

Compare and contrast

      Before becoming a design major student in Davis, I struggled on deciding which emphasis of art or design to major. First of all, between UC Davis and UC San Diego, I had a hard time choosing  which school to attend because they are all related to art in a sense. Despite the difficulty, after I went over both majors’ curriculums, I found out that classes required for design and for art studio are completely distinct of one another. Therefore, I have realized my image of design and art as the same subject was wrong. Although Design and art to share common knowledge and techniques, they are considered different entities.

       In the world of art and design, some people often combine art and design together and state the two are interchangeable. Even though both art and design share the same knowledge base and methods and carry aesthetics senses within themselves, the purpose of art and design is not the same. The basic purpose of art is to express one’s feelings or emotions through the practice, and sometimes describes the current environment experienced by the artist. In other cases, art can even serve as a tool for mental-recovery. Furthermore, art sometimes requires more interpretation than design. Art in many cases are not meant to be understood by the general but by a few chosen individual.

       On the contrary, most designs intend to serve a specific purpose. Designers use the same technique as artists such as drawing and painting; however, unlike art, design is less personal and more genearal. The purpose of design is to convey messages to others by using the same skills or medium art uses. In addition, design has a clear purpose. For example, looking at FedEx iconography, the design tells people that the FedEx company is reliable and fast. Therefore, in order to send the right messages to viewers, designers create designs tangible to that specific purpose along with aesthetic sensibility, enabling  the correct message to be send out.

Design as conversation

All the time, I have heard from many people that design is similar to conversation.  In fact, during the last session in Design 1, this topic regarding design as conversation was brought up and discussed in small groups. The question was how do one consider design as conversation and why. Throughout the group discussion, I stated that design as a form of conversation can be considered as a language that designers not only created for themselves but also for an wide range of audiences coming from different part of the world. Design, like conversation, can be used to convey one’s message to another person through visualization.

To further explain this idea, conversation means to communicate messages, such as one’s thinking or feeling, between two or more people. In a similar fashion, design  carries the same purposes, passing on one’s thinking or feelings, compare to that of conversation; however, unlike speech conversation, design visually conducts a conversation. As a result, design can be categorize as a form of conversation like languages. Visual communication, visual identity design, animation, and web design, are some of the many examples proving that design is conversation. 

One of the evidences that design can be considered a form of conversation is visual identity designs such as brand logos. Brand name and logo, a visual representation of one company, are the fundamental building blocks of a company. Each company’s unique brand logo represents its characteristics, missions and values. Logotype, a part of brand design, communicate a company’s ideology to the audiences and grabs the audiences’ attention. From the graphics to the typeface’s color, texture, and medium, audiences can acquire information such as the company’s function, concept, and the style of business through its logotype.

For example, the logo FedEx, one of the most renounce logotype designed by Lindon Leader in 1994, had won more than 40 awards and claimed worldwide recognition. This logotype with its Futura bold fond and the word “Fed” in purple is straightforward and simple. As for the design of the word “Ex,” which its color depends on the division it represents and ranges from orange, blue, green, to red, is clever at the same time convenient. For example, the division of ground is in the color of green, which can relate to the ground as green grass. Furthermore, the logo contains a hidden message that most people cannot realize unless someone points out for them. If one look into the design more carefully, one will notice an arrow in the negative space between “E” and “X”. This arrow represents the speed of a continuous forward movement and the main vision of the company. This hidden message is brilliant in that it subliminally communicates its vision to the audiences. Moreover, a hidden message in design is the same as a whisper during a conversation, the message will mostly likely be instill in one’s memory .  

For a company it is important to have a good logo design because a logo design serve as a bridge that connects the company and the customers. A logo design tells what customers could expect from the company and what the company’s vision are. In conclusion, one can state for sure that since logo design is a form of conversation, design has to be a form of conversation as well.