information environments, creating interfaces that are relative to you and your immediate environment very sik

..depressing yet ideologically affirming

the D&AD lecture theater, rammed packed full of apparent designers, students, teachers etc.. etc..just to build an image in ones head as to the lunacy of the event….some PAYING people from the  audience had to stay outside and watch the lecture on live TV streaming from the room next door because they OVER BOOKED, and EVERY seat was filled….. complete madness–

anyway..

from overhearing various conversations throughout the half hour we were waiting for the talk to start, i can quite safely assume the room there was filled with not intrigued ‘graphic designers’ awaiting with anticipation to scrutinise Peter Saville on his responsibilites and perceptions of good and bad design, ready and armed with biting  interrogative and examinative questions for the justification of his status as an ‘art director’/ ‘visual communicator’ NO NO NO. Alas, the room filled to the BRIMMMM, with fan boys, girls and starry eyes bed wetters from all over, from st martins students to Neville Brody,…. not an interesting person in sight.

depressing,

why….

because in this apparently well documented age of post illumination, we STILL as the audience do not understand what it IS we are ALL TALKING ABOUT>………what it is we are ACTUALLY SEEING, ‘ READING’ , LISTENING TO… and it couldn’t have showed more than tonight..self consciousness is not so apparent. It was like being at a sit down Japanese Michael Jackson gig. (not because there were lots of Japanese people there, no, it was the sheer hype you could feel in the air and on peoples vacantly docile expressions.

A short history

Im not claiming to be an authority in this field what so ever, nor on savilles, or brodies work but.. i have some  things i would like to say, or mention.

the overall context: graphic design / visual communication / information design

the reality of the context: a person who almost single handily subverted (unbeknown to him at the time )  DESIGN THAT WORKS ( ie Russian constructivist communist propaganda)  by stealing ‘elements’ (ie the forms, colours and textures which now have an intrinsic and inseparable connotative relationship with horrendous fascist dictatorship) and  by applying these so called innocuous elements into POP CULTURE which were then used as a TOOL to SELL ‘artistic work’, this was then ASSIMILATED in nothing more than a formalist and arbitrary way by BIG BUSINESS in the 80s and 90s  and thus paved the way for definition warping, mass accessibility to powerful tools, ideas and convitions that business and ’so called graphic designers’ used without second thought during application and what implications this has.

What the designers role was initially there for, was to simplify, translate and to honestly communicate without any self indulgence or personal interference in case of mistranslation……

NO instead we have….

people LIKE Peter Saville, Malcolm Garrett and Neville Brody who have believed or still believe it is ACCEPTABLE to use visual language without fully understanding what it ACTUALLY SAYS, what is ACTUALLY MEANS, how it  ACTUALLY READS, which has led us to an age of mass confusion and docile incompetence’s. Giving way for sloppy, irrelevant and confusion, all the way from record sleeve covers through to GOVERNMENTAL BODIES polling day voting slips…….

i go on…

UNIFORMITY, MASS PRODUCTION, MASS COMMUNICATION………

did the not to distant history teach us anything, did we not learn the importance of this?Was the presence of several fascist leaders who used MASS COMMUNICATION in the 20th century NOT ENOUGH for us to UNDERSTAND why is it inportant to understand the power of the writen word in relation to the image?

WHY is it now acceptable for people/ business/ governments/ countries  to misuse, misinform, mislead us all by using visual trickery and it being legally acceptable?

now im not suggesting we should revert to an authoritarian esque stance on such issues. BUT we should make it FULLY aware to the importance of understanding and sometimes adhering to the relevence of imagary and what it provokes. We NEED NOT pastiche, or parody. There is enough immidiate visual stimuli to forfill the now, the present the absolute relevent… without having to bring in dictorial propaganga stylisms to the present. The things in life i have most issues with in terms of design, are anything ,spoken by a government, food packaging and presentation, signage/wayfinding systems, educational systems.

RESPONSIBILITIES, may i refer you to  a recent TED talk on ‘cheating’
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html

i like what Neville Brody said on a Culture show ( number 26 or 27 at the end of  February, cant actually remember which). He was was being asked a few questions on his thoughts of the new exhibition on at the Tate Modern which was on : Russian constructivists Alexander Rodchenko and Lyubov Popova.

when being asked on his thoughts of the imagery now knowing the history of what happened because of it, to paraphrase him he said

‘ you have to separate your self from it dont you’

so what he is saying is:

you must separate from the fact that, this Stalin led and Hitler co-signed propaganda is directly culpable for millions of deaths inflicted on the 20th century?????!!

WHAT A FUCKING CUNT

How DARE he say such inconceivably ludicrous and farcical statements  on such sensitively poignant  subject.

NEVILE BRODY YOU ARE AN IGNORANT CRETIN, of the HIGHEST ORDER

he is more so guilty than saville because he still practices these ideologies and gives justification for the existence of these ‘innocuous’ and ‘harmless’  worldly media blanketeers, such as Rupert Murdoch to whom owns every type of media entity known to man in most western countries.

To be allowed to FREELY ADVERTISE EVERY SINGLE DAY on the streets of one of the most importantly Economically and Politically influential cities in the world… LONDON… im referring to Rupert Murdoch and his FREE daily dose of self publicity otherly known as the LONDON PAPER??

Appropriation is weak, not clever visual puns are not big and are not clever.

And back to uniformity

It takes many shapes and forms some/most are more subtle than a macdonalds logo, often its a way of saying something, a tone of voice delivered with exact timing and subtle and unnoticeable precision, often because of the context of where both Saville and Garrett came from that being ‘graphic design’ graduates, it must be said they MUST be doing ‘graphic design’??

alas not, im not saying saville or garett have perpetuated it, they just conceived the idea.

people like PENTAGRAM  perpetuated the idea through the conception of accepting Saville to work for them….as Saville said during the talk his company ‘Saville associates’ went under in the early 90s, but he was personally saved by a friend at Pentagram. this is how he got in. During his time as he pointed out, his ‘partnered’ were never into his work and many times Alan Fletcher said to Saville ‘ this is not graphic design’.

This begs the question as to why he wasnt fired or taken off of the team if that was the case. strange very strange. I think then it was more of an image thing and design needed some serious lifting, and if someone as so well revered as Saville wasnt in the worlds aparently best design team they were no longer this.

In retrospect, this may of helped lift the stature and relevance in pop culture but dragged Pentagram and the subject as a whole it down into the syphilitic depths of celebrity, narcissism, notoriety, self indulgent mutual masturbation. As an exercise in marketing it may have worked in the short term but failed in the  long.

This accesibility opened the flood gates for what some people would call a positive step in visual communication, and thats 50,000 design graduates in the UK ALONE EVERY YEAR…….now what i would like to ask is how many of those graduates actually understand the importance and responsibility of designing something that is mass produced, how many of them care how it is used, is it even important that they care, if the answer to the last question is no, then why has the right for a political party in the western world to wear a uniform of ANY sort ILLEGAL ?

re:

Public Order Act 1936

http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content.aspx?ActiveTextDocId=1083745

because it was made aware of the political potency of visual propaganda in both nazi germany and the soviet union.

saville

He and his pals perpetuated the ideas of graphic design being an easy way to decorate, misinform and warp visions of the thermoset reality of capitalism / or pop culture, an inextricable mould  made of power, sway, polical potency and self interest. with little to no sense of a wider responsibility to what they are directly effecting and what intrinsic implications they have on the world. (this notion is more relevent now than in has been in a while for the reasons of ecomomic collapse)

he is one of the greatest perpetrators for visual pollution ( again unbeknown to him at the time )

issues with the context

this talk can be viewed in TWO ways….

1. he Peter Saville was asked by D&AD to talk there because they KNOW they could sell it out with absolute ease, and that they did, but with no REAL intention of addressing any real, serious, even relevent issues in design at the moment.

or

2. they did all of the above, ( because lets face it its true ) BUT also  they may have had the intention of asking him to address some RELEVANT questions towards the currently  transition that is happening in design, what is design, what is GOOD design, what is it called, is it called graphic design, visual communication or something else, what is art is design art?

alas…. i believe it was for number 1, and they touched on one or two aspects for literally a million of the second….it was a show,… typical LONDON showmanship…

( on d&ad’s part that is )

now, he is the interesting thing:

is the opening sentence  you see on his website

This correlates with what he said at the talk about him realising on a seemingly very sobering day in his 3rd year at Manchester polytechnic after picking up a book in the library which he had never done so (according to him). he realised at that moment design was not what he initially thought it was. He was interested in the end, the finality, the forms the shapes of work, and realised graphic design was not about the self indulgent and the arbitrary. He went on to then say that in retrospect,

‘No one should be designing record covers after the age of 30’, and ‘Music covers are not graphic design, they do not communicate anything, they have no purpose in that respect.’
after this, he randomly serves the task of idenifying that he disagrees with the term ‘graphic designer’ in relation to him, ( without any real justification only talking about the term ‘graphic’ but was not clear to the point he was making) but then calling him self a ‘visual communicator’.

this tells me, Visual communication refers to an act of communication that bares no shape, form or resemblance of rigor , denoting the arbitrary nature of anything visual, communicating something, this is obvious, anything you can see visually communicates something, in itself bares no function at all.

AND THUS, that was a VERY sympathetic description of his own work. But not really identifying whether its relevent communication, good, bad, whether it works or doesnt. JUST ‘visual communication’

This is closely related to the study of fine art without the intellectual part. In which he would probably disagree with.

I SEE no place for him in this context, all he served was facilitate the notion of D&AD having such sway and potency within the ‘design community’ that they can get such ‘legends’ as Peter Saville. Unless he is going to outline FULLY and unambiguously what it is he does, what he respects, what he doesnt, whether his work is of use or no use to anyone else but him self. Until then he is only there to facilitate ulterior motivations.

its disgusting!

he is a complete and utter formalist, i dont disrespect this i just think its a shame hes thrown into the lime light of ‘graphic design’ as an important
figure, he says he now regrets doing his degree .. he didnt say why, but i believe its because he KNOWS it was down to him that made
graphic design accesible to the masses and he knows what he was doing was not graphic design…but being percieved as graphic design
as he begged and borrowed or sould i say stole ‘elements’ from avant garde artists from futurism to constructavists to bauhaus to swiss style….

and it was just an unholy accident that it came around to being like this … he refers to himself as a ‘visual communicator’ but .. ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING communicates something to someone for good OR for bad…. and thusthats his justification for his ‘ work ‘ he KNOWS his work does not communicate for the good as , as he quite rightly and many times pointed out he does work for him self and what matters to him.. in other words MOST of his work is 100% completely arbitrary APART from the manchester city identity stuff which is the closest thing hes done towards ‘functional meaningful design’ but he knows its shit, but couldnt turn the job down after being asked even begged to do it, even after trying to put the clients off from hiring him he knows hes not good and doing GOOD DESIGN… but he was put in an comprimising position between his ‘reputation as a graphic designer’ and ‘his own moral ideas’ of him self.

it was very interesting how, he was extremely good at preserving his own self and ideologies by hammering home that he
does what he likes

i just found depressing that the fact people didnt get what he really thouht of him self and the fact he wasnt prepared to identify what ‘GOOD DESIGN’ is, as this would comprimise his very well preserved identity of the brand that is Peter Saville, by defining what real good design is would thus make him a BAD designer… and ……no bodies wants to label them selfs that

I was going to put him in the comprimising position of asking the question ‘ what would your definition of good design be in the context of designer and audience, the audience NOT being yourself’ and ‘what would you call it’.

I see this talk not as it appeared to be presented, a talk about his life or even a talk about the future of design… but its kind of weird how he does ‘design talks’ but doesnt class him self as a designer per se’…which leads me to think, that he feels ever so slightly responsible for the way things have gone over the past 30 years and all the absolute visual pollution that has resulted from his initial ignorance over the absolute importance of understanding how communication works, he wants to rid him self of this guilt, but  TRYING to say this is his equivilent of recycling plastic…. get the feeling he WOULDNT do ANY talks if he didnt feel even slightly.

or hes just perpetuating his identity as ambiguous figure head of the design world.

As said in the TED talk above, about how people become less reluctent to ‘cheat’ or ’steal’ when the concept of morality / reality is once removed from the actuality, ie: stealing tokens or an office pen instead of money or a ten pence piece. Saville uses the very same trick by using his brand ‘Peter Saville’ in such a way that he can morally detatch him self from the reality of which he has inflicted himself upon. He even refers to him self in the 3rd person for fuck sake…….He appears to be very moralistic, and ethical. But the above i believe proves him to be is a decietful machiavellianist with no actual regard as to what he has done.

everyone needs to step the fuck up and denounce these charletons, and denounce D&AD

Hello Designers,

For the grids workshop on Thursday 27th November (next week), you will need to bring with you please, ready prepared, for a 10.30am start, the following:

————
• 36 squares of black paper, each one cut-out to 65 x 65mm

• 144 squares of mid-grey paper, each one cut-out to 30 x 30mm

• centred on an A4 sheet of white paper, a grid drawn in black ink,
comprising 5 rows by 5 columns of 30mm squares, separated by 5mm space between the squares on both the horizontal and vertical axes (the overall grid area will be 170 x 170 mm)

• an A3 sheet of grey paper, with a window 190 x 190mm, cut-out in the centre of the sheet

• paper glue, clear tape, masking tape, ruler, scalpel, pencils etc

• 24 sheets of A4 LAYOUT PAPER (ie, thin enough so you can see the grid you will have drawn as described above through the paper when overlaid on the grid sheet). Tracing paper not acceptable
————-

A detailed brief for the day will be given on the morning of the 27th.

Thanks,
Hamish

also….

here is the start of an idea

This week which incidentally was a week and a half ago, our task was to take one sheet of paper…

which had the same information typed in 3 type sizes and 2 weights, which effectively gave us 6 choices of type to play with and 6 choices of ‘line feed’ (which is the distance between the acender on the caps height and the decender on the low swinging characters of a typeface.

we had 3 exercises… and we had to give 4 examples of each of the following:

1: one type size / one type weight
2: one type size / two type weights
3: two type sizes two type weights

restrictions:
1:no centre-axis or ranged right text alignments were permitted
2:the base lines of all text MUST be parallel to the top and bottom of the format NO type on an angle.
3:cannot enlarge/ nor inverse type
4: only using scissors, glue, photocopier, cutting knife, metal rule, pencils, set square.

i only managed to do 5/ 12 examples in the 6 hours we had, which had to include lunch.

unfortunately i had been on the start of a hellish 2 week flu/virus deterioration process, and thus couldnt concentrate all day. but HAD to go to this couldnt miss it. 5 isnt too bad but my examples were shocking…ly bad..

im going to try do some more to improve it.
What was most apparent and was suggested by hamish, was the use of small type often makes things look professional and makes it look like you know what you are doing. Using large type is possible but you must be extremely good at weighting and composing type to get away with it.

hierarchy in itself seems relatively basic, but within the context we had it, the idea of listing an address twice for the opening of the gallery and the definition of the sculpture gallery would have been a waste of space and over done… so doubling up information whilst trying to be objective as to the relevance of importance of gallery is VERY VERY hard to achieve. the idea that A word or sentence has several functions and you must denote that by using one typeface and one weight… is very much a challenge indeed..

By using you hands you get an idea of scale and importance more so than if you did it straight on indesign without seeing the traces of where you came from last. I would highly reccomend working to scale with full paste ups, its what our tutors preach, but for very good reasoning.. its the O N L Y way to find out if something REALLY works. without inducing rediculous printing costs on your self through printing out every step of indesign infull colour on the stock you are going to be working with… its just ludicrous.

REAL typography is extremely hard, and IS as important to be sympathetic to the layout of information as THIS is how one READS something, order is how we communicate effectivly. If abused/ignored or rejected, this can often misconstrue ones ideas of a piece of information and thus making information arbitrary. Which is done ALL TOO OFTEN……..

informative information should be clear as in legible and ideologically clear within its message. Function, form and usability are indeed kings of communication and should not be abused nor ignored.

this workshop was very interesting, understanding and becoming aware of the main benefits and downfalls of pie, area, bar and line graphs.

It was a fast turnaround in the realisation that charts of such manner are very limited in the way they can or indeed cannot objectively present certain variables within data. None the less when dealing with 3 or less variables i think this is when they come in to their own. And only if the values of are at least similar scaling and relation……really in terms of information design, i think personally they can only help one deconstruct information at first but they are not relevant for mass human consumption..

and thus i believe we are entering an age which the likes of john maeda and edward tufte have been harping on about entering for a longg time… ‘escaping flat lands’

As all the best theorist say its the mediums that you deal with that are the real carriers of information, the likes of marshall mcluhen and kenya hara are bastions of such messages, or at least offer portals of explanation into the way we should deal with ANY information be it within the form of pre made data or indeed a collection of found objects or patterns ( by patterns i mean a regular and intelligible form or sequence discernible in certain actions or situations).

The way in which information is structured and relayed, in form and aesthetic, i believe in making what
andrew blauvelt

was talking about on design observer this week, RELATIONAL DESIGN .

This breaks all notions that information, of any sort be it langugage in the form audio, spoken , smybols maths, music, science, visual language what ever…..shall have a pre-determined, default form or way of looking at something. instead of relying on other contexts, create your own and thus becoming more profound and engaging…

relative to the doctrine of the episteme, by Michel Foucault, the ideas of not letting what you believe to currently know, or are believe to be currently aware of, suggesting the possibilities that this limits your mindset even when trying to further your ideas even beliefs of categorisation and order

Now back to charts, chart can be a term to present an idea which is almost like a blueprint for a realisation of representation. So i say, do not take charts as a literal way of representing information, its a ladder to understanding the bigger picture.

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Radish ‘em
Radish me
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Share dim
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Shire dam
Shire mad
Shred aim
Smear hid
Amid hers
Arid mesh
Dare shim
Dash emir
Dash mire
Dash rime
Dear shim
Dime rash
Dire mash
Dire sham
Dish mare
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semi Hard
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“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

Its the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

Its the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled – Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

Its the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

Its been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and hes fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nations promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the Vice President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last sixteen years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nations next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy thats coming with us to the White House. And while shes no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics – you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what youve sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to – it belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didnt start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington – it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generations apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.

I know you didnt do this just to win an election and I know you didnt do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime – two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how theyll make the mortgage, or pay their doctors bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America – I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you – we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who wont agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government cant solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way its been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek – it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, its that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers – in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House – a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, We are not enemies, but friends…though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn – I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world – our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down – we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security – we support you. And to all those who have wondered if Americas beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

For that is the true genius of America – that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one thats on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. Shes a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing – Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldnt vote for two reasons – because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that shes seen throughout her century in America – the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we cant, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when womens voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that We Shall Overcome. Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves – if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time – to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth – that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we cant, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:

Yes We Can. Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.”

Georges Perec

extract first published in 1973

What speaks to us, seemingly, is always the big event, the untoward, the extra-ordinary: the front-page splash, the banner headlines. Railway trains only begin to exist when they are derailed, and the more passengers that are killed, the more the trains exist. Aeroplanes achieve existence only when they are hijacked. The one and only destiny of motor-cars is to drive into plane trees. Fifty-two weekends a year, fifty-two casualty lists: so many dead and all the better for the news media if the figures keep going up! Behind the event there is a scandal, a fissure, a danger, as if life reveals itself only by way of the spectacular, as if what speaks, what is significant, is always abnormal: natural cataclysms or social upheavals, social unrest, political scandals.

In our haste to measure the historic, significant and revelatory, let’s not leave aside the essential: the truly intolerable, the truly inadmissible. What is scandalous isn’t the pit explosion, it’s working in coalmines. ‘Social problems’ aren’t ‘a matter of concern’ when there’s a strike, they are intolerable twenty-four hours out of twenty-four, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

Tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, tower blocks that collapse, forest fires, tunnels that cave in, the Drugstore de Champs-Elysées burns down. Awful! Terrible! Monstrous! Scandalous! But where’s the scandal? The true scandal? Has the newspaper told us everything except: not to worry, as you can see life exists, with its ups and downs, things happen, as you can see.

The daily newspapers talk of everything except the daily. The papers annoy me , they teach me nothing. What they recount doesn’t concern me, doesn’t ask me questions and doesn’t answer the questions I ask or would like to ask.

What’s really going on, what we’re experiencing, the rest, all the rest, where is it? How should we take account of, question, describe what happens every day and recurs everyday: the banal, the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary, the background noise, the habitual?

To question the habitual. But that’s just it, we’re habituated to it. We don’t question it, it doesn’t question us, it doesn’t seem to pose a problem, we live it without thinking, as if it carried within it neither question nor answers, as if it weren’t the bearer of any information. This is not longer even conditioning, it’s anaesthesia. We sleep through our lives in a dreamless sleep. But where is our life? Where is our body? Where is our space?

How are we to speak of these ‘common things’, how to track them down rather, how to flush them out, wrest them from the dross in which they remain mired, how to give them a meaning, a tongue, to let them, finally, speak of what is, of what we are.

What’s needed perhaps is finally to found our own anthropology, one that will speak about us, will look in ourselves for what for so long we’ve been pillaging from others. Not the exotic anymore, but the endotic.

To question what seems so much a matter of course that we’ve forgotten its origins. To rediscover something of the astonishment that Jules Verne or his readers may have felt faced with an apparatus capable of reproducing and transporting sounds. For the astonishment existed, along with thousands of others, and it’s they which have moulded us.

What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live, true, we breathe, true; we walk, we open doors, we go down staircases, we sit at a table in order to eat, we lie down on a bed in order to sleep. How? Why? Where? When? Why?

Describe your street. Describe another street. Compare.

Make an inventory of you pockets, of your bag. Ask yourself about the provenance, the use, what will become of each of the objects you take out.

Question your tea spoons.

What is there under your wallpaper?

How many movements does it take to dial a phone number?

Why don’t you find cigarettes in grocery stores? Why not?

It matters little to me that these questions should be fragmentary, barely indicative of a method, at most of a project. It matters a lot to me that they should seem trivial and futile: that’s exactly what makes them just as essential, if not more so, as all the other questions by which we’ve tried in vain to lay hold on our truth

So first day back at school, we chatted through our up and coming term and conversed over the George Perec book we were meant to of read.

This was all well and good, until i realised how things still havent changed since secondary school. Medeocraty still exists within the rehlms of my educational framwork. I am not talking about the teaching staff, quite the contrary. The lackadasical students around me.

This shant effect us, any longer NOW we have our own rooommmmmmm……!……( below)

well anyway, Hamish gave us our first typographic workshop.

all we had was a H2,HB and B2 pencils a rule & an eraser. We had to enlarge the sheet of printed type we all got that said ‘w i d g e t ‘ on. All in various sans serif typefaces. two types of Helvetica, two types of Univers and Akzidenz grotesque faces.

we had from 1130 till 4pm to do this, we had to produce a ‘beautiful drawing’.

It was more about appreciating that typeface design is not simply about enlarging or decreasing a fixed design, you have to realises the nuances of stroke width contrast, thick and thins, horizontals and virticals for reasons of legibility, readability, clarity and overall continuity in character design.  Realising that the counters that look good a sizez 12 point, look disjointed and disfigured at 40 point.  The hardest part from my experience was drawing the counters and harmonising them in a logic fashion.

I spent 2 hours working everything out

I spent 2 hours and 20 minutes drawing the w, i, d, g, and 10 minutes drawing the e,t…. AS you can probably tell by the horrendous rush job at the end.

none the less

here are the results from the day:

work times

Originally uploaded by alex crayon

me and tash,.. i guess

j.

Originally uploaded by alex crayon

james the G

well.

now

formatting