(republished from 2005) While I haven’t traditionally kept a list of favourite designers, as I’ve learnt more and more about my profession through reading, practise and other people, I’ve found I admire other people’s work more. I appreciate what they have created and have learnt to read other levels of meanings to it. This approach can not only be applied to other graphic and web designers, but any discipline of design. Therefore I have now found, while I don’t canonise other designers, I do indeed have a list of favourite designers.

“If you have two people who think the same, fire one of them. What do you need duplication for?” —Jerry Krause, General Manager, Chicago Bulls.

The short list of favourite designers that I have so far are individuals (though they all run their own companies) but recently I have had to consider multi-disciplinary design as part of my studies and thinking of a good example of this I have returned to a previous post I made on my website earlier this year about IDEO. I heard David Webster speak at a design conference earlier in the year and was very impressed by their approach to design.

IDEO is a true multidisciplinary studio and their approach to design is a very lateral one. Their team is made up of people with broad skills but one or more in-depth specialisations —they call their staff ‘T’ people, for obvious reasons. The teams within IDEO are; Human Factors, Business Factors, Industrial Design, Interaction Design, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Manufacturing, Software Engineering, Healthcare, Kid-Centric Design and Environments. Bringing together professionals from this array of fields ensures an innovative approach to their work, and I’m sure also makes for an interesting experience for their staff. It removes limitations that each individual brings with them through their professional and personal experience and allows the teams to explore alternative and innovative solutions.

IDEO designed the first production mouse in the early 1980s for Apple, creating a cheap and robust solution using the mouse ball. A more recent project is The Ten Faces of Innovation, a book written by a manager at IDEO containing real stories of how companies have successfully used innovation and design to provide a better experience for their customers. While acting as a great resource it’s also nice to know that IDEO obviously reflect on their own work.

I guess one weakness is that because they don’t specialise in any media or discipline as such, clients who think they know what they want maybe overlook them. That is, clients that aren’t looking for innovation. The fact that they are a large company with overseas offices also means they probably can’t work to tight budgets for smaller companies. But the advantages for the client as well as the members of staff far outweigh these disadvantages, at least from my perspective —and this is why one day, when I return to full time employment, I’d like to work in a company that shares this approach.

(republished from 2005)

Rhetoric was traditionally concerned with writing or speech, used where it is not necessary but instead used for effect in order to impress or persuade the reader.

In design ‘visual’ rhetoric can be used the same way it can in writing, in order to add meaning, or just to persuade or impress the viewer. For this reason it is often used in advertising.

Jacques Durand states that there are always two operations in figures of rhetoric; addition (eg: repetition) and suppression (eg: concealment). A substitution or exchange may also occur in either of these figures. A substitution is a suppression followed by an addition, and an exchange is two reciprocal substitutions. Each figure can be executed in several ways.
Rhetoric adopts two levels of meaning, or language, ‘language proper’ and ‘figurative language’. This relates to both Barthes’ and Eco’s theories on semiotics in that they split meaning in to two areas as well, Barthes in to ‘language’ and ‘speech’ and Eco in to ‘signification’ and ‘communication’.

Language proper is the syntax/rules that the communication must follow in order to communicate and figurative language is the system in which the message is communicated, ie: the nature of the operation and the relation that unites the variable elements.

Absolut have a whole series of ads using suppression; the product is missing and so becomes obvious through its absence and even more obvious over time. I knew about these ads but only recently found out how many there were and that they have a cult following – take a look at these sites: absolutad.com, absolutcollectors.com and absolutad.org.

The Absolut website is also great at adopting other figures of rhetoric. Try rolling the mouse up in to the top left corner and you get back stage access where you can even graffiti the area!

(republished from 2005) My research has questioned a few previous assumptions and confirmed others. My first assumption was that design was restricted to visual objects. I am now aware that design surrounds us, and most cities in the world. Everything is designed for a purpose, be it the roads and road signs to move and direct us around the world, or the toaster to dry bread to our liking.

Secondly, something that I hadn’t given much thought to, was the history and evolution of design. My research has led me to conclude design evolution was borne from capitalism. As society and technology change and improve so does design, it’s constantly changing and so is it’s definition.

I believe design is a complicated process that must consider everything that surrounds it, from the style to the production to the culture and therefor requires a research component, nothing can be assumed.