is it possible to assess the quality, and/or fully understand a piece of graphic design work outside of the specific communication system it is made in relation to? e.g. social marketing to a specific group?
is it possible to do this for a piece of work which would be considered to be a work of fine art?
quality in Graphic Design is measured by the changes it produces in the audience? discuss
tasks: post notes on lectures
read Blanchard, T(2004) vivienne westwood in Fashion and graphics.
read Traub, C (2006`) The artist in the market place in The education of a photographer
Almost all graphic design relys on a vast, unseen visual dictionary. For example, I know that a green traffic light means 'go', that a flag on a beach might mean it's dangerous to swim and that a long fringe was a popular bohemian look in the 1960's and all the connotations that brings with it. Graphic Design, possibly more than any other form of creative work, requires the audience to understand what it is saying, directly or sub-conciously. Decoding a complex piece of design may be the job for an expert but the lay person also needs to understand a certain amount of the message. A graphic designer needs to know their target audience's norms, be it advertising or safety information, and have a good understanding of what their verbal and visual language will include. I would imagine this will vary from town to town, area to area and even continent to continent.
ReplyDeleteI would not be able to tell you if photograph or sculpture were of particularly high quality, I may or may not be able to see deeper layers of meaning behind what I see. I would be able to tell you how I respond to it, what it means to me and whether I 'like' it. The people I would expect to assess the quality and/or understand the work, in what ever media, are the people who have chosen to build their knowledge of the subject and thus be better able to place it within it's artistic context. It may be possible to fully understand the work and to find it of high quality but it is much more subjective, it's down to individual interpretation and, i'd imagine, it will be individuals who understand it, rather than a section of humanity.
Graphic Design may sensibly be measured in the changes it produces in it's CHOSEN audience whether that is potential consumers of a brand or potential users of equipment. Whilst the latter should raise awareness of the dangers, for example, of anyone who comes into contact with that information, an advert may not produce any change in a consumer who is not being targeted. they may in no way be affected, not even being more aware of the brand.
tipping point - light + toys + excess?
ReplyDeletesemiotics - the study of signs
death of the author - this is what i was thinking of in relation to performance, no more narrative, we construct it ourselves. a shift from appreciation to critical engagement. inter-textuality - how stuff relates to other stuff that isn't present.
(sketches of a dog, a flying arrow and a gravestone)
constructions. dogs don't understand arrows... Greeks don't use mime in the same way... *a mime artist friend of mine was arrested for showing his palm to a policeman , in greece it's really offensive!... In Mongolia it's offensive to accidentaly touch shoes or thresholds. Teeth sucking can be either really offensive or simply irritating. "He thinks the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature" George Bernard Shaw
different worlds/cultures clashing makes drama.
sign language (hmm, useful to me?)
www.citri? the history of visual communication - cave painting gallery, petroglyphs, geogryphs?
www.design history.?
dublin - museum of the year. lots of old books (inc kells?)
british museum - rosseta stone, beginnings of typography.
scriptoriums - rooms for reproducing books. like a typing pool :o)
cheap printing at bower ashton
bauhaus
constructivist - anti -frivolity. abstraction. death of the author
where's kandinsky (is that who i mean?) from? and when? is that who i saw at gugenheim, venice?
liss toky? the artist can be an agent for change.
rochenkco - classic socialist art, copied/honoured/ripped off/referenced by franz ferdinand. L Popova i think was the one i liked... and tatlin's tower... and those sets, meyerhold used?
collage was radical! dada.
futurism - radical change. out of the text grid.
art & craft - hand made, reject mass production.
dada - 1916 - 1920. political. scientific leads to war. anti--science. breaking logic.
advance guard. avant-garde. difference between post modern? doesn't sit easily with tradition. unknown. dangerous. risky. or shit? My tandemonium didn't sit easily with any tradition but maybe that's because it didn't sound very good? Was it as shocking and unknown as all that or was it just not that great?
modernism - 1930/deco. cars, furniture. clean lines of manufacture, steel , glass...
swiss style was minimal.
post-modern - 50's 60's onwards. no longer looking to science, the failure of modernism. so really, what's the difference between avant-garde and post-modern? a-g wanted to shock didn't it? but p-m maybe isn't trying to?
arent' we all post modern simply by being alive and creating work as no one can go back.
computer - showing movements of the body (arnolfini) internet mapping etc.
frascara. wrote about avant-garde.
miffy!
graphic design know what it wants to say. functional.
other art may leave it to the audience.
the move away from mass-culture to subculture - tribe. mass marketed. they get to everything.
true to type - guardian online.
I have paid a lot of money to listen to someone else look at a website on a computer that doesn't work on a campus i was told i'd hardly ever have to visit.