design school


Students designed posters representing hierarchical phenomenons - with layouts rich with layers, stacks, ranges etc.

When designers describe what they do, they often could be said to be establishing and manipulating, or otherwise arranging the world into a sort of hierarchy: pasting something before or below something else, framing a sub-item, categorizing research material and so on.

This attitude is not without good reason. From the point of view of perception, all elements of a page or screen (images, graphic signs, colors) are part of a total hierarchy.

Partly still functioning as a hunter or sampler (well, in fact, as a monkey), a reader first sees a page as a landscape – large masses of shape and color, with foreground elements contrasting against the background field. There are subtle visual cues that tell his/her eye how to build a mental model of what is seen. In the landscape, not everything carries the same visual and therefore mental weight. This helps the mind organize a model. If you want to build images for the eye/mind to consume/use, you have to deal with these kind of hierarchies.

This involves, to begin with, learning a distinguished visual language. In this project you will assemble classical and alternative typographical ranges, play with the weighting of page layouts and hierarchy in texts, learn to nest portions of information in each other (think of Russian dolls), experiment with information graphics and use layers in (Adobe-)programs in a clever and productive way.

Dealing with hierarchies also includes: looking for alternative ways of organizing. Following the paths of dadaist, futurist, beatnik and fluxus author/designers, this course will include experiments in (quasi)-scrambled hierarchies. Alongside, there is the wide field of heterarchy, the principle of ordering information (and making it available) more horizontal. A simple example is printing all information in lowercase ('avoid the dominance of capitals'), or (more or less) democratic swiss typography. A step further are internet (2.0) applications (such as wiki's, in contrast to tree-structured webdesign), but also portfolio's printed as card games or the story of someones life as a map.

Having gained insight and a power to play with hierarchical elements, the final step is to let it work – or, in other words, to link the dept of a topic to the dept of a printed page or screen. This is a chance to have a fresh look at broader hierarchical phenomena, such as an aspect of upbringing or education, relation, religion, evolution, sexuality. You will be asked do this in a very, not to say exclusive, design-oriented way. After detecting the hierarchical backbone of your subject, you will be able to create visual and conceptional variations or alternatives. Expect outcomes like a (re)designed guide, a report, a newspaper, a screen-catalogue or on-line exhibition.

By altering hierarchical gestalts you change ways of generating meaning, design, perception. The way you deal with ranges, dept and layers tells not only a lot about your point of view toward the designated topics but also your attitude and role as a designer in general.