graphic design

Design Communications

SNS Reaal’s Summary Annual Report… the Movie

By Delphine Hirasuna |

When Dutch financial company SNS Reaal produced an online only annual report, it had its designer Fabrique summarize the salient points in a simple 2 and a half minute film. No fancy computer graphics, no elaborate sets, no fuzzy corporate-speak, just three ordinary-looking people walking viewers through who they are, what they do and how they performed in 2010. The complete annual is presented just as simply, incorporating functions that let readers make a custom pdf of just the pages or paragraphs that they want to keep for reference. The first test of transparent reporting: make it understandable.

Global Trends

20’s & 30’s Graphic Design in Japan

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Today design trends ricochet around the globe instantaneously, thanks to the Internet. But a look at these posters, advertisements and magazine covers produced in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s show the integration of art movements from European cultures, including Constructivism, Surrealism and Cubism. The graphic works — which appeared in “Modernism on Paper: Japanese Graphic Design of the 1920s-30s” by Naomichi Kawabata – represent a period when communication design was emerging in Japan. The posters and ads from this period are sometimes referred to as “city art,” because merchants wanted to appeal to urban consumers by departing from traditional pictorial naturalism and embracing message-driven avant-garde visuals that implied that they were keeping pace with styles from the West. The aesthetics and composition communicated this awareness of the larger world and established many of the principles of early graphic design in Japan.

Sustainability

Shedding Light on Light Bulbs

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Since Thomas Edison invented the incandescent light bulb in 1879, designers have often used the familiar pear-shaped product as a graphic device to represent a “bright idea.” Think again, designers, because the European Union restricted the sale of incandescent light bulbs in favor of compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs in 2009. It also targeted the phase out of Halogen bulbs by 2016. Cuba and Venezuela actually started phasing out incandescent lights in 2005. Other nations have scheduled phase out plans – Australia, Ireland and Switzerland in 2009; Argentina, Italy, Russia and the UK by 2011, and Canada in 2012. A late adopter, the United States will begin phasing out incandescent lights in 2012.

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Design Education

Teaching Design to Inner City Kids

By Delphine Hirasuna |

IP

Design, particularly graphic design, is not a profession that most inner city kids consider, partly because many don’t know that such a profession even exists. In fact, the whole notion that somebody had made design choices about the size, color, typography, etc. of a simple sign comes as a revelation to some kids. Jessica Weiss, a student in the nonprofit Inneract Project program, explained her surprise. “I just thought, oh, someone wrote this sign. Someone wrote that sign. No, it had to be designed.”

This is exactly the lesson that Inneract Project founder Maurice Woods hoped to pass on. Woods, a senior designer at Studio Hinrichs in San Francisco, started the program in 2004 when as a graduate student in a University of Washington’s Visual Communication Design class, he got the assignment to “Use Design to Try to Change the World.” Drawing from his own experience growing up in the violent teen-gang and drug-plagued town of Richmond near San Francisco, Woods wanted to help young adolescents expand their awareness of the career options open to them.

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Design Education

Happy Birthday, Milton!

By Delphine Hirasuna |

dylan

Whether the delivery is graphic or spoken, Milton Glaser can be relied on to pare away the superfluous and focus on what’s relevant in the most direct, thoughtful and inspiring way. Today he celebrates his 80th birthday and a 60+ year career that is still going strong. A new documentary “Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight” directed by Wendy Keys, now playing in select U.S. locations, provides convincing evidence that he is worthy of being called the most influential graphic artist of our time. It’s a must-see. And here’s something that we consider a must-read – a talk that Glaser gave in 200l to the London AIGA titled “Ten Things I Have Learned.” Great food for thought.

10 Things I Have Learned

by Milton Glaser

1. You can only work for people you like.

This is a curious rule and it took me a long time to learn because in fact at the beginning of my practice I felt the opposite. Professionalism required that you didn’t particularly like the people that you worked for or at least maintained an arms length relationship to them, which meant that I never had lunch with a client or saw them socially. Then some years ago I realised that the opposite was true. I discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client. And I am not talking about professionalism; I am talking about affection. I am talking about a client and you sharing some common ground. That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with the client, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle.

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