This project takes advantage of the omni-present word 'crisis'. By studying and displaying some of its meanings, students came up with ways of dealing, way-outs and other solutions.
Among other characteristics, generally designers tend to like limitations. A good century ago design emerged from art as 'applied art': art with at least one limitation: it is applied to something (a certain task or function, a certain client, a certain message).
Soon after, in the middle of years of economic depression, the concept "less is more" was introduced by Mies van der Rohe. This was, besides a code for 'good design' nothing more, or less than a further limitation and stayed dominant for over 50 years.
Beside aesthetic limitations, an average 20th century (graphic) designer was proud to deal with practical restrictions such a limited catalogue of typefaces, limited reproduction facilities, limited lay-out possibilities and limited publication platforms. The beauty and efficiency of many innovative logos, books, and corporate identities relied on the complex puzzle for which they were a surprisingly simple solution. Even though simpleness was 'required', the complexity of getting there gave structure, direction and sometimes even purpose to the whole process.
In the last decades designers were 'freed' of many limitations. Layout and illustration software without, apparently, any visual borders, the readers and users became hungry for new, alternative and different forms, and then there were, in the booming economies of the (recent) past, bottomless budgets.
Design-surfaces became as free to fill with text and form as the canvas of a classical, not 'applied', painter. With the freedom also came confusion: what is the meaning of appliance if 'everything' can be applied to 'everything' in 'every' way? Design has lost the restrictions which once defined its existence.
With the current economic figures, a package of old and new challenging limitations is filling the hole and will be put central in this project.
Activity & Outcomes
The project will start with an investigation. What does making food, love, music, journeys, careers mean when you want to save money, space and energy at the same time? How does it look? How is it structured? What are new elements to play with? Which alternative ways of thinking?
Researched visual/readable material will be processed in a phase of 'darwinistic cutting and pasting': within an environment of contemporary restrictions there will be experiments with mutation, recombination, transformation and fusion. Students will learn to deal with limitations, detecting and using (not necessary the best but) the fittest solution, taking accidents as authority. New solutions will be developed (created) as new species.
Outcome will be a designed demo of visualized possibilities (in print and/or on screen).
The course will support students of all levels in specific routines of editorial design, such as typographical rules, grid systems, and compact info-visualizing.