Design Dialogue #1

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I found these dialogue in one of Heller’s book (Design Dialogue) and it’s sort of give me an inspiration while reading it. I thought would be nice to share it although it might not mean as much as it mean to me.

This is the dialogue between Steven Heller and Jonathan Barnbrook on Experimentation. Barnbrook is a graphic designer, type designer, live-action director and run his own font foundry. His most popular fonts are Mason and Exocet released by Emigre Fonts. They discussed about his experiences, his type design and his personal opinion on graphic design. One of the dialogue that interest me is this :

Q by Heller:
How do you see graphic design as having changed – stylistically, philosophically, ideologically – from when you begin to now?

Barnbrook:
In many ways, graphic design has changed very little since the 1920’s. It is and always will be about problem solving a communication problem; it’s just that the definition of the problem and the many differing ways of communicating have changed. I think technology has obviously had an effect, both bad and good. It has allowed people to greater access to the tools of graphic design, but the education about how to use these things has not happened along with them. People should be fundamentally educated about the basis technology and typography, which is , first and foremost, that just because you can do something doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea. One very positive side is the fragmentation of the industry. There are many smaller design groups and font foundries than there ever had been before. This has produced more diverse work and allowed back-catalogue of typefaces to be released, allowing more particular typography. It is also true that graphic design has taken on the complexities of philosophy in much more mainstream work- ideas such as deconstruction. Despite the world generally turning more toward capitalism, graphic design has opened up to a much wider range of people rather than just big marketing-led design companies.

Watch Barnbrook video based on Typography