The Golden Age and Graphic Design
I finally saw Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris this week, and I thought it was wonderful. You all should watch it. As with most Woody Allen films, and good films in general, it left me thinking about a lot of things, not least of which is the idea of the “golden age” and how it pertains to design, specifically design education.
Spoiler Alert.
The movie features contemporary protagonist Gil Pender, a writer that has been successful selling shallow, vapid scripts to big budget Hollywood productions. Though he has been prosperous in all quantitative measures in his career, he longs for the romantic life of an artist and yearns to write a novel set in Paris in the 1920′s, what he considers to be the “golden age.” He discovers if he waits at a certain street corner, when the clock strikes midnight, a vintage Peugeot will pick him up and drive him back through time that he might experience his “golden age,” rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ernest Hemmingway, Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter, and T.S. Elliot. He falls for a brooding and curious woman in the 20′s (GASP! An affair in a Woody Allen film?) and ends up travelling with her even further through time to the 1890′s, what she considers to be the “golden age.” The resolution of this four-dimensional scandal is that everyone thinks that some time before theirs was the “golden age” because life is generally unsatisfying, and this is something that we simply cannot accept. Bleak, existential the–grass–is–always–greener.
This is something I have thought about before, and I find it to be generally true. People who work for others always tell me how lucky I am to be self–employed, and entrepreneurs I know wish someone would do their bookkeeping for them and give them a health plan and a 401k. I suspect this dissatisfaction is one of the major forces driving humanity ever forward, a whole species — or at least a whole hemisphere — chasing the carrot–on–a–fishing–line that is contentedness.
I have found this to be especially true of my peers, who all happen to be recent college graduates, most of which are still looking for gainful employment. I have seen first and second hand how important knowledge of basic interactive and web design is to getting a job in design today, and to put it bluntly, schools can’t seem to keep up with the lightning fast evolution of the web. The vast majority of my classmates at MICA, and I suspect students across the country, feel nostalgic for the “golden age” of graphic design. There is boundless passion for letterpress, screen printing, patinated signs, and 60′s logos and branding. People lament the death, or at least realignment, of print and designing for the screen is tiresome and limiting.
Everything is faux distressed or egregiously skeuomorphic. The web is in the throes of puberty; we have all sorts of new and exciting potential, but we’re uncomfortable in our own skin.
Students should and need to be excited about the amazing possibilities afforded by the Internet. As much as I love the tactility of paper, the sound and feel of a Vandercook, the smell of ink, we are not living in the age of print. Your counterfeit vintage poster is easy; your retro typography is irrelevant. Print is not changing the world, Facebook is changing the world, and not necessarily for the better.
May we all learn to not just accept, but love the times we’re living in, against all odds. Eyes on the future, everyone, not the past.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
9 Comments
Very thoughtful.
The scribe is dead. Long live the book.
The book is dead. Long live the newspaper.
Painting is dead. Long live the photograph.
Print is dead. Long live the recorded sound.
The stage is dead. Long live the motion picture.
Film is dead…
New technologies naturally breed new jobs along with counter-reactions. Sure, you can pick a side, or just hang out in the middle. No need to shun the older arenas. William Morris thrived because of retrospective type. Scribes are still writing Torahs. Success is found when there is quality in craft and concept that answers to demand, or generates it. Answering the demand for web & interactive design is obviously lucrative at this time.
There is more surface area for design than ever before in history—which is definitely why everyone should love the present for.
@Suzi — Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I did not mean to imply we should shun everything that’s not on a screen; my concern is that the majority of students today do the exact opposite. Designing for the screen has a nerdy stigma and 95% of the design assignments I got while in school were print. I can’t tell you how many times one of my classes had the “is print dead” conversation, with everyone waxing poetic about how letterpress is making a huge comeback and how The New York Times is still distributed in print in every major city in the world every day. I am not arguing that print is dead, I am saying that discussion is dead. We need to be talking about the fact that more than 10% of the whole world’s population has an active account on Facebook, or what makes Tumblr so sticky.
There will always be those that bring historical processes and references into their work, and it will be probably be better for it, but institutions of design education need to be better advocates for the screen. They should be preparing people to lead the way, not write the history books.
Very nice, thought provoking post..
I also just graduated this past May with my BFA in graphic design and I have to say I agree with you whole heartedly on about every point you made.
I (and i think just about every design student) had jumped on the “print is not dead” train during school, loving vintage, distressed, retro style, with dreams of doing album covers and show posters, and was taught primarily in Print design.
Although I had great professors, I was only offered ONE interactive class, which was optional, and not available till my last semester. This was disappointing at the time and has only made me more frustrated since graduating. I feel almost behind the times now, even though i try to constantly keep up and learn and grow in my designs.
I guess my point is design needs to be taught for the Web just as much as it does for Print these days, if not more directed for web.. I may be a different case but web and interactive design were just not offered to me.
It is inspiring to hear that you ARE self employed fresh out of school, but more inspiring to see that you are doing new, exciting things. More DESIGNERS should be ENTREPRENEURS, creative minds changing the world
@Rob — The unfortunate state of screen based design education is that most “Graphic Design” programs feel that designing for the screen falls partially or wholly outside of the scope of GD. This is largely because development is a gigantic can of worms that the vast majority of designers won’t ever open, and there is a lot of frustration in designing something that isn’t “real” and complete. This is a hurdle that needs to be overcome, perhaps by forming collaborations between design students and IST students.
I think it’s also important to step back and think about the idea that “my higher education has limited me professionally as a designer.” If you are still holding onto this idea after the smoke clears from your recent graduation, you may be in trouble.
I think we all know in life and in any education program at any level: if you want to learn something that isn’t included, you need to do some leg work, seek it out, and make it happen.
Coming from a monster public university, web usability and experience design classes were readily available. Lots of cross-disciplinary collaborations. I heard a lot of my professors slamming art school design programs because they didn’t focus on experience design and usability—I don’t know if that is really the case, but I hear some of that in this discussion. At the same time, I felt our portfolios didn’t have competitive aesthetics. So, which grass is greener?
Andy—I completely agree with you regarding codephobia. It is very curable with designer + developer collaborative 12-step program :P
@Suzi — Certainly most of the world is “you get what you give;” and I am a big advocate of going above and beyond. I suppose what I am proposing is that studying user experience and screen based design shouldn’t be going above and beyond these days, it should be the standard. Perhaps studying print publication layout, traditional branding, or poster design should be the extracurriculars. To the vast majority of students, those skills won’t be half as useful as knowing how to set type for the web or how to craft a rewarding and clear user experience.
It’s interesting and encouraging to hear that big Universities focus more on practical things like UX and usability. The graphic design dept. at MICA was actually very practical, but they wouldn’t touch anything interactive. The department that’s supposed to have all the interaction design courses is super experimental and impractical, which kind of ruins things. I know a student going into his senior year now who wants to make a web based service/product for his thesis and he isn’t getting as much support as he would like because the idea is so practical. I guess it’s not “Art.”
Andy,
Thoughtful and well-written post. Kudos for tersely stating shared observations and concern about design education today.
While it’s a shame to hear MICA couldn’t scratch your “interactive itch”, you should be very proud of your ability to learn on your own. It’s obvious you’ve got a sharp brain and senses, which I suspect countless hours spent on personal projects and side-curiosities are partially responsible for. Frustration with your curriculum can become excellent motivation for self-guided, _true_ learning. I’m sure your friend Anthony Mattox would agree, some interests (botany, electronic music?) are probably best pursued in a way where they’re allowed to naturally evolve outside the confines of syllabi.
More interactive design courses certainly would have helped found and/or round your education, but hopefully the energy spent outside of class has given you a personal investment and true enthusiasm that, sadly, others with more formal training often lack. Knowing *how* to make websites (etc) doesn’t mean they’re any good.
I have a lot of respect and interest for you and your friends-of-the-web projects. Your print-heavy background comes through the screen in very refreshing ways (excitement of turning pages, scrolling to see what’s next). Many (including myself) share your distaste for overly skeuomorphic gimmicks, and the novelty one-ups-manship in general on the web today.
I graduated in May, too. BFA Graphic Design with a co-major in Interactive Media Studies, big public university. Our programs were *great*, very conducive for interdisciplinary interests and on the other side of the spectrum from “traditional print-only” programs. I was fortunate that the IMS program was really blooming during my 4 years, and was able to take both practical “here’s how to code web/Flash/Processing” courses as well as “lets make some ‘artsy’ kinetic sculptures and question things”. Helen Armstrong brought a renewed print-focus when she came from MICA (maybe you’ve had her, too?) but was still highly interested in what print is to look like in this digital, interactive age. On top of all that, had a course on Design History in 20th century and Alternative Design Media complete with Vandercook and movable type.
It’s funny, most of the kids in my program were/are highly envious (to say the least) of MICA portfolios overall. There were countless times in studio we’d see your work on lovelypackage, etc and be pissed to learn it’s student work! Good to have competitive motivation though :).
Anyway, sorry this comment got lengthy. I’ll close with this: you’re fully correct that by now, design education needs to include the web and interactive technology as a ‘legitimate’ medium, as it’s *not* going away. It’s foolish to treat it as icing, it’s gotta be part of the cake.
— Ryan
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