Off the grid

View from my bedroom window
the morning of OCTOBER 29. What th'...?

It snowed hard here on Saturday afternoon and evening--wet and heavy, falling on trees that weren't yet ready for winter. Our area lost tons of trees, and our house lost power for 48 hours. It doesn't sound like very long, but we were shocked to recognize how much of what we do is electricity-driven. Everyone was home Sunday and Monday and we did some fun things, like cooking potatoes and popping popcorn in a fire pit in the backyard. I figured out Fibonacci (more or less) and read lots more theory, at times by kerosene lantern.

Our power was restored at 4:30 this afternoon, but Comcast hasn't kicked back in, so now we're grabbing some free wireless in a parking lot behind a cafe in town. After I got over the initial shock, I thought that (except for my beloved MFA program) I wouldn't miss much if the internet exited my life.

Flummoxed by Fibonacci

I have just been struggling to understand what all the ratios in the Golden Mean and the Golden Rectangle are about. I looked at a couple of tutorial pages, but it has not yet clicked. I know, based on past experience with this kind of thing, that  I just have to keep looking and thinking and I'll suddenly get it. Many of the pages I have looked at say that these ratios are so wonderful, not only because they appear everywhere in nature, but because they're "easy" for people who have difficulty understanding math. Hmmm...

My 12-year-old son Evan, who supposedly has math disabilities, got it right away and has been drawing Golden Mean spirals all over the place.

Marching orders

Hooray! I received (the start of) my working plan. This semester I'm going to design a classical book and a modern book and do some other visual exercises, along with lots more reading. Tonight I start on a piece by Suzanne West called "Working with Style: Traditional and modern approaches to layout and typography." I know, I know...too exciting!

More Theory: Creating the Field

100+ Posters 50+ Years Swiss poster exhibit
at VCFA Photo: Roger Crowley 

In the next section of the book, Armstrong introduces several designers' manifestos. Maybe because I tend to just jump into things, I love the idea of a manifesto--putting a declared statement of purpose and belief down on paper and using it as a guidepost. I had been teaching French to elementary school kids for several months before I found out that it would help my lesson plans a lot if I had OBJECTIVES--creating meaning and a reason for us all to be there. I suppose a manifesto isn't exactly the same thing, but it shares the trait of making things more purposeful.

The book includes manifestos from Martinelli, Rodchenko, El Lissitsky, Moholy-Nagy, and others I haven't gotten to yet. Martinelli's futurist manifesto is so vigorous and energetic--you can just feel the passion that lead him to want to smash the conventions of the past. Too bad about the hateful misogyny that shows up toward the end and that, sadly, doesn't stray too far from that ugly tradition.

Here's a beautiful quote from the constructivist Alexsandr Rodchenko. I might be taking this out of context, because I've never felt that I totally relate to the constructivists, but here goes:

"Work for life and not for palaces, temples, cemeteries, and museums. Work in the midst of everyone, for everyone, and with everyone."

From Graphic Design Theory, edited by Helen Armstrong

Funny photo of me giving my presentation last week.
That's my index finger, in case you were wondering.
Photo: Roger Crowley

Since I came home, I have been reading Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the field, edited by Helen Armstrong and Detail in Typography by Jost Hochuli. 

In Ellen Lupton's foreword to the Armstrong book, she states that it's important for designers to stop and ask "why?" rather than being continuously caught up in the "how" of our work. Design is social--yet anonymous, and visible--yet invisible, with its own subculture. These ideas capture part of why I'm pursuing this MFA. I want to get deep into the "why" (as well as some of the "how") and understand the invisible language of design.

Helen Armstrong brings up key questions of authorship, universality of design, and social responsibility. She says that early graphic designers bowed to the authorship of the machine. The Bauhaus valued collectivity and universality, with emotional neutrality. Swiss designers furthered the notions of objectivity and neutrality with their rational, systematic grids, encouraging the designer's anonymity and the withdrawal of personality. Postmodernism challenged this universality with the idea of diversity and shifts in meaning, leading to hybridity and the mixing of skills across disciplines.

Contemporary designers, influenced by the DIY movement, produce content and brand themselves as makers. This may lead to a level of collectiveness and sharing that swings the designer's pendulum back to anonymity--a manifestation of this shift is "prosumerism," (term coined by Dmitri Siegel), the act of producing and consuming at the same time (like when designers create templates for others' use).

With regard to social responsibility, Armstrong writes that technology has prompted a sharper critical voice. Tracing major movements in graphic design, she observes the way the artist's social voice is subsumed to forces such as the machine and the corporation, then re-emerges with greater self-expression and emotion. Designers of the 1990s rebelled against consumer culture (as seen in AdBusters), and in 2000, a group of prominent designers issued the First Things First manifesto, protesting the dominance of the advertising industry. The Avant-Garde of the new millenium is characterized by the dominance of the rational mind over individual desire, incorporating a strong environmental ethos and "models that produce 'global harmony and mutual benefit." (words of Kenya Hara of MUJI)

And that's all I'm going to say about that, for now.

Back in the saddle, and nothing is the same

I'm still processing my amazing week of learning and connection at Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier. It was the first residency of the first-ever class of the brand new MFA Graphic Design program. We spent a week listening to inspiring speakers (including our very inspiring classmates and professors), thinking, planning and making.

I'm delighted by how the richness of the experience is energizing everything I do back in my everyday life (especially now that I have slept a LOT).