Form and Chaos is the blog of Esa Matinvesi. I am currently studying Graphic Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art Design. >> This blog is a place for me to share some of my interests and thoughts about design, arts and life. >> esamatinvesi.com
Earlier this week it was again the time to be press passing a new issue of Port. As this fresh of the printer cover sheet reveals, our first themed issue is all about the power of food. Although that might sound like a massive topic to cover, I think we have gathered a really good selection of opinionated, visually engaging and indeed tasty content.
For the strategic designer it’s not a question of thinking or doing, but what to think about and how to do
— Helsinki Design Lab
There are numerous examples where a simple act of displaying content in a different context creates interesting and unexpected results. Listening Post, an interactive installation, is a primary example of this kind of effective relocation of the content. The installation uses uncensored real-time fragments of text from public internet chatrooms and bulletin boards, creating a visual and sonic response to this online noise, as well as to the magnitude and immediacy of virtual communication. By translating this online content into digital poetry Listening Post manages to construct a very fascinating and almost a spiritual spatial experience — an experience that I cannot recommend highly enough!
Redesigning any kind of education system is hard, and practically impossible to do in a one day seminar. Strangely that was the primary reason why I did not hesitate even a second when my tutor Joshua Trees asked me to join him at the Redesigning (Graphic) Design Education conference at the University of Derby.
A sentence printed on one of my skateboard T-shirts says “only thing that is constant is change”. I am not sure if the makers of the shirt thought of the deeper meaning of the sentence they had borrowed from ancient Greek philosopher Heralictus, but reflecting that thought on a sociological context it is easy to see why redesign to any existing system would not be permanent: an independently thinking person will eventually find faults in the system, no matter how brilliant it would have been at the start with. Pretty happy first thought, right?
So there we were, ready to redesign the design education at once. At this point it is probably already needless to say that we did not do so. Now, let me go back a bit: even before ending up to this notion the complexity of education is something that I have been thinking a lot. By having work experience prior my current studies and continuing to work in the industry besides the course has made me look at education in a somewhat broader perspective. As we know developing any kind of education system in this changing world is certainly a challenge. Our technological capacity doubles in such a vast amount of time that not a single education model can realistically keep up to date with the flux. This is exactly where design education is in trouble: the balance between the conceptual and more practical (vocational) training is something that seems very hard to achieve in the modern world.
During the conference it became evident that most of the problems the various graphic design courses in UK were based on institutional problems — which is hardly surprising to anyone. So before redesigning any design education we should probably be able to rethink about the structures behind the educational system and institutions. That is certainly a bigger bone to chew as it seems that even the radical means such as demonstrations do not manage to gain the desired effects. However, instead of only blaming the dark matter I think we could solve many problems locally by making the communication channels more transparent.
Looking at this from a students’ perspective I can say that in reality most students would be generally a lot happier if they were just more informed about the institutional issues. For example the national problem of students getting too little tutor time is mostly a matter of explaining the nature of independent learning in higher education, rather than the need of having someone constantly holding the student’s hand. The other side of the coin is that when the students finally get their tutor time it should be used on constructive criticism, which is sadly often not the case. But as students it is our responsibility to demand that feedback if it is not presented. To quote a certain Austrian designer: “Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.”
One notion on the industry perspective is that the reality is also that design positions are rarely handed out based on any university degree grades; it is the quality of the work that counts. And every professional knows that many times personality drives even further than the great work. So should we then focus more on educating people how to be? Should we focus more on the holistic experience of being a human? Well one thing is for sure: the more I think about these issues the more I seem to have questions than answers.
Ps. I am also interested in the notion that by this day the question when not to design is still somewhat off the table…
You need to learn an entrepreneurial
constant mode of development to explore
the possibilities as they are evolving
— Bruce Mau
Our anniversary issue hit the newsstands last week with the tales of Mr Hoffman and tons of other goodness. But that is not the only exciting news around our studio lately: Port has been shortlisted in the 47th Annual Society of Publication Designers Awards in the category of Magazine of the Year alongside with Bloomberg Businessweek, GQ, IL, Lotus, New York and TIME — a good company to say the least!
I’m not sure how old the grids and tits blog is, but it surely does a good job in justifying the point I was making earlier with this project.
There are moments when you know that your life has done a full circle. For me one of those moments happened yesterday. I would have never guessed that one fine day I would be listening a design lecture in London and see my old local “night snack” kiosk Hesarin Grilli displayed on one of the presentation slides. Thank you Dan Hill at The Design of Understanding conference for taking my mind back to those countless nights in my life that have ended in front of this particular menu…
Ps. I sincerely hope that you will enjoy your time in Helsinki and learn to understand the beauty of Finnish night snack choices!
Edit: You can watch one of Dan Hill’s presentations here.
As the note states this beauty is Catulli, Tibulli, et Propertii Opera from 1772. The books typesetting is made by John Baskerville. I’m currently working on a self initiated brief at the college, and in order to achieve better understanding on digital type, I decided to focus on the comparison between the digital and analogue typesetting.
First I wanted to find a good example where a classical typeface has evolved a lot through it’s journey from metal to digital format. After identifying the suitable content I planned to replicate the typesetting using both computer and letterpress. I’ll do this to be able to see the differences myself by going through the process. The suitable content came in front of me when Professor Phil Baines was kind enough to point me towards this particular book, which belongs to our college’s museum and study collection’s archives.
On Friday evening I spent hours and hours studying the book inside out, and it was simply amazing! I made my measurements in millimetres, which I obviously now need to convert to points.
According to Phil the lines used in the book aren’t something Baskerville used to do, thus they are probably made out of the request of the client. Although the arrangement of type and lines was based on mathematics, one could clearly see the work was hand crafted.
A few things that were notable from the layout were the use of indent in some of the pages and the position of page numbers. Like in some of the digital versions, the uppercase letter Q stood out due its’ boldness and long tail. I also found the use of full stop on some of the headings adding a very interesting details on the page.
Looking closely one could see that the printed ink had a visible texture. However, knowing that Baskerville used to be very considered with his paper and ink choices in order to get higher contrast between his text and paper (thus enhancing the readability), I’m sure that the print quality I was witnessing was close to perfection at its’ time.
Some of my notes I wouldn’t dare to show Mr Baskerville:
One thing I’m just wondering is: if Baskerville would live today, would he be designing with a computer?
Forget the music, Lydia Sachse and Timo Hinze have made a synthesizer that plays type!
