Fame and good design are synonymous in the right contexts.
Everyone and virtually anyone, anywhere in the world is entitled to their “15 seconds of fame”, which surely over 75% will have at some point in their lives in the Western World. For me in particular, a taste of fame as most of the world imagines it had come for me early, as I has sang on national radio and had roles in movies seen by over 6 million in the past couple years. And though it was thrilling at high-time, it was very short-lived, and soon after I stopped the gigs, I rolled back into the world behind the camera, where I wasn’t in front of a camera and otherwise unrecognizable. This is the fate for many individuals chasing the fame train unless you’re Barack Obama or Beyoncé, are constantly prompted to seek thrills that are both sensational and limelight worthy for consistent media attention. A major flaw I see in chariot chasers is that they spend too much time trying to be the best at what everyone else is best at, and don’t invest nearly enough time in finding a niche to set themselves apart.
I for one have never been an advocate of entering contents. Recalling that I entered myself in a beauty pageant in college once and after I didn’t place, became hell-bent on never entering a competition again. That is until I discovered my incredible inspiration and talent for public speaking. While reading the “How To Become Famous” piece of the Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design series, I found a lot of Michael’s points to be inspiring, effective, but most of all—self-evident. It was refreshing to read this article in particular and dive in to the “truth of the trade”. Essentially, finding your passion, augmenting your personal growth and getting the word out about it. To reiterate some of his talking points, what good are designs if nobody sees them? He suggested entering design competitions and attending professional workshops to introduce personal designs to the public. A version of me in a recent past would’ve said, “thanks, but no thanks.” But a present-day me, with design-forward thinking says, “I’ll give it a shot.” I agree with the notion of always having a back-up to fall on, and constantly up-keeping creative projects to stimulate illustrative potential and sharpness. And with successful branding, I could weave myself right into the heart of notorious NYC design.
There’s a grand saying about New York City—“if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.” Pardon the cliché, but being an icon in New York City, especially for design notably has its perks. But diverting back to the center concept of successful design, published pieces must be easy to understand as well as visually appealing. I spent a good amount of time reading “Mr Vignelli’s Map”, not only for the fact that it was about the NYC Subway system, but also about the integration of a complex map for an organized chaos of transits. For nostalgia’s sake, I envy Michael for being able to snag a Massimo Vignelli designed map as a souvenir as it is a vintage piece. However, it is quite unfortunate that such a hyper-vivid map of NYC’s subway can be no more than that. While reading the article, I learned that what Vignelli’s map lacked was core to the significance of functional design. Simply put, it wasn’t functional. And through its lack of functionality didn’t solve any problems and moreover became a complicated mess, that was intriguing to look at, but couldn’t be used for what its purpose intended. According to Michael, Vignelli’s map shared a lot of similarities to Harry Becks map of London’s transit in 1933. To be discovered, however, is that New Yorkers are far less forgiving that the British. In terms of geographical mapping, “don’t you dare draw Central Park as a square and you know damn well its a rectangle”!
I used to think good design, along with fame, was relative. However, there are core characteristics to both that enable them to be global symbols.