Art & Design

There is a significant difference between art and design. Art is about what the artist wants to communicate, what feelings the artist him/herself wants to express. An artist breaks rules and creates his/her set of rules; whereas for design, it's much more planned, it's about finding the best way to communicate visually to the targeted audience. The creator's presence is more evident in art than design, since every artist is 'unique' in their own choice of expression through various medium, color, subject matter etc.

Although art and design are very different, I see them as inseparable elements especially in product design. In my own practices, I try merging design with my fine arts photography, and merge 'artsiness' to my design. (refer to Design Issues hardcopy)

The difference between art and advertising is that advertising should never be open to interpretation. - Stephen Freeman

Female in Design

I remember in class one day, Charles mentioned that there are the most number of females in graphic design than other design industries such as interior design, architecture, and industrial design. I think that it makes total sense. To me, graphic design projects are much smaller in scale than architecture or industrial design. It is on a flat surface, which technically requires less consideration compared to 3D product design. Projects can be accomplished just on a small laptop, which is more accessible than models of architectural projects. Sometimes, it only requires one person to be involved in smaller graphic design projects, whereas with architecture, constant communication is a must between the architect, the designer, the engineer, the client etc. Design can be a one-person home-based business (women has always been associated with staying at home in history). Many design resources and blogs online are created by females such as swissmiss, Fuel Your Creativity, 6b Design. Our required book for Beginning Typography class 'Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students' is written by female designer Ellen Lupton.
Like many other industries, the graphic design industry is male-dominated. But because of the above factors, I think that the ratio of male and female graphic designers will change gradually. I mean, even in our graphic design department at school, there are much more female than male. I'm not saying that the gender ratio at school will be the same as the ratio in the real world, but who knows?

Name and reputation

My friends and I always ask each other, is it worth the high tuition fee to attend the 'most influential art school in the United States' — School of the Art Institute of Chicago (which always gets mixed up with the Art Institutes)? How is our school different from other design institutions?

From a job-seeking point of view, I think it is worth it. Recruiters in general prefer candidates who went to Ivy League school than those who attended community college, especially in Hong Kong where I come from. Most people are overly-realistic and it's all about your education, the degree you hold, your résumé, and which school you went to. Many prefer students who studied overseas and can speak fluent English. Even with parents, teachers and family friends, it is as though you have to go to a renowned school or else it's not considered a real education. SAIC is constantly ranked Top 3 in the graduate program, which helps build reputation for the school in general (which includes undergrad), which I suppose is an advantage for me.

But does attending a good school mean that you are better than others? I don't think so, and I think it really varies with individuals. Some people graduate from our school without giving a shit about anything, and just slides through the four-year degree program with the CNC grading system. But just because they went to a more well-known school, people see higher of them. It's all about the name and reputation, or is it?

Globalization

McDonalds and Coca-Cola have become emblematics of globalization. With a worldwide market, the two companies have to alter their logos to suit the local language. With Mcdonalds, the golden arches logo is simple, easy to interpret, and does not necessarily require a knowledge in the English alphabets to understand. To those who know the 26 alphabets, they can determine that the golden arches stands for M for Mcdonalds; for those who don't know English at all, it's simply two golden arches side by side. Unlike Coca-Cola however, their logo is a logotype - a logo created with the use of typography. Coca-Cola has to create logos in different languages but in similar style. What I found interesting with Coca-Cola, is that the logo of Coke in some countries are significantly similar to the original American one, but some are not. For example, the type in TAIWAN , KOREA and ETHIOPIA are not italicized, rather it's upright and geometric. I was wondering, how can people make the connection if the logo is so different.

With McDonalds, they don't have to worry too much since all they have to do is add 'i'm lovin it' in another language under the golden arches, and there's the localness of the logo, whereas Coca-Cola has to put on more effort. Personally, I think with logos, it's best to have a simple pictorial design since visual language is much more powerful and effective than verbal/textual language in this case.

Wordplay

After looking at everyone's wordplay assignment, I thought of my trip to the Apple store. I went to get my laptop fixed last weekend at the Genius Bar, and can't get the Genius Bar logo out of my head. I never did understand the use of the atomic symbol (and I still wonder how they got the copyright of it), but I thought that they were really smart at placing 'u' and 's' at the center of the image, creating a word within a word - US.

I don't know if this is intentional, but to me, having that US placed like that, it seems to be hinting that the Genius Bar is a place for US - YOU (the customer) and I (the Genius). It is a one-to-one service, and it takes both of US to solve the technical problems on Mac, iPod, Apple TV, or iPhone. The customer communicates the problem to the Genius, and the Genius finds ways to solve it. Without the customer or the Genius, this problem cannot be solved.

On a side note, from my research, I found that Apple's logo is very similar to American Atheists, and I wonder if there are any hidden meaning. And I, again, wonder about the copyright issue. I don't know much about copyrights, but the similarity is so obvious... how did Apple get away with it?

Advertising (Part II)

From Ji Lee's presentation, he came up with a conclusion that '[He] can't depend on others to make things happy.', and the solution was: 'I'll just have to do it myself.' So he worked on a personal project - the bubble project, which gained him recognition and ultimately forwarded his professional career.

The second issue raised from his presentation was the importance of self-marketing. When Chris came in, he mentioned about making good use of social networking sites such as twitter, facebook and linkedin. I agree supremely, without self-marketing, how do other people know what kind of work you do? I feel like everyone in the creatives industry has to promote themselves as an individual much more than in other industries. We as 'creatives' are identified by the body of work we create, by our portfolio. Whereas for other industries, it's mainly their résumé and the candidate's personality. And since art and design is relatively subjective, I find it even more important to publicize one's work, which may lead to unexpected chances or job opportunities.

PS - some of my own individual projects - http://lielaine.blogspot.com/search/label/Self-initiated%20project

Advertising (Part I)

I recently watched a video clip of Google Creative Lab's Creative Director, Ji Lee giving a presentation. It started off with him talking about a project that he worked on when he was in a big advertising industry, addressing the issue on creativity and inspiration. The client was General Mills, and the brief was 'to communicate that Cheerios comes in five different flavors'. He came up with this solution - 'Only their holes taste the same.'

They presented the idea to the client, and everyone loved it, saying that it's simple, clever, smart, incredible and funny. Until one of the clients said wait a minutes, you are supposed to be talking about flavor (the corporate language) not taste. This led to a 45-minutes discussion on taste vs flavor. The smart and awesome idea ended up in the trash, muddled in corporate dialogue and ego etc...

The issue raised here is the line between creativity and effectiveness. From Ji Lee's presentation, and a real marketing case from the PBS documentary Frontline: The Persuaders, I learnt that marketer's main concern is to boost sales, which makes total sense because that is what advertising is all about. Whereas the Art Director or CD's concern is to find ways to produce a new and innovative ad creatively and without being cliché. I've always wondered how and where do you find the balance between the two? Through endless meetings and negotiations? Are there really times when both sides are happy?