GRAPHIC DESIGN THE NEW BASICS

ELLEN LUPTON AND JENNIFER COLE PHILLIPS

Princeton Architectural Press, New York and

Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore

 For Maryland Institute College of Art
Contents 6 Foreword
Published by
Princeton Architectural Press
37 East Seventh Street Book Design
New York, New York 10003 Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips 8 Back to the Bauhaus
Ellen Lupton
For a free catalog of books, call Contributing Faculty
1.800.722.6657. Ken Barber
10 Beyond the Basics
Visit our website at www.papress.com. Kimberly Bost
Jeremy Botts Jennifer Cole Phillips
© 2008 Princeton Architectural Press Corinne Botz
All rights reserved Bernard Canniffe 12 Point, Line, Plane
Printed and bound in China Nancy Froehlich
11 10 09 08 4 3 2 1 First edition Ellen Lupton
Al Maskeroni 28 Rhythm and Balance
No part of this book may be used or Ryan McCabe
reproduced in any manner without written Abbott Miller 40 Scale
permission from the publisher, except in Jennifer Cole Phillips
the context of reviews. James Ravel
Zvezdana Rogic 52 Texture
Every reasonable attempt has been made Nolen Strals
to identify owners of copyright. Errors or Mike Weikert 70 Color
omissions will be corrected in subsequent Bruce Willen
editions. Yeohyun Ahn
84 Figure/Ground
Visiting Artists
Marian Bantjes 100 Framing
Nicholas Blechman
Alicia Cheng
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Peter Cho 114 Hierarchy
Lupton, Ellen. Malcolm Grear
  Graphic design : the new basics / Ellen Lupton and David Plunkert 126 Layers
Jennifer Cole Phillips. C. E. B. Reas
Paul Sahre
       p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index. Jan van Toorn 146 Transparency
ISBN 978-1-56898-770-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) Rick Valicenti
ISBN 978-1-56898-702-6 (paperback : alk. paper) 158 Modularity
1.  Graphic arts.  I. Phillips, Jennifer C., 1960– II. Title. For Princeton Architectural Press
NC997.L87 2008
741.6—dc22                                                                      Editor 174 Grid
2007033805 Clare Jacobson
184 Pattern
Special thanks to
Nettie Aljian, Sara Bader, Dorothy Ball,
Nicola Bednarek, Janet Behning, Becca Casbon, 198 Diagram
Penny (Yuen Pik) Chu, Russell Fernandez,
Pete Fitzpatrick, Wendy Fuller, Jan Haux, 214 Time and Motion
Aileen Kwun, Nancy Eklund Later, Linda
Lee, Laurie Manfra, Katharine Myers, Lauren
Nelson Packard, Jennifer Thompson, Arnoud 232 Rules and Randomness
Verhaeghe, Paul Wagner, Joseph Weston, and
Deb Wood — Kevin C. Lippert, publisher 244 Bibliography

246 Index
 Foreword

  Foreword
Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips This book was thus created in The current volume, Graphic Many of the designers featured,
a global context. The work presented Design: The New Basics, marks the including Marian Bantjes, Alicia
within its pages is energized by the launch of MICA’s Center for Design Cheng, Peter Cho, Malcolm Grear,
diverse backgrounds of its producers, Thinking, an umbrella for organizing David Plunkert, C. E. B. Reas, Paul
whose creativity is shaped by their the college’s diverse efforts in the Sahre, Rick Valicenti, and Jan
cultural identities as well as by their area of practical design research. van Toorn, have worked with our
unique life experiences. A common In addition to publishing books students as visiting artists at MICA.
How do designers get ideas? Some During the 1990s, design In this book, you won’t see thread that draws all these people about design, the Center for Design Some conducted special workshops
places they look are design annuals educators became caught in the exercises or demonstrations together in one place is design. Thinking will organize conferences whose results are included in this
and monographs, searching for pressure to teach (and learn) involving parody or cultural critique— The majority of student work and educational events to help build volume.
clever combinations of forms, fonts, software, and many of us struggled not that there is anything wrong featured here comes from the course the design discourse while creating Graphic Design: The New Basics
and colors to inspire their projects. to balance technical skills with visual with those lines of inquiry. Designers we teach together at MICA, the invaluable opportunities for MICA’s lays out the elements of a visual
For students and professionals who and critical thinking. Form sometimes and educators will always build Graphic Design MFA Studio. Our MFA students and faculty. language whose forms are employed
want to dig deeper into how form got lost along the way, as design personal meaning and social content program’s first publishing venture To complement the student by individuals, institutions, and
works, this book shows how to build methodologies moved away from into their work. With this book we was the book D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself work featured in this project, we locales that are increasingly
richness and complexity around universal visual concepts toward a chose to focus, however, on design’s (2006), directed at general readers have selected key examples from connected in a global society. We
simple relationships. We created this more anthropological understanding formal structures. who want to use design in their own contemporary professional hope the book will inspire more
book because we didn’t see anything of design as a constantly changing This is a book for students lives. Currently underway is a guide practice. These works demonstrate thought and creativity.
like it available for today’s students flow of cultural sensibilities. and emerging designers, and it is to independent publishing, along with experimental, visually rich design
and young designers: a concise, This book addresses the gap illustrated primarily with student other titles devoted to expanding approaches conducted at the
visually inspiring guide to two- between software and visual thinking. work, produced within graduate and access to and the understanding of highest possible level.
dimensional design. By focusing on form, we have re- undergraduate design studios. Our design processes.
As educators with decades of embraced the Bauhaus tradition school, Maryland Institute College of
combined experience in graduate and the pioneering work of the great Art (MICA), became our laboratory.
and undergraduate teaching, we have formal design educators, from Numerous faculty and scores of
witnessed the design world change Armin Hofmann to some of our own students participated in our brave
and change again in response to teachers, including Malcolm Grear. experiment over a two-year period.
new technologies. When we were We believe that a common ground of The work that emerged is varied
students ourselves in the 1980s, visual principles connects designers and diverse, reflecting an organic
Acknowledgments
My work creating this book constituted My contribution to this book is dedicated to
classic books such as Armin across history and around the globe. range of skill levels and sensibilities. my degree project in the Doctorate in Malcolm Grear, my lifelong mentor and
Hofmann’s Graphic Design Manual We initiated this project in Unless otherwise noted, all the Communication Design program at the dear friend.
(published in 1965) had begun to 2005, after stepping back and noticing student examples were generated in University of Baltimore. I thank my advisors, The culture at MICA is a joy in which
Stuart Moulthrop, Sean Carton, and Amy to work, thanks in large part to the vision and
lose their relevance within the that our students were not at ease the context of MICA’s courses; a few Pointer. I also thank my colleagues at MICA, support of our President, Fred Lazarus;
restless and shifting design scene. building concepts abstractly. Although projects originate from schools we including Fred Lazarus, President; Ray Allen, Provost, Ray Allen; and Graduate Dean, Leslie
Postmodernism was on the rise, and they were adept at working and visited or where our Provost; Leslie King Hammond, Dean of King Hammond; together with our savvy
Graduate Studies; and my longtime friend and talented faculty colleagues. Deep respect
abstract design exercises seemed reworking pop-culture vocabularies, own graduate students are teaching.
and collaborator, Jennifer Cole Phillips. and thanks go to our students—especially
out of step with the current interest in they were less comfortable Our student contributors Special thanks go to the dozens of students the GD MFA group—for their courage and
appropriation and historicism. manipulating scale, rhythm, color, come from China, India, Japan, whose work enlivens these pages. contributions. This book exudes their energy.
hierarchy, grids, and diagrammatic Korea, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Seattle, Editor Clare Jacobson and the team at I hold heartfelt gratitude for my
Princeton Architectural Press helped make friend and close collaborator, Ellen Lupton,
relationships. Minneapolis, Baltimore, rural the book real. for her generosity and grace.
Pennsylvania, and many other My whole family is an inspiration, I thank my family, especially my parents
places. The book was manufactured especially my parents Bill, Shirley, Mary Ann and Jack and my sisters Lanie and Jodie,
Jane, and Ken; my children Jay and Ruby; for their spirit, humor, and love. Last and
in China and published with my sisters Julia and Michelle; and my most, love to my Blue Weimaraner, Stone, for
Princeton Architectural Press in New husband Abbott. almost always being by my side.
York City. Ellen Lupton Jennifer Cole Phillips
Back to the Bauhaus

  Back to the Bauhaus

Transparency and Layers The Google Earth
Ellen Lupton The New Basics Designers at the interface allows users to manipulate the
Bauhaus believed not only in a transparency of overlays placed over satellite
universal way of describing visual photographs of Earth. Here, Hurricane
Katrina hovers over the Gulf Coast of the U.S.
form, but also in its universal
Storm: University of Wisconsin, Madison
significance. Reacting against that Cooperative Institute for Meteorogical
belief, postmodernism discredited Satellite Studies, 2005. Composite: Jack
formal experiment as a primary Gondela.

The idea of searching out a shared The Bauhaus Legacy In the 1920s, Since the 1940s, numerous component of thinking and making What are these emerging a film’s rhythm and style. They
framework in which to invent and faculty at the Bauhaus and other educators have refined and in the visual arts. Formal study universals? What is new in basic also modulate, in subtle ways, the
organize visual content dates back to schools analyzed form in terms expanded on the Bauhaus approach, was considered to be tainted by design? Consider, for example, message or content of the work.
the origins of modern graphic design. of basic geometric elements. They from Moholy-Nagy and Gyorgy its link to universalistic ideologies. transparency­— a concept explored Although viewers rarely stop to
In the 1920s, institutions such as the believed this language would Kepes at the New Bauhaus in This book recognizes a difference in this book. Transparency is a interpret these transitions, a video
Bauhaus in Germany explored design be understandable to everyone, Chicago; to Johannes Itten, Max between description and condition in which two or more editor or animator understands
as a universal, perceptually based grounded in the universal instrument Bill, and Gui Bonsiepe at the Ulm interpretation, between a potentially surfaces or substances are visible them as part of the basic language
“language of vision,” a concept that of the eye. School in Germany; to Emil Ruder universal language of making through each other. We constantly of moving images.
continues to shape design education Bauhaus faculty pursued this and Armin Hofmann in Switzerland; and the universality of meaning. experience transparency in the Layering is another universal
today around the world. idea from different points of view. to the “new typographies” of Today, software designers have physical environment: from water, concept with rising importance.
This book reflects on that vital Wassily Kandinsky called for Wolfgang Weingart, Dan Friedman, realized the Bauhaus goal of glass, and smoke to venetian blinds, Physical printing processes use
tradition in light of profound shifts the creation of a “dictionary of and Katherine McCoy in Switzerland describing (but not interpreting) the slatted fences, and perforated layers (ink on paper), and so do
in technology and global social life. elements” and a universal visual and the United States. Each of these language of vision in a universal screens. Graphic designers across software interfaces (from layered
Whereas the Bauhaus promoted “grammar” in his Bauhaus textbook revolutionary educators articulated way. Software organizes visual the modern period have worked Photoshop files to sound or
rational solutions through planning Point and Line to Plane. His structural approaches to design from material into menus of properties, with transparency, but never more motion timelines).
and standardization, designers colleague László Moholy-Nagy distinct and original perspectives. parameters, filters, and so on, so than today, when transparency Transparency and layering have
and artists today are drawn to sought to uncover a rational Some of them also engaged creating tools that are universal can be instantly manipulated with always been at play in the graphic
idiosyncrasy, customization, and vocabulary ratified by a shared in the postmodern rejection of in their social ubiquity, cross- commonly used tools. arts. In today’s context, what makes
sublime accidents as well as to society and a common humanity. universal communication. According disciplinarity, and descriptive What does transparency them new again is their omnipresent
standards and norms. The modernist Courses taught by Josef Albers to postmodernism, which emerged power. Photoshop, for example, is mean? Transparency can be used to accessibility through software.
preference for reduced, simplified emphasized systematic thinking over in the 1960s, it is futile to look a systematic study of the features construct thematic relationships. For Powerful digital tools are commonly
forms now coexists with a desire to personal intuition, objectivity over for inherent meaning in an image of an image (its contrast, size, example, compressing two pictures available to professional artists
build systems that yield unexpected emotion. or object because people will color model, and so on). InDesign into a single space can suggest and designers but also to children,
results. Today, the impure, the Albers and Moholy-Nagy forged bring their own cultural biases and and QuarkXpress are structural a conflict or synthesis of ideas amateurs, and tinkerers of every
contaminated, and the hybrid hold as the use of new media and new personal experiences to the process explorations of typography: they are (East/West, male/female, old/new). stripe. Their language has become
much allure as forms that are sleek materials. They saw that art and of interpretation. As postmodernism software machines for controlling Designers also employ transparency universal.
and perfected. Visual thinkers often design were being transformed itself became a dominant ideology leading, alignment, spacing, and as a compositional (rather than Software tools provide models
seek to spin out intricate results by technology—photography, film, in the 1980s and ’90s, in both the column structures as well as image thematic) device, using it to soften of visual media, but they don’t tell us
from simple rules or concepts rather and mass production. And yet academy and in the marketplace, placement and page layout. edges, establish emphasis, separate what to make or what to say. It is
than reduce an image or idea to its their ideas remained profoundly the design process got mired in In the aftermath of the Bauhaus, competing elements, and so on. the designer’s task to produce works
simplest parts. humanistic, always asserting the role the act of referencing cultural styles textbooks of basic design have Trans­parency is crucial to the that are relevant to living situations
of the individual over the absolute or tailoring messages to narrowly returned again and again to elements vocabulary of film and motion-based (audience, context, program,
authority of any system or method. defined communities. such as point, line, plane, texture, media. In place of a straight cut, brief, site) and to deliver meaningful
Design, they argued, is never and color, organized by principles of an animator or editor diminishes messages and rich, embodied
reducible to its function or to a scale, contrast, movement, rhythm, the opacity of an image over experiences. Each producer animates
technical description. and balance. This book revisits those time (fade to black) or mixes two design’s core structures from
concepts as well as looking at some semitransparent images (cross his or her own place in the world.
of the new universals emerging today. dissolve). Such transitions affect
Beyond the Basics

11  Beyond the Basics

Choose your corner, pick away at it carefully, intensely and to the best of your ability
Jennifer Cole Phillips
and that way you might change the world. Charles Eames

Even the most robust visual Yet, as these digital technologies Visual Thinking Ubiquitous access to The book is organized around
language is useless without the afford greater freedom and conven­ image editing and design software, some of the formal elements and
ability to engage it in a living ience, they also require ongoing together with zealous media phenomena of design. In practice,
context. While this book centers education and upkeep. This recurring inculcation on all things design, has those components mix and overlap,
around formal structure and learning curve, added to already created a tidal wave of design makers as they do in the examples shown
experiment, some opening thoughts overloaded schedules, often cuts outside our profession. Indeed, in our throughout the book. By focusing
on process and problem solving short the creative window for previous book, D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself, attention on particular aspects of
are appropriate here, as we hope concept development and formal we extolled the virtues of learning visual form, we encourage readers
readers will reach not only for more experimentation. and making, arguing that people acquire to recognize the forces at play
accomplished form, but for form that In the college context, students pleasure, knowledge, and power behind strong graphic solutions.
resonates with fresh meaning. arrive ever more digitally facile. by engaging with design at all levels. Likewise, while a dictionary studies
Before the Macintosh, solving Acculturated by iPods, Playstations, With this volume we shift the specific words in isolation, those
graphic design problems meant and PowerBooks, design students climate of the conversation. Instead of words come alive in the active
outsourcing at nearly every stage command the technical savvy that skimming the surface, we dig deeper. context of writing and speaking.
of the way: manuscripts were used to take years to build. Being Rather than issuing instructions, Filtered through formal and
sent to a typesetter; photographs— plugged in, however, has not always we frame problems and suggest conceptual experimentation, design
selected from contact sheets—were profited creative thinking. possibilities. Inside, you will find thinking fuses a shared discipline
printed at a lab and corrected by Too often, the temptation to turn many examples, by students and with organic interpretation.
a retoucher; and finished artwork directly to the computer precludes professionals, that balance and blend
was the job of a paste-up artist, deeper levels of research and idioscyncrasy with formal discipline.
who sliced and cemented type and ideation—the distillation zone that Rather than focus on practical
images onto boards. This protocol unfolds beyond the average appetite problems such as how to design
Diagramming Process Charles Eames drew
slowed down the work process and for testing the waters and exploring a book, brochure, logo, or website, this diagram to explain the design process
required designers to plan each alternatives. People, places, this book encourages readers to as achieving a point where the needs
step methodically. thoughts, and things become experiment with the visual language and interests of the client, the designer, and
society as a whole overlap. Charles Eames,
By contrast, powerful, off-the- familiar through repeated exposure. of design. By “experiment,” we mean 1969, for the exhibition “What is Design” at
shelf software now allows designers It stands to reason, then, that initial the process of examining a form, the Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, France.
and users of all ilks to endlessly ideas and, typically, the top tiers of a material, or process in a methodical © 2007 Eames Office LLC.
edit their work in the comfort of a Google search turn up only cursory yet open-ended way. To experiment
personal or professional workspace. results that are often tired and trite. is to isolate elements of an operation,
Getting to more interesting limiting some variables in order to
territory requires the perseverance better study others. An experiment asks
to sift, sort, and assimilate subjects a question or tests a hypothesis whose
and solutions until a fresh spark answer is not known in advance.
emerges and takes hold.