“There is no guarantee that being famous counts for anything,” says Michael Bierut a “famous” graphic designer whom I’ve never heard of. But I’m assuming in the world of graphic artist, who is someone that a lot of people know. Although I’ve never hearing of him, I thought he raised some interesting points about graphic design and how to get your name out there or becoming “famous.” Personally, I don’t desire to become a graphic artist, but I think some of the points he talks about in his essay can be applied to any area of art and design, or areas that are totally unrelated to design. For example, he mentions how speeches and presentations should follow the pattern of an Alfred Hitchcock movie, tension followed by release. Designers should mention the problems they encountered and had to solve first and then follow with the product. This keeps the audience interested and anticipating what is to come which can be used in any intriguing presentation.
He also mentioned having something “cool” to fall back on when you can’t think of any solutions as a designer. That something “cool” could easily be a black horizontal stripes or circles (one of my favorites). These types of elements could easily become known as your signature or design aesthetic. I’ve noticed that this year through my matriculation, I can now look at certain creations from my classmates and although being different projects, can pinpoint the designer based on the aesthetic. For example, one of my classmates always uses bold, heavy font such as Gill Sans in all her projects and another only uses Helvetica Neue Ultra Light in his projects which adds a very clean and modern taste to all his work. I haven’t particularly pinned my design aesthetic yet but I’m sure it’s coming. At the end, Bierut recites one of my favorite sayings “It’s nice to be important, but it’s important to be nice.”
Another essay I read paid homage to Vladamir Nabokov’d book Pale Fire which can be considered the prototype for hypertext. When I saw the word hypertext, I immediately though about Stich Bitch, the one article I still don’t quite understand. But what I do know is hypertext is one of the coolest concepts ever, but if you’re not careful, it can swallow up a lot of your time. It happens to me often. I go online to read a story or watch a video, and because of hypertext, I always follow the breadcrumbs and end up watching or reading more than several articles or videos related to the subject. Then when I realize the time, I’m angry with myself for not paying attention. 10 minutes quickly become one hour. But I guess that’s the beauty of hypertext, taking your mind from one place to the next on an information journey. Design can be this way too, taking the audience on a multipath journey, allowing their minds to stop traveling whenever they want. Design is visual hypertext. So I know now to thank Nobokov for planting this crafty idea in the minds of designers in a book with sans-serif font.
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