Abstract: The Art of Design

Key:

Key points

My own notes 

I figured it would probably be quite useful to look into the work of some Graphic Designers (as well as other artists/ professionals) as they tend to work in a more shape-driven manner and commonly use the art of simplification within their work - which is essentially what I will be investigating in my dissertation. 

I came across a Netflix documentary series called Abstract: The Art of Design, which I've been told by some peers is really interesting. Each episode focuses on a professional working within a specific creative discipline. I want to watch the illustration one soon, but started with the Graphic Design episode after having a think about cop.

Paula Scher

Paula Scher is an American graphic designer, painter and art educator who has massively influenced the direction of graphic design over the last four decades. 

Notes & Quotes:

• "The city of signs" - referring to New York City - could be interesting as a starting point? Could look into symbols and signs in New York or take the idea of this further and investigate Leeds/ other places
• "I walk outside and I see typography everywhere"
• "The way numbers are on doors, no two are the same down the block" - interesting, things can be written differently but still have the same meaning
• "All messages are different and they're everywhere"
• "typography is painting with words"
• "I knew it had to be New York-ish, meaning it had to be loud and proud" - talking about design for The Public Theatre. Looks at tone and what it communicates
• "You can create an identity for a whole place based on the recognisability of type" - context
• "You instantly knew The Public. It's a language that could easily be dissected, taken apart, put back together" - could be interesting as a concept for making practical work- taking things apart and putting them back together in a different way? 
• "If a font is heavy and bold it may give you a feeling of immediacy. If a font is thin and has a serif form, it may feel classical. So that before you even read it, you have a sensibility and spirit and that if you can combine that with a meaning, then that's spectacular." - The way the type looks massively influences the way it's read. Could experiment with writing the same thing is different typefaces. Probably already a creative professional who does this- {research. 
• "Mostly what I design are identity systems. They have to exist in lots and lots and lots of ways." - explore this idea of identity systems
• "I generally try to want to push something as far as it can be pushed" - concept sort of explored in first year where we were given an object to draw and had to keep simplifying until we reached the most simplified form we could find (shown below): 

I actually really enjoyed this task and think it could be a good idea to revisit for this investigation.

• "You want to design something than can be adapted to its time"
• "Signalled a paradigm shift" - Research paradigms
• "I really started to understand that type had spirit and did not have to be some clean mechanical-like thing that was simply doing its job. It could be this marvellous thing to engage with" - Could explore type and image 
• "Design exists beyond screens, it has an impact in real like" - design is everywhere, I need to go and explore
• "an emotional sign system"
• "Design needs to take human behaviour into account" - needs to work in a way that people will easily understand. Maybe the idea of human behaviour could be interesting to explore - how do represent the notion of human behaviour/  characteristics in the most simple form
• "Paula has created a typographic language that is popular, it's American, it's New York"
• "a visual language... you don't need to see the logo to know what it is" - creating an identity for something
• "They want proof that this is really, really gonna work. The problem is there isn't proof. It's how do people see and perceive and accept things" - could carry out an investigation on the way different people perceive things.

One last quote I took from Scher was:

• "You have to been in a state of play to design. If you're not in a state of play, you can't make anything" 

I thought this was super inspirational and good thing to live by if you work creatively. It's important to play and explore different avenues and this is something I need to do within this investigation. 

This documentary was really interesting and definitely worth watching. Lots of ideas have been sparked which is exciting. These are highlighted in my added noted above.