I enjoyed the essays by Michael Bierut; however, the one major flaw was that reproductions of the Vignelli subway map and ITC Garamond typeface – the subjects of two of the respective essays – were not included. Of course, I looked them up online to see what the heck the guy’s talking about, because of course in design you need to see it.
I personally dislike the “3” here.
Surprisingly for me, I had no idea of the history behind the New York City subway system, and am not surprised that New Yorkers were up in arms over the liberties taken by Vignelli’s design. I, too, would find it misleading that Central Park isn’t really a square (especially if I was walking it) and I noticed that Staten Island is missing from the map. Now maybe in the ’70s those subway lines didn’t exist (I should know this…), but c’mon son, that’s just glaring.
The subway map that caused New Yorkers to lose their shit.
However, I can appreciate flattening an image and making it easier to digest, and I don’t fault Vignelli for taking the liberties he did. It was a risk, a design choice, and you have to own them. It’s really hard to design something to be legible and communicate information effectively; I’m thinking of the recent struggles for the food pyramid, which isn’t a pyramid anymore but a plate now.
Even a topic brought up in another of Vignelli’s essay, the terrorism alert system, was inefficient. What actions could citizens take from knowing a particular alert level? It didn’t say that under one color security would be tightened by everyone having to check bags, or that hours would be changed – there was nothing concrete that citizens can focus on, and because of that the system was a laughingstock. Meaningless information, as Bierut wrote. Frankly, that’s something I see in a lot of design, which I often label as redundant. It’s in web design, on products, yet even in my own design work this semester, throughout several classes, I wonder as I point out a redundancy, if it’s necessary. Does losing it matter?
Many of the issues Bierut brings up in these selected essays I’ve struggled with in my work this semester. Besides deducing redundancies and inefficiencies, especially in my smartphone application design, I’ve definitely had the defeatist thought of lack of originality; I’ve certainly heard my classmates bemoan their lack of good ideas because everything’s been done before. Yes, nothing’s truly original, in that it’s just a mishmash of ideas melded together and it’s the execution and the details that make something what it is. Plagiarism, another topic so often discussed nowadays, has many shades; I still remember Motley arguing that stealing code is a form of plagiarism that doesn’t get worded as such. As a journalist, I wondered if “copying” my own work was a form of plagiarism, and I’d always try to reword a sentence slightly even if I was rehashing an article I wrote the previous week, since all I had to do was provide an update. Any writer, musician or designer (and I’m sure I’m missing some other professions) has tons of influences percolating in their unconsciousness at any given time, and sometimes it is hard to suss out where what came from and where.
As for being famous – well, recalling a conversation I had in high school, I think the best way is to be well-known and well-respected in your field. And Bierut’s points about contests ring true, as I flashbacked to hours spent compiling entries for both high school newspaper contests and PR campaign awards, knowing that all the meticulousness in copies and stapling wouldn’t be noticed. The payoff is always small compared to the time spent, but that’s life.