Research in progress
Corridor Conversations
Project Team Professor Teal Triggs Nicolas Marechal
Members of the i.e. team are interested in exploring areas of new technology including social networking but also the relationship between physical and virtual spaces. In this ongoing project series, the i.e. team are establishing links between corridors in different parts of the world. The intent is to explore communication environments within a theoretical frame, but also as a way of better understanding new technologies and the way in which information is conveyed through social networking practices.
Project Partners MA Design Writing Criticism students, London College of Communication Riley Triggs, Dan Olsen, Peter Hall and Graduate Design students, Design Division, Unversity of Texas at Austin, U.S.A.
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Professor Teal Triggs, Nicolas Marechal, and ma Design Writing Criticism students found themselves in a virtual corridor conversation with University of Texas at Austin design graduate students and tutors Riley Triggs, Dan Olsen, and Peter Hall. This initial meeting was set up to ‘test’ the approach of using Skype technology and is the first of a series of more formal projects to be undertaken with MRes Information Environments students.
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communicating by design
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COMMUNICATING BY DESIGN
LECTURES BY i.e. STAFF The dissemination and exchange of staff and student research is key to progression of any academic discipline. To this end, members of the area actively engaged in speaking about their work at academic conferences as well as through professional organisations on a national and international level including Brussels, Capri, Hayon-Wye, Hong Kong, Jeddah, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne and São Paulo. Teal Triggs presented ‘Scissors and Glue: Exploring the Visual Rhetoric of Punk and Riot Girl Fanzines’ during RMIT University’s Graduate Research Conference, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (15 November 2008). In the same part of the world and a month earlier, Ben Jonson presented at the ‘Dare to Desire’ Design & Emotion Conference (6-9 October 2008) with his pedagogical paper ‘Communicating Emotion in Design: The Studio Experience’.
Claire McAndrew and Teal Triggs present their paper on ‘A Three-tiered Approach to Knowledge Production in Design’ to architects and designers at the conference ‘Communicating (by) Design’, Brussels, Belgium (15-17 April, 2009).
Catherine Dixon outlines the difficulties with the ongoing use of typeface classification schemes derived from the Vox system of 1954 in her paper ‘Beyond classification: finding new ways of understanding typeforms’ presented at 9º Bienal de De Gráfico ADG (24 April 2009). Photograph: Henrique Nardi.
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COMMUNICATING BY DESIGN
LECTURES BY i.e. STAFF Dar Al-Hekma
Leviedei Italy
Teal Triggs was awarded the Dar Al-Hekma Prize for Outstanding Contributions and Achievements 2008/09 for her work as a graphic design historian, educator and critic. The Prize was established by the Dar Al-Hekma College - a women’s university in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia - in 2004. Teal also participated in Tawasul, the first International Design Conference held in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (16-18 May, 2009) and conducted a fanzine workshop with Dar Al-Hekma students.
Patrick Roberts and Teal Triggs presented some of their thoughts behind interdisciplinarity using research projects undertaken by members of the i.e. team for the conference Le Vie dei-Mercanti held in Capri, Italy (4-6 June, 2009). During their visit, they documented some of the more interesting examples of the island’s distinctive signage.
Scenes from Jeddah Saudi Arabia: workshop with students as part of ‘Tawasul’ conference.
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Signs from Capri, Italy.
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COMMUNICATING BY DESIGN
London Design Festival: The Informational City
SPEAKERS (2009) Erik Spiekermann Eden Spiekermann Tim Fendley AIG
London Design Festival: The Informational City
SPONSORS (2009) Institute for Urban Information (IUI) research unit for Information Environments
London is a city full of visible and invisible layers of information and of digital and analogue spaces. New technologies have prompted designers to question the use of traditional communication methods (e.g. posters, billboards), as well as the ways in which design and motion might be more effective in its mediation of information. The way information is sent, received and mediated presents new challenges and opportunities. The intent of this lecture programme is to make visible the different ways in which design and architecture interfaces with digital and analogue technologies and how we might begin to address information networks for the 21st Century.
SPEAKERS (2008) AIG Kasper de Graaf Jason Bruges Jason Bruges Studio SPONSORS C4D (Cranfield University and University of the Arts London) and the research unit for Information Environments University of the Arts London Held as part of London Design Festival. http://www.londondesign festival.com/
Erik Spiekermann
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Kasper de Graaf
Tim Fendley
Jason Bruges
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NEW VIEWS 2: CONVERSATIONS AND DIALOGUES IN GRAPHIC DESIGN
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NEW VIEWS 2: Conversations and Dialogues in Graphic Design
Conference and Exhibition An international conference defining graphic design for the future : 9-11 July 2008, London College of Communication University of the Arts London This was the second in a series of international conferences which explored ways in which we might define graphic design for the future. The event took the form of a series of conversation clusters (Design Writing/ Criticism; Interdisciplinarity; Practice and Methods; New Critical Thinking; Responsive Curricula; and Changing the Real World). Our keynote speakers – Terry Irwin (University of Dundee), Chris Downs (live|work) and Professor Richard Buchanan (then at Carneige Mellon University) provided the prompts for discussions. Participants were asked to actively engage in workshops which examined graphic design in relationship to these themes. The results of this three-day event have prompted further conversations to take place in participant’s professional practices, academic institutions and in publication. The conference was a collaboration between the research unit for Information Environments, University of the Arts London, uk and the Design Research Institute, rmit Melbourne, Australia. Accompanying the conference was New Views 2: Conversations in Graphic Design, an exhibition of 40 posters on the future of the profession. Another 60 images, combine to create the visual conversation that is the digital exhibition.
www.newviews.co.uk
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NEW VIEWS 2: Conversations and Dialogues in Graphic Design
‘10 DESIGNERS, 10 STORIES, 10 PAGES’
NEW VIEWS 2: CONVERSATIONS AND DIALOGUES IN GRAPHIC DESIGN
We are very pleased to be able to turn over the next section of this book to a group of international students (as they were then in the summer of 2008) from ma Graphic Design, London College of Communication. The i.e. unit has a strong commitment to establishing links between teaching and research through the mechanism of special projects. In this case, we asked for student volunteers to document by any means necessary photographic, video and/or written - the discussions which took place during the working groups at New Views 2.
15 November 2008 — 15 February 2009 Melbourne Museum Melbourne, Australia
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Who knew at the time, where this process would take all of us? Following the symposium we kept talking and meeting on a regular basis, sharing stories about where this group of students saw their future as designers, as cultural ambassadors and now, as recent graduates with a desire and the drive to make a difference. For members of the i.e. team, these conversations and stories will not be lost nor forgotten.
We heard about New Views 2 from our classmates and tutors, but what it actually meant, we did not know. Dissecting the name, it seemed probable that new refer red to the fresh, different and perhaps unexplored nature of attitudes or opinions; the views. What about the number 2? There must have been a previous number 1 in order to have a number 2*. If so, was there really room for new in 2? The dichotomy of this curiosity is what brought, molded and kept us, 10 graphic design ma students, together. As members of the backstage crew, we became the eyes and ears of the New Views 2 conference, eavesdropping into conversations like invisible participants. Looking through the frame of our cameras and the listening to the distinctly clear voices through our audio recordings, we often felt like we were a part of the conversation, but not just quite. In the beginning, we felt intimidated because we felt it was not our playground but through countless conversations we realized that every-
‘10 designers. 10 stories. 20 pages.’ Thank you for having room for us.
*New Views: Repositioning Graphic Design History took place in 2005, London College of Communication
one’s questions and worries were similar. The views were real life issues that had design at its core. And to our delight, there was still plenty of new in 2. It was a great privilege to be a part of New Views 2. Even after the conference, we realized that the spirit of the conversations had rubbed on to us. Many times we came together, always over a cup of coffee, to share our own views. We spoke and listened and eventually realized that we too had a story to tell.
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NEW VIEWS 2: Conversations and Dialogues in Graphic Design
10 DESIGNERS 10 STORIES 10 PAGES 56
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NEW VIEWS 2: Conversations and Dialogues in Graphic Design
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10 DESIGNERS, 10 STORIES, 10 PAGES DJORJE BALMAZOVIC - YUGOSLAVIA
• 1980s, Yugoslavia. I remember when I was a child, growing up in socialist Yugoslavia, we had only two tv channels and they were both state owned. Usually at about 8pm or 9pm they would show a movie and we would all gather together in front of the tv set, ready to watch. There were no breaks, no commercials, nothing to interrupt our watching. It meant that we had to sort out a few things before starting the movie such as; having dinner, going to the toilet and so on. It was like in a cinema – no breaks during the show. Commercials when shown on rear occasion were five minutes long and called “intermezzo”. Intermezzo was once in every few hours and that was the time that we could do things we needed to do.
• 1998, New York. This was the year that our small art group was invited to New York. I remember that one evening a friend of mine decided to watch the movie Rear Window, by Alfred Hitchcock, on tv, which started at 9pm. The movie in actuality is 90 minutes long. At midnight, my friend, frustrated, switched off the tv and turned to me: “This is unbelievable! The movie started at 9pm, then there was a commercial break, then news, then commercial break, then news, and then commercial break again and now, at 12pm, they tell us that the second part of the movie will be shown tomorrow at 9pm!”
• 1990s, Serbia. My real interest for “the role of design” started when Yugoslavia was involved in the heavy and devastating civil war during 1990s. In 1993, due to economical sanctions proposed to Serbia, the country had the highest inflation ever in human history. Shops were empty and people used to queue every day for bread and cigarettes. In the same time, big international advertising agencies such as Saatchi & Saatchi, Ogilvy & Matter, Spectra and others were opening their branches in Belgrade. Nicely designed billboards were popping up around the city and state, selling nice international brands, while 90% of the people were struggling to survive. Looking at those billboards, I often asked myself - to whom do they speak? All young and emerging designers were looking for an opportunity to find a job in any of those agencies. This was reasonable since
• 2008, London, Muswell Hill. When I went to visit a friend of mine living in Muswell Hill, London, I noticed a number of beautiful small “pictures” on the pavement. There were hundreds of them. Friends told me that it was the work of Ben, an artist known for painting on chewing gums that everyone living in Muswell Hill recognized.These chewing gums are colorful, cheerful, imaginative and humorous in their unique way. There are no two of the same kind. I wanted to meet Ben and with the help of a friend, I arranged a meeting. Over a cup of hot chocolate, Ben told me that he came up with the idea of painting on chewing gums while walking on Muswell Hill, observing hundreds of permanent ugly white splotches on the ground. He said that he wanted to turn them into something else. He has many notebooks,
the salaries were almost 100 times more than the average salary in Serbia.
full of sketches for unpainted chewing gums. People approach him every day while he is lying down on the pavement, painting. They tell him their wishes and he makes their wishes visible. Ben is a meeting point for socializing. Kids returning from school with their parents approach him with curiosity. This curiosity is what brings people together. I remember, on a cold winter day while I was watching Ben paint, a boy was passing and spotted Ben. He excitedly told his father “it’s the chewinggumman!”. The father next to me, watching Ben with disgust asked me in shock, “Does he really paint on the chewing gum?” I pointed to a chewing gum that Ben had already painted. Bending down towards the pavement to see what I was pointing at, I witnessed the man’s face change completely. He was thrilled: “Ben, people will start stealing pavement because of you!” Commercials persuade us to wish for things, but Ben asks what we wish for. The Chewinggumman, hero of Muswell Hill and visualiser of people’s sincere wishes can hopefully encourage us, the “professional” designers, to communicate and design in order to bring excitement and infuse a sense of community into people’s lives.
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