Typophagy

On Active Silence

2009-12-01T17:18:00.006Z

Silence is not – as commonly thought at a glance – the representation of void, but that of home, a kind of shelter. Thus, John Cage knew that in order for us to truly appreciate music, we have to know silence.

Art is meant to cleanse and stands as a sensorial stairway for the silence that succeeds it, granting access to the divine in human nature.
There is a certain sense of homecoming in this access of the unconscious, and we prove this by hypnotizing ourselves various times during the day and even talking inwards. Many times one finds oneself staring vacuously into a blank – there's a reason for calling it white noise – and indefinite point in space.
The upside of this (in)definition is focusing through unfocus.
Paradoxically but co-dependently, by unfocusing, you rest your eyes comfortably and recognise the value of this home allowing for the dust to settle down, hence focusing.

So, "there, where none of those objectives are sought, silence becomes something different – in no way silence – but sounds, ambient sounds".

Take type design for instance: the counter, negative (white) space is seen unanimously as what truly defines the soul of the alphabet, and ultimately the typeface. And the generally deceiving perception that the body of a letter is its true recognition – when obviously one can't live without the other, being complementary – is dropped as soon as you see past through plain syntax.

This of course is an essay on a resting space, a pause for breathing; after all, the rest is what defines rhythm.
And it also doesn't have to – I personally think it shouldn't – be as haiku or irritatingly zen as that. It is merely a suggestion of balance.

Drop your but does it float or fffound feeds and just gaze for a while.
I know that most designers already have their kind of haven or their walks in the park, even sheep in the big city moments; whatever floats your boat.

But stop looking and start seeing.
The act of seeing is a sensible interaction. It isn't just watching or sheerly observing.
In turn, this creates an isthmus where artist and life or reality perceived meet and merge; practically speaking, creating renewed semantics instead of redundant, uninterpreted – barely or not even changed at all – cut-and-pastes.
Pretty much like trying to fit two different pieces from two different puzzles together. These mind-numbing juxtapositions of concepts usually result in lifeless depictions – more noise, that is.
Good designers are by and large good observers whereas the great artist – or human – is an active seer.

That's why an eraser is a great transparent pencil that may come in handy.
Silence is a still water; a perfect basis for being able to be surprised, by not putting reality in a box of routine/predictability, i.e. expectations – in the most literal sense of the word – as if you're looking for something greater. Allowing yourself to see what's around you with a simple moment of quietness can shed some clarity.
And bring you home.

Our home is our world, our life – Yes/Jon Anderson

History of a Quote

2009-06-24T02:01:00.014+01:00

The graphic aspect of the quotation mark tells clearly what it's about – and I now solemnly swear this won't be an incursion through any of the very dear typographical mark's significance or history, rather a thought about influences and what we do with them –, by a simple recipe too.

Join two commas together, put them hovering on both sides of something someone said – that you'd like to denote –, and there you have it: you quote someone.
And then, – making use of my own poetic freedom and personal interpretation – it joins you and that person.

Now, warping back a few concepts.
Monkey see, monkey do, right?
We learn how to walk, talk, behave, etc., by watching, sharing, and doing the same. Mimesis is an essential move when trying to construct a self, and it is no shame either to openly show the structure, or to conceal it.
And so, communication relies on learnt or acquired abilities to process meaning, to tell you something effectively. The simple fact of recognising something establishes a psychological common ground: an ideal base of comparison, somewhere in the back of the mind. It's a natural response, and also why one would take someone who quotes Albert Einstein as (somewhat) truthful, because of those same shared values. We amount to something that always has something in common with another being.
Going with the cliché: all different, all the same. Cheap and vague as it may sound, it is true.

Keeping the concept of mimesis in mind, greek philosophers coined it as the (mere) representation of nature; a persona of the truth. Simultaneously, the quote mark becomes a symbol of paradoxally both proximity and distance – getting you closer while keeping you at the bay of non-novelty.

Everything's a copy of a copy of a copy – Chuck Palahniuk

It's our nature.

Nevertheless, the really strange phenomenon here – generally born in the spectre of social behaviour – is the one that makes imitation natural to the human being while simultaneously conditioning him to believe it is not right to do so.
Why condemn imitation, when it comes to art? We're past that. We're even past Duchamp's total appropriation of the work, and gladly.
This latter, however, poses the question of flagrant theft. Because everything is nice while it is honest – and quite the few times that's also not enough.
And, while we're at it, why should we despise self-reference as well? If someone has already said something good on a given subject, and coincidentally that someone is you, it is only right. It is never a matter of weighing ego versus true importance.

Sometimes references are insidious – rather than neon-signed blatant – and even cryptic. Like a challenge; or just shameful secrecy.
There's a plenitude of examples scattered all around, but essentially, it's our way of drafting a future while holding the legacy of our pasts and presents into account.

...and constantly reinventing ourselves.

I do think it's only healthy to transpire – obviously or not – something that makes sense but picked off of another person or referential to another thing, in whatever language you prefer to use: it will most probably help define your identity instead of meaning the loss of it.

Gladly we have been assisting to a constantly-evolving, exponentially noticeable outbreak of pure expression. This historically chained and overlapping imitation of an imitation, is – like the ouroboros biting its own tail – what's enabling us to express and evolve even further.
We imitate, and pay (never silent) homage to what or who has touched us – mainly positively – made us grow into what we are.

Thus, we are too being what we admire the most.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – Charles Caleb Colton

Why Should Designers Forget About "Form Follows Function" - Or, At Least, Try

2009-05-05T23:41:00.003+01:00

1. First of all, because it never worked like that. Surprised? Hope not. Assuming this motto is the same that affirming that the egg came first. Or the chicken. Or the reptile. Why doesn't function follows form? It happens so many times: look at Starck's work - he starts with a form, an after decides what is it for (or at least he says so). Thus, the motto is unilateral. Bummer.

2. Most of the design work appears to be a product of problems and limitations, not pure intent or purpose. Form follows trouble? Form follows the need to escape from trouble?

3. Design is a really young métier. Well, in fact, the motto form follows function appeared as an attempt to assassinate the aesthetic options of 19th century's revivalism and eclecticism, in order to validate the Modernist Epoch, to dazzle people with the idea that it was necessary to evolution. Worst, designers and architects embraced this in order to validate what they were doing. This is rather ugly: bad product, lovely package.

4. It's an idea with 4000 years, based on a thought framework that might frighten you. It's relative to Plato's Theory of Forms: that there is a higher concept of things, thus things as we see it are illusory. According to this, whenever I think of chair, I think on the higher concept of chair, not actual chairs. Well, we now believe (and probably prove) that we think on an abstract concept of chair because we saw millions of chairs. Watch kids asking what's that?, it's enlightening.

5. It makes you dull. Do you want to find how to do a thing and repeat the same process every day, believing that there is no way to improve it? Why do we insist that we have to find the way, without letting us build that path with the richness of error?

6. It's irresponsible. True. If things go wrong, it's the clients problem, not yours. You are doing always the right thing and always the right way, right? You have the magic key, the magic process! You possess the higher concept of chair! You do, don't you? Hey, there?

7. It's totalitarian. Now your being rude. Well, am I? Ever heard of International Style? Futurists? Did you ever noticed that biggest period of totalitarianism was a product of the Modern Epoch and during this same one? The there is only one way thought killed millions of jews, other millions in Russia an China with the Communist Revolution. Shame on form follows function!

8. Finally, it's unpersonal. You have more to give, kid. Try it yourself.

Global Boring

2008-09-06T07:06:00.012+01:00

Personally, I've been experiencing a kind of impasse and so, undergoing a certain exploration of time, past, and its influence.
Having in mind the concept of cyclic fashions, one obviously tends to think about the necessity of looking towards the positive and upcoming region of the time graph – as in present and future.

Old clothes desperately call out to be nowadays' pajamas. Take a serious peek at what we've accomplished and move on.
I don't want by saying this, to mean past should be promptly thrown away as it stops serving the present, neither do I want to overrate future.

I do mean we should instead close a chapter of what we can sum up learning with experience, and direct it towards a greater discovery of current values – finding within ourselves as designers a visual, empirical and an even more communicative language – and syntony with the now & tomorrow.

We are increasingly living in the versatile, ayurvedic – and that's something to take advantage of – "you are what you eat" era. And if that's how it goes, I surely prefer to ingest something I can identify with today rather than something reflecting myself but twenty years ago.

Shall we preserve this dynamic spirit that does (or should even more) characterize our actuality, so that there isn't a risk of being victim of a Global Boring.

After all, it isn't the first time that in human history consciousness is forced to shift from one plane to another. Any change is painful. If there's a future, it deserves to be examined. – Louis Pauwels

Films make bad books

2008-08-22T22:14:00.005+01:00

It's almost a cliché that, when a film made based on a book comes out, people often afirm that the book is better. In fact, it is very, very rare to find the opposite opinion. Oh, the film is much better than the book!, doesn't this sound awkward?

And why does this happen? Well, books are fabulous on encouraging us to develop our own images or constructions of visual narrative. We are deeply visual.

Words were built to explain things that weren't available at the time we spoke, at first. Second, they were invented to compile large groups of words. Done. No further discussion.

Now that we have passed the introduction, here's my proposal: Let's put it upside down!

What?!, you may ask. It's the book-film thing above. Using words to create images. Or ideas (clusters of words or clusterwords) to this purpose.

While still in college, a teacher or two insisted that visual culture was the most important thing that we could do. In my opinion, this causes trouble. No doubt that this is important, but this can be highly restrictive and/or overwhelming. If you think about it, if someone says to you, to be a good artist, you must have to have visual culture!, or that you have to find your visual languange or visual poetry, this sentences are a huge press to creativity.

Why shouldn't I change language whenever I want to? Do I have to see all bags to design one? - Yes and No. You have to study most of the cars and the one you want to design it properly.

Hoping that imitating others will solve our case is silly. Instead, try to figure out why does it works to others - and see the differences.

Here's my point: theory is always more inspiring than visual culture. Or that visual culture works for abstract/deductive knowledge (study), not for formal reference.

My métier is a medium

2008-07-10T22:50:00.010+01:00

That everyone agrees that Design is an artistic métier is widely unquestionable. But when we discuss about what distinguishes the Design praxis from other artistic expressions or from Art itself, it becomes rather controverse.

First of all, artists and humans are, generaly speaking, narcissists. In spite of this being a really interesting subject, we prefer to be right than being truthful. With this pointed out and assimilated, we can now see the random shooting of arguments and connect them to the human ego.

Well, I believe that Design is purely another artistic medium. For those who are used to this latin word, it still may sound confusing. "When you refer medium, do you mean a pencil or a canvas?", yes, I do - but not in a physical way.

Like a piece of paper, clay, a canvas or a screen - and the list goes on - any artistic medium has inherit characteristics, and these are the ones that makes the medium identifiable. So, as the canvas is to the painter, Painture, Sculpture, Design, Arquitecture and other artistic métiers are for Art. That's why Design is easily inside the Arts' paradigm.

The boundaries question is a lot more complicated. As for any Art's medium media (canvas, paper, and so on) it's not that easy. Just because there is paint on a canvas, it doesn't means that it is painture. In fact, it can be sculpture. And I'm not talking about modulating ink into a 3D form, that could be painture. I am talking about intension.

If the artist is concerned, on a 2D surface, about the way that piece is interacting with space, that is sculpture. And if a designer is concerned how typographic elements can form an image, he is doing illustration, not typography. But in other hand, when he is concerned on how a particular glyph is shaped inside that illustration, he is on a typographic ride.

So, and this is nothing new - Nelson Goodman already exemplified it with genius -, the question "what is Design" or any other métier in the Arts, is wrong. There are no wrong answers, only bad questions and much, much worse interpretative minds. The question "when?", "in which universe?", "in which culture?" or "in what sense or scope?", seem a lot better.

Good Morning

2008-06-22T08:03:00.004+01:00

Hello to everyone!

This blog is born with the purpose of presenting some essays, thoughts, articles, critiques, and whatsoevers about design, typography, and intimately related subjects;
Why this focus? Well, the person who is writing this - for that is myself - is a young designer and/or graphic artist, with no credibility whatsoever, who really thinks has some interesting ideas to share with all of you who might be interested.

I hope as well that this comes to a point where your own reviews, comments or critics might help develop a deeper, and more concise point of view about what's being discussed.
And that applies to my occasional bad english as well - which I will really try to accompany with the respective portuguese version.

For now, I wish to thank everyone who has motivated and supported me in all my way up to where I am now, and continues to do it unconditionally.
And last but not least, I thank you for reading and participating; and by doing so, I truly believe we are making up for new perspectives, and consequently a better world - which is exactly contemporary design's role (and not just a dream anymore).

It is everywhere.

Today, we live and breathe design. – Rick Poynor