Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design - "Why Designers Can't Think"
-Michael Bierut
- Process Schools/ Portfolio Schools
- Process Schools = form-driven problem solving approach
- Portfolio Schools = The product, not process, is king.
- Value found in how design looks, not what it means.
- Today's designers "worship the altar of the visual."
- Design pioneers are well rounded intellectually.
- Modern educators push technology on design students.
- Students need to be exposed to more culture.
The above image is a great representation of this article because it shows how today's designers are not designing culturally, but just designing to please a client. The meaning of the mark in its culture was just disregarded. The firm tried to back the redesign with a bunch of graphs and mumbo-jumbo on emotions, but really they changed a line to get paid millions of dollars. There isn't a big meaning to the logo anymore, no connection that people make to the logo besides that it equals Pepsi. The author of the article explains that today's designers are in a vacuum that excludes popular as well as high culture, the pepsi logo only demonstrates popular culture because its stuck in our heads, but really means nothing.
El Lissitzky's " Red Beat the Whites" design is a strong visual to support the article because it shows what a classic designer could do with just intellect. He didn't have four years of design college to learn the principles of design, but just designed using his knowledge of culture. He wasn't "worshipping the altar of the visual," but nurturing the ideas and concept of design. When looking at Lissitzky's design you can tell he was trying to design for the people, not just for designers. His symbols are readable by everyone, and it didn't take knowledge of computers to do it. The author of the article explains that todays graduates are speaking a language only their classmates can understand. This visual shows how a designer can design for the masses.
This image is meant to show what a lot of designers a producing today, which is trendy design. Just visuals and effects showing off what we learn to do with technology in school, but not representing a bigger idea. It shows that designers are just learning programs, and basic ideas of design, but nothing more. People are just designing for these trends, but what will they do when its not cool anymore? Real proffesionals have a broad range of education, such as politics, history, science, etc. The graduates today don't know all of these other topics, and some do eventually learn, some try to fake it, but it needs to be taught in school. The author of the article calls it a cultural illiteracy which is a nice way of saying we don't know how to think outside of what we learn.
