Buch & dessen Zukunft
Print Ain’t Dead Yet
Helfand 2000
21 March 2000
Dear Fiona:
You are turning 2 in a few weeks and I think it’s high time you understood a thing or two about graphic design. After all, you are part of
Generation ABC and what are ABCs, after all, but typography?
And what is typography, you ask?
A good question.
Typography is letters (and numbers) and why they look the way they do. Sometimes letters are BIG AND LOUD and sometimes letters are small and quiet. Typography can make words look good. It can also make words look bad.
But the way they look—whether they’re pink or purple or big or small or quiet or noisy or happy or scary or funny or weird, well, that’s something that comes from typography.
Which is also called type.
Which is sometimes called print.
Which is a word that occasionally causes people to wrinkle up their noses and describe a time when it was customary to wear burlap shoes and sit hunched over, by candlelight, scratching painstakingly written messages to one’s friends and neighbors using quill pens. This really happened, back in ancient times. Like back when there were mummies and dinosaurs. Before television. Like when Daddy was little.
Printing is what you do when you write letters one at a time, as opposed to script, which is when you write letters so-that-they-connect-to-each-other-like-this. Printing is also used to describe what happens when machines (called »presses«) get hold of all those words, all that typography, and actually
press the letters together onto paper.
Paper is a word that occasionally causes people to wrinkle up their noses and describe a time when it was customary to wear burlap shoes and sit hunched over, by candlelight, scratching painstakingly written messages to one’s friends and neighbors using quill pens. This really happened, back in ancient times. Like back when there were word processors and 8-track tapes. Before computers. Like when Mommy was little.
Now here’s the really confusing part. A lot of people say print is dead. Flat and not moving. Dead, like when we drive down our road and see a rabbit or a woodchuck that didn’t make it across in time. The whole concept of roadkill is something I had hoped to put off for a few years, but I think it’s important for us to be clear about one thing.
Print isn’t dead, sweetheart. It’s just sleeping.
So as you begin to learn your ABCs, remember that your mind is like a giant alarm clock that wakes those letters up so that they spell something, so that they mean something, whether they’re on TV or in a book or scratched on the side of a wall somewhere. And while you’re at it, remember that S isn’t the same as 5 and L isn’t the same as 1. Remember that 1 LoV3 U isn’t the same as I LOVE YOU even though it looks cool. Remember that anything that looks cool probably won’t look cool for very long. Remember that very long means, well, probably about a day-and-a-half. Remember that pictures may speak louder than words, but that words speak volumes. Remember that sometimes typography can help you understand something or react to something or feel a certain way faster, but that it probably won’t help resolve conflicts between embittered nations or advance your capacity for reason or prevent you from getting bee stings or tick bites or chicken pox. Remember that spelling mistakes are celebrated in email but not tolerated in literature. Remember that literature is made up of stories that are what they are because someone wrote them down, letter by letter, word by word, intending for them to be read and remembered and retold for years and years and years to come. Remember that this is why your father and I want you to learn your ABCs, in the order in which they were intended to be learned, even though you can, and will, mix up the magnets on the refrigerator to proudly spell words like hrldgsno and wsigefoo and pstwe6882ge. Someday when you read the work of Gertrude Stein or look at the work of David Carson, you will make sense of such verbal and perceptual aberrations, but until then, my sweet girl, remember that your ABCs are what helps you to read, and reading is what opens up your mind so that you can learn about anything you want. Turtles. Communism. Particle physics. Reading feeds your brain and helps your mind to grow. So today’s Goodnight Moon is tomorrow’s Charlotte’s Web is next year’s Elmer and the Dragon and before you know it you’ll be reading Thomas Hardy and Thomas Mann and A.S. Byatt and V.S. Naipaul, just as your parents did, and our parents did and, with any luck, your children will. And even though we read them printed on paper and you will very likely read them emblazoned on a screen, do you know what, Fiona?
It doesn’t matter, because no matter what the typography does (or doesn’t do), and no matter what the print is (or isn’t), words are just ideas waiting to be read. And
reading will never die. Reading is your ticket to the world.
The Relevance of the Book
Boom 2022
Being in this enormous library surrounded by books from the very beginning until basically today made me realize
books are made for the future. The unchangeable or frozen information is the key to understanding the past and the future. This is especially important now, because making books is no longer self-evident. One of the most important debates of our time concerns whether books can survive.
I don’t think the book needs to be defended, by the way, it’s been one of the most stable media for over 600 years. Are books nostalgia, relics from another time? The answer lies in the hands of
the new generation. It is precisely young students who are mainly active in
the digital world who are discovering the book as a source of exclusive information today. The »no screen« is a
new dimension to them and
reading is literally a rediscovery of the
materiality, tactility, the smell of paper and ink.
My main focus is the study of the earliest printed books in relation to the book now. If you look at the oldest manuscripts, from AD 500 and 850, and the earliest printed books, from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, these are of unprecedented modernity, you would now call it experimental. It is an exciting time, anything was possible—you see text as wide as the page, there are no headings, no paragraphs, no page numbers.
I find the innocence you see in that earliest book super fascinating and inspiring. Bookmaking was not yet hindered by conventions or marketing rules. The printed book, as we know it today, still had to be developed and invented in all its facets. The printed book was a medium in development. When the demand for the printed book grew and it became widely distributed, there was a need to make rules for how a book should work. I follow the quest: »What happened to the book?«
At a time when information is increasingly being distributed digitally, the book seems to be under threat, but nothing could be further from the truth. The immutability of the printed world in relation to the Aux of the Internet is only one of the values of the book: the printed word as a reference for the future. Therefore, I can—or must—articulate my work as a bookmaker and study the intrinsic characteristics of the printed book intensively and propagate them in my book designs and apply those characteristics. The making, the focus and concentration, and the ambitions I have, can keep the book vital and I want to continue to develop this.
It is an unstoppable process.
Struktur, Raster & Farbe
Buch als Objekt ist ein Blindspot
Spoerhase 2016
Inwiefern ist das Buch in seiner »überkommenen Gestalt« aber ein Medienformat der Vergangenheit? Benjamin glaubt, dass sich eine »bedeutende literarische Wirksamkeit« nunmehr ausschließlich in »Flugblättern, Broschüren, Zeitschriftartikeln und Plakaten« entfalten könne; für die »anspruchsvolle universale Geste des Buches« – die, so ließe sich hinzufügen, von Mallarmé mit »Un coup de dés« noch vollzogen wurde – gebe es in der Gegenwart keinen Platz. […]
Bereits die Zeitung wird mehr in der Senkrechten als in der Horizontalen gelesen, Film und Reklame drängen die Schrift vollends in die diktatorische Vertikale. […]
Die Schrift, die im gedruckten Buche ein Asyl gefunden hatte, wo sie ihr autonomes Dasein führte, wird unerbittlich von Reklamen auf die Straße hinausgezerrt und den brutalen Heteronomien des wirtschaftlichen Chaos unterstellt. […]
Ihm wird die unvermeidliche Zerstreuung durch ein »dichtes Gestöber von wandelbaren, farbigen, streitenden Lettern« in der Tagespresse und im Plakatdruck sowie im großstädtischen Straßenbild insgesamt scharf kontrastiert. […]
El Lissitzky ist einer der wenigen, die sich zeitgleich darum bemühen, einerseits das Buch von der Buchseite streng zu unterscheiden und andererseits die Dreidimensionalität des Buches theoretisch anspruchsvoll zu reflektieren. […]
Zentral ist nun, dass Lissitzky darauf hinweist, dass die avantgardistische »Sprengung« auf die typographische Seite beschränkt geblieben sei; die plane zweidimensionale Seite (des Buchs, Plakats, der Zeitung) sei Gegenstand der theoretischen Reflexion und der (konkret)
gestalterischen Dekonstruktion gewesen, nicht aber das dreidimensionale Buch. Dieses bleibe weitgehend intakt, weil bisher »für das Buch als Körper keine neue Gestalt« gefunden worden sei. Eine Sprengung des Buches als dreidimensionales Objekt habe gar nicht stattgefunden, denn es sei die aktuelle Arbeit an der Seite »im Innern des Buches noch nicht soweit, um […] die traditionelle Buchform zu sprengen.« […]
Dreidimensionalität (Raum) scheint als metaphorischer Spender für Zweidimensionalität (Fläche) nur deshalb in Frage zu kommen, weil die dritte Dimension des Untersuchungsgegenstands gar nicht in Frage steht. Und ist erst einmal die Dreidimensionalität als mächtige Metapher für die Zweidimensionalität installiert, lässt sich leicht übersehen, dass die Dreidimensionalität auch einen »wörtlichen« Sinn hatte. […]
Für weite Teile der theoretischen Reflexion über textuelle Materialität ist das Buch als bloß zweidimensionale Seitenfläche von einem Bildschirm überhaupt nicht zu unterscheiden. Um es etwas zuzuspitzen: Bis in die Gegenwart wurde das Buch theoretisch meist so diskutiert, als ob es sich auch um den Bildschirm eines avancierten »E-Book-Readers« handeln könnte.
Grade der Ordnung
Bosshard 1971
Typografisches Gestalten heisst Ordnung herstellen: Ordnung ist auch noch im Chaos, besonders im gestalteten Chaos. Man versuche, eine Anzahl Punkte chaotisch zu »ordnen« es wird nicht gelingen. Immer entstehen optische Beziehungen einer Gruppe von Punkten, die in einer optisch relevanten Konstellation stehen. Das absolute Chaos gibt es nicht, es gibt lediglich verschiedene Grade der Ordnung.
Wie entsteht Ordnung in der Typografie? Durch das Aneinanderreihen von Buchstaben beginnt
das Spiel der weißen und schwarzen Räume. Schon die meisten Buchstabenbilder enthalten ein Verhältnis von Strichstärke und Punzenweite. Ein Wort erweitert diese Verhältnisse durch die Räume zwischen den Buchstaben. Im Satz entstehen weitere Raumbeziehungen durch die Wortabstände. Dies ist das rhythmische Geschehen innerhalb einer Zeile, also in der Leserichtung von diesen Verhältnissen hängt auch weitgehend die
Lesbarkeit einer Schrift ab. Mit der Breite des Zeilenbandes (Mittellängen) und dem optischen Durchschuss werden die aufeinander bezogenen Raumverhältnisse auf die Satzfläche ausgeweitet.
Je nach der typografischen Technik können mehrere dieser Räume individuell beeinflusst werden. Die alten Handschriften erreichen die höchste Individualität: Strichstärke, Punzenweite, Raum zwischen den Buchstaben, Wortzwischenraum, Breite des Zeilenbandes und optischer Durchschuss variieren selbst innerhalb einer Buchseite, wenn auch nur wenig. Am stärksten determiniert ist der
Bleisatz, bei dem durch die Vorfabrikation der Typen Strichstärke, Punzenweite, Buchstabenabstand und Zeilenbandbreite feststehen – nur Wortzwischenraum und optischer Durchschuss sind frei veränderbar. Der
Fotosatz erlaubt wieder grössere Variabilität – selbst die Proportionen der Buchstaben können durch Verzerrung verändert werden.
Diesen Raumverhältnissen im kleinen Bereich stehen diejenigen im grösseren Bereich von bedruckten und unbedruckten Flächen gegenüber. In ihnen drückt sich die Beziehung der bedruckten Flächen zum Grundformat aus. Es gibt keine Beurteilung typografischer Arbeiten ohne die Berücksichtigung von »Positiv« und »Negativ«. Dies gilt auch für den
dreidimensionalen Raum.
In der Formenlehre wird die optische Relevanz der geometrischen Formen untersucht. Das Rechteck – das Quadrat ist eine spezifische Form des Rechtecks – bildet die Basis typografischer Gestaltung. Die Vertikal-Horizontal-Richtung ist dominierend, die Diagonale sekundär. Jede Gestaltungsarbeit löst Beziehungen der Teilformen untereinander sowie der Teilformen zur Grundform (dem Papierformat in diesem Fall) aus.
Ein weiterer wesentlicher Punkt ist die Entscheidung Symmetrie oder Asymmetrie. Symmetrie (auch in ihren neuesten Formen) ist grundsätzlich statisch, starr, traditionell. Gleichgewichtigkeit bei gleichzeitig dynamischer Form wird in der Asymmetrie erreicht.
Typografie zwischen Symmetrie und Asymmetrie
Hochuli 1990
Symmetrie, Asymmetrie und Kinetik
Geöffnet, ist das Buch von spiegelsymmetrischer Gestalt. Seine Achse ist der Bund, um den die Seiten gewendet werden. Jede, auch asymmetrisch angelegte Typografie, hat deshalb stets auf die dem Gebrauchsgegenstand Buch innewohnende Symmetrie Rücksicht zu nehmen. Die Symmetrieachse des Bundes ist immer da; man kann sie zwar überspielen, aber nie negieren. Buchtypografie unterscheidet sich dadurch grundsätzlich von der Typografie von Einzelblättern wie Geschäftsdrucksachen, Plakate usw.
Die Symmetrieachse ist die eine wichtige Gegebenheit, auf die der Buchgestalter Rücksicht zu nehmen hat. Die zweite ist das dem Buch eigene kinetische Moment, der Bewegungsablauf, der beim Umblättern der Seiten entsteht.
In gestalterischer Hinsicht ist nicht die Einzelseite, sondern das durch die Symmetrieachse zur spiegelbildlichen Einheit zusammengefaßte Seitenpaar wichtig. Der Bewegungsablauf der nacheinander aufgeschlagenen Doppelseiten jedoch führt zum zwingenden Schluß, nicht diese Seitenpaare, sondern deren Gesamtheit als letzte typografische Einheit zu begreifen. (Diese ist allerdings erst ein Teil des Buches, zu dessen Gesamteindruck auch die Dicke – der Umfang – in bezug zu Seitengröße und -proportion, die Materialien und die buchbinderische Verarbeitung beitragen.)
Da die Abfolge der Seitenpaare die zeitliche Dimension einbezieht, ist die Aufgabe, die der Buchgestalter zu lösen hat, im weitesten Sinne ein Raum-Zeit-Problem.
Der Streit zwischen den Anhängern »symmetrischer« und jenen »asymmetrischer« Typografie, der in den zwanziger Jahren unseres Jahrhunderts durch die Neue Typografie entbrannte und während Jahrzehnten geführt worden ist, hat sich in den letzten Jahren gelegt. Nur sture Ideologen werden heute noch leugnen, dass sowohl die eine wie die andere Gestaltungsart ihre Vorzüge (und Nachteile) hat und dass sich je nach Buchtyp entweder die eine oder die andere besser eignet, oder die beste Lösung gar in einer Mischung beider Prinzipien zu finden ist.
Symmetrische Typografie pauschal und undifferenziert als Ausdruck antidemokratischer, hierarchischer Herrschaftsstrukturen zu diffamieren, ist Unsinn. Die bilaterale Symmetrie ist in Natur und Umwelt allgegenwärtig: im menschlichen Körper ist sie ebenso vorhanden wie im Tier- und Pflanzenreich und in der Mineralogie. Volkskunst und anonymes Handwerk haben sich ihrer schon immer bedient. Es stimmt zwar, dass sich profane und geistliche Hierarchien zu allen Zeiten gerne in axialsymmetrischen Gestaltformen dargestellt haben, und es ist ebenso richtig, dass wir in der Buchtypografie kaum je traditionelle Lösungen finden ohne mittelaxiale Anordnung der Titel. Der Umkehrschluss jedoch, der besagt, dass mittelaxiale Gestaltung an sich schon traditionell und Ausdruck hierarchischen Denkens sei, ist nicht wahr. Symmetrie als solche ist weltanschaulich wertfrei.
Überhaupt tut man gut daran, die Begriffe »symmetrisch« und »asymmetrisch« in der Typografie nicht allzu wörtlich zu nehmen. In sogenannten asymmetrischen Layouts stehen Satzspiegel und Paginas in aller Regel symmetrisch; in sogenannter symmetrischer Typografie sind Untertitel sehr oft seitlich gestellt, und Einzüge und Ausgangszeilen ergeben immer ein mehr oder weniger asymmetrisches Bild der Doppelseiten. Letztlich beziehen sich die beiden Begriffe nur auf die Anordnung von Haupt-, Abschnitts- und Kapiteltitel. Es sei denn, man verwende sie anstelle der Adjektive »traditionell« und »zeitgemäß«, welche beide dann freilich mehr besagen.
Funktion und Funktionalismus
In der Typografie setzt erst nach 1920 ein, konzentriert sich aber fast ausschließlich auf die Frage Symmetrie oder Asymmetrie? Asymmetrische Typografie wird oft als funktionalistisch bezeichnet. Dabei wird unterstellt, dass es sich um sinngemäß geordnete, übersichtliche und deshalb gut funktionierende Typografie handle. Allen gegenteiligen Behauptungen zum Trotz ist der Funktionalismus letzten Endes nicht mehr als ein Stil, und oft verhält er sich zur Funktion wie der Klassizismus zur Klassik: er tut nur so als ob. Asymmetrische Typografie kann gut funktionieren, sie muss es durchaus nicht, nur weil sie asymmetrisch ist.
Beispiel: Ein zweisprachiges Sachbuch über Typografie, das nicht angeschaut, sondern gelesen sein will; fast quadratisch, 278×295 mm; auf
schweres, augenfeindlich ultraweißes, mattgestrichenes Papier gedruckt; bei 256 Seiten 1,95 kg schwer; asymmetrische Typografie, größere Textmengen in schmalen Spalten, Flattersatz, konsequente Kleinschreibung;
viel weißer Raum und viele Abbildungen, die lediglich zu informieren haben, also keinen Eigenwert besitzen und deshalb fast durchwegs auch kleiner hätten reproduziert werden können. Funktionalistisch? Ja. Funktionell, d. h. die Funktion bestmöglich erfüllend, bequem lesbar? Nein.
Grid and Design Philosophy
The use of the
grid as an ordering system is the expression of a certain mental attitude in as much as it shows that the designer conceives his work in terms that are constructive and oriented to the future. This is the expression of a professional ethos: the designer‘s work should have the clearly intelligible, objective, functional and aesthetic quality of mathematical thinking.
His work should thus be a contribution to general culture and itself form part of it.
Constructive design which is capable of analysis and reproduction can influence and enhance the taste of a society and the way it conceives forms and colours. Design which is objective, committed to the common weal, well composed and refined constitutes the basis of democratic behaviour.
Constructivist design means the conversion of design laws into practical solutions.
Work done systematically and in accordance with strict formal principles makes those demands for directness, intelligibility and the integration of all factors which are also vital in sociopolitical life. Working with the grid system means submitting to laws of universal validity.
The use of the grid system implies:
the will to systematize, to clarify
the will to penetrate to the essentials, to concentrate
the will to cultivate objectivity instead of subjectivity
the will to rationalize the creative and technical production processes
the will to integrate elements of colour, form and material
the will to
achieve architectural dominion over surface and space
the will to adopt a positive, forward-looking attitude
the recognition of the importance of education and the effect of work devised in a constructive and creative spirit.
Every visual creative work is a manifestation of the character of the designer. It is a reflection of his knowledge, his ability, and his mentality.
The typographic grid
The grid
divides a two-dimensional plane into smaller fields or a three-dimensional space into smaller compartments. The fields or compartments may be the same or different in size. The fields correspond in depth to a specific number of lines of text and the width of the fields is identical with the width of the columns.
The depths and the widths are indicated in typographic measures, in points and Cicero. The fields are separated by an intermediate space so that on the one hand pictures do not touch each other and
legibility is thus preserved and on the other that captions can be placed below the illustrations.
The vertical distance between the fields is 1, 2, or more lines of text, the horizontal space depending on the size of the type character and of the illustrations. By means of this division into grid fields the elements of design, viz. typography, photography, illustration and colour, can be disposed in a better way. These elements are adjusted to the size of the grid fields and fitted precisely into the size of the fields. The smallest illustration corresponds to the smallest grid field. The grid for a 1/1 page comprises a smaller or larger number of such grid fields. All illustrations, photographs, statistics etc. have the size of 1, 2, 3 or 4 grid fields.
In this way a certain uniformity is attained in the presentation of visual information.
The grid determines the constant dimensions of space.
There is virtually no limit to the number of grid divisions. It may be said in general that every piece of work must be studied very carefully so as to arrive at the specific grid network corresponding to its requirements.
The rule: The fewer the differences in the size of the illustrations, the quieter the impression created by the design. As a controlling system the grid makes it easier to give the surface or space a rational organization. Such a system of arrangement compels the designer to be honest in his use of design resources. It requires him to come to terms with the problem in hand and to analyse it. It fosters analytical thinking and gives the solution of the problem a logical and material basis. If the text and pictures are arranged systematically, the priorities stand out more clearly.
A suitable grid in visual design makes it easier
a) to construct the argument objectively with the means of visual communication
b) to construct the text and illustrative material systematically and logically
c) to organize the text and illustrations in a compact arrangement with its own rhythm
d) to put together the visual material so that it is readily intelligible and structured with a high degree of tension.
There are various reasons for using the grid as an aid in the organization of text and illustration:
economic reasons: a problem can be solved in less time and al lower cost.
rational reasons: both simple and complex problems can be solved in a uniform and characteristic style.
mental attitude: the systematic presentation of facts, of sequences of events, and of solutions to problems should, for social and educational reasons, be a constructive contribution to the cultural state of society and an expression of our sense of responsibility.
What is the purpose of the grid?
The grid is used by the typographer, graphic designer, photographer and exhibition designer for solving visual problems in
two and three dimensions. The graphic designer and typographer use it for designing press advertisements, brochures, catalogues, books, periodicals etc., and the exhibition designer for conceiving his plan for exhibitions and show-window displays.
By arranging the surfaces and spaces in the form of a grid the designer is favourably placed to dispose his texts, photographs and diagrams in conformity with objective and functional criteria. The pictorial elements are reduced to a few formats of the same size. The size of the pictures is determined according to their importance for the subject.
The reduction of the number of visual elements used and their incorporation in a grid system creates a sense of compact planning, intelligibility and clarity, and suggests
orderliness of design. This orderliness lends added credibility to the information and induces confidence.
Information presented with clear and logically set out titles, subtitles, texts, illustrations and captions will not only be
read more quickly and easily but the information will also be better understood and retained in the memory. This is a scientifically proved fact and the designer should bear it constantly in mind.
The grid can be successfully used for the corporate identities of firms. This includes all visual media of information from the visiting card to the exhibition stand: all printed forms for internal and external use, advertising matter, vehicles for goods and passenger transport, name-plates and lettering on buildings, etc.
When designing with grids, the results are often quite predictable. Of course, designers can define the grid and therefore can use it as an individual tool to generate layouts. Depending on the subtlety of a grid, layout options can be fairly diverse. But, because of the possibilities and the complexity opened up by ever finer grids, it becomes more and more difficult to use them. This contradicts the original purpose of a grid: Reducing the number of options and thus improving the efficiency of a layout for a large number of pages. The designer has to weigh simplicity against detail. What would a grid look like that is not overly complex and still leads to more organic and diverse-looking layouts? Instead of static lines defined by coordinates, it could consist of moving elements that, even if they have their origin at a particular coordinate, move between positions and over time. Using such a grid for layouts, the probability is small that its lines are at the same spot at different points in time. The grid has become more unpredictable.
Standardised tools in graphic software, such as the grid, can only be changed within the narrow scope of a few predefined settings.
Working without Grids
Lorenz 2021
Even if you want to work without grids, you still need visual systems. Grids are one of the most helpful inventions since communication designers had to design more than one deliverable. By limiting the options where to place text or images and in which size, so much time has been saved. Apart from being an
efficient design tool, they also establish a comprehensible order that makes reading easier. Having said that, you are not obliged to use them.
A visual system is nothing else than a set of rules, an instruction manual for humans and/or machines. By inventing rules, similar to the ones on the left, you can design processes that lead to distinctive visual identities. The instructions you are giving are actually code that can be executed by humans (usually slowly) or by machines (usually more quickly). When you let these rules be executed by machines instead of humans, you gain a lot of new possibilities. Not just that your design can become more complex, you can instruct any machine that is manageable with code. Even a remote-controlled spray can installation
1, drone, or car can be used to visualize the applications of your system.
But not everything programmable needs to be executed by machines. The imperfection coming from humans can create interesting details a machine would avoid.
Suprematism, Constructivism, and De Stijl would have been extremely boring if not painted by humans but printed by machines. Executing programs by humans also have a collaborative dynamic that can add interesting interpretations within the parameters of the rules
2.
We see and remember only the things that make sense to us. Based on our experience some things appear to be comprehensible and some don’t. Not everything that is logical to us is logical to someone else, because the other person has different experiences in life. The more people with different backgrounds we want to reach, the more universal the language we use has to be. Maths and physics are such
universal languages. If you show a person from the other side of the world an animation using physics, this person will intuitively understand it because they’ve lived with the same physics on the same earth.
Which advantages does using a grid have?
While you do not need a grid, this book is full of them because grids make it easier to determine the positions and sizes of the assets. Just as the assets can react to formats, grids can also adapt to different formats by repeating or distorting its modules. Designing with grids has several advantages:
1. Structure
Grids create a comprehensible visual structure that can help to distinguish different information types from each other. For example,
three columns can be used for three different languages or the top row can always be used for headings.
2. Aesthetics
Grids can create the feeling of order and harmony, but also of dynamism. Through the interaction between positive and negative spaces or the irregular and regular placement of elements tension can be built up.
3. Efficiency
At first glance, grids look like more work for the designer. In fact, they save us a lot of work. By reducing the options for positioning assets, the number of decisions to be made when designing is also reduced. If, in addition to the grid, you have found a system for distributing the various types of information, you only have to make a manageable number of design decisions on each page. With a book of 48 pages or more, you will quickly see how much time this saves you.
4. Harmony
After a number of pages you will also see that the design decisions influenced by the grid make the book a harmonious whole, even if each page looks different you will always notice the underlying logic.
5. Identification
In the context of this book the possibility of creating a
recognizable visual language with grids is very interesting. If the grid, and/or the system on how to apply the assets on the grid, is distinctive it serves as an identifiable design element.
6. Instructions/Design Manual
The description of how something is designed is often disregarded as a non-essential part of the design process. I consider it as one of the most important phases. If a system is easy to understand and apply it will most likely be used for a long time. If a system is highly complex and there is a human applying it, it will most likely be wrongly interpreted.
A grid helps to visualize rules. Everybody understands what it means to divide the width of the format by ten and use a tenth of the format as a space around an object […]. The modules resulting from the division of the format help to define position and size of objects and spaces and the best thing about them, they are scalable and adapt to the size of the format.
At the risk of mentioning the obvious, I would like to point out that there is a difference between graphic and typographic grids and that these must be coordinated with each other. While typographic grids need space in between columns and rows, also called gutter, graphic grids can work perfectly without the gutter. In fact, they are easier to manage and calculate without the gutter. When working with graphic-heavy visual systems I usually start with a graphic grid and place a typographic grid inside the sections which have text. If I am working on a book or any other text-heavy application I start with the typographic grid and place the graphic grid inside of the modules of the typographic grid. Another option would be to place a format-spanning typographic grid on top of a graphic grid, but to this date design software does not make this easy.
How to create a grid with different geometric forms?
Reset
Forget about the software you are working with and the possibilities they offer you at the moment, and you will see that you are very limited and that there are countless other ways to develop grids. You only need to look at centuries old Islamic patterns. These seemingly complex patterns are based on simple grids based on different geometric shapes and their intelligent use. Even the much simpler posters for Musica Viva by Josef Müller-Brockmann, designed on a grid rotated by 45 degrees, look very innovative for a today’s designer adapted to today’s software. Not to mention Müller-Brockmann’s circular grids. All of these are quite complicated to realize with today’s software.
Starting Points
Begin your experiments with alternative grid systems with a geometric shape that is not the rectangle. For example, take a triangle or hexagon and put them together. Use the resulting characteristics to design shapes and patterns, but also to design or arrange fonts.
Adaptation
Today’s software favors the grid based on horizontal and vertical guidelines. Adapting the grid based on other shapes is complicated. This is why in this book I have worked with triangles, pentagons, and hexagons that fit into a rectangular grid.
How to use grids?
There are different ways to use a grid. You can generate shapes by filling modules or their outline. You can also use the module or outline to align text or graphics. The more unusual the grid and its use is the better it serves as a distinctive visual identity. These couple of options give you already sheer unlimited possibilities. You can repeat the modules and use them to create larger patterns, lines, frames, or labels, depending on the need of each deliverable. Adjusting the complexity of the grid needs to be dependent on content and scale of the deliverable. Simple solutions are better suited for small applications. The larger the format, the more complex you can get.
We think of color as decorative, what philosophers call a secondary quality, as opposed to the qualities of form and matter, that exhaust the essence of a thing. Colors are given to bodies, but they do not posses bodies. A chair is a chair, red or green. […] Bodies of colors. Kandinsky made this bodies dance to music, freed colors from the hold of forms. He gave value to color’s plastic, »floating«, variable existence. Likewise, for Greiman, it is the very variable existence of color that gives color power. »From the Center: Design Process at SCI-Arc«, a book that includes texts and images of faculty work at the progressive architectural school, is a showcase of what colors can do other than just color. White, the background, passive meld against which words and images receive form, here pets her equal share.
No longer just a neutral surface upon which the writing is inscribed, or images put, she is rather a physical force, a body that responds to other bodies in an environment.
White hugs, and curves around images. It provides a scaffolding for texts. Sometimes white jumps into the spotlight. It becomes the color of text, against a black background, like chalk on an old-fashioned-blackboard (SCI-Arc is, after all, a school). All the colors in this book serve outrageous purposes. They become nesting places for texts, virtual breeding grounds. Orange becomes the medium for the articulation of a line drawing. Colors collide, express tensions, extend the significance of images. They can give porosity to the text, or enclose a text in a kind of organic wrapper.
Aside from the play of colors, the question Greiman poses for herself with »From the Center: Design Process at ScI-Arc« is: can a page approximate the nature of the
three-dimensional world? Can a page approach
architecture? The answer to this question appears in her radical treatment of texts. Already, from the »19th Amendment Commemorative Postage Stamp« project on, it is hard to keep Greiman’s typefaces in place. They seem to posses a kind of eagerness to play multiple roles, to dance, to be part of, as well as so much signage pointing to the action. But with »From the Center: Design Process at SCI-Arc« texts respond, form a kind of intimate circuit with the images. Sometimes they copy, sometimes they hollow out in precisely the shape of the architectural image they refer to. Sometimes they seem to simply generate from out of themselves their own structure giving a whole new sense to a »column« of text. All in all, there seems to be an exchange of information between color, text, and image. The same way, for instance, a bee and a flower form an empathic circuit.
How can we allow a door through which the observer might pass into the field, not just mentally but sensually, physically? How do we create an environment in, for, play?
About Intuitive Design with David Carson
Blackwell & Carson 1995
Lewis Blackwell: You’re redesigning the magazine. Ray Gun: tell me about it…
David Carson: The problem is I haven’t worked it through right now. It’s turning out to be a bit of a challenge because there’s no… you know. […]
LB: Well, there’s nothing to redesign: is that it? It redesigns itself every month?
DC: Something like that. In a sense I feel it does, but in another sense it doesn’t: there is a certain predictability to its unpredictability, I realize that. I feel it’s time to change because there are too many magazines trying similar things. It will go simpler in some way… the obvious thing would be to give it a format and everything, go in completely the opposite direction. Like Neville [Brody] did with Arena, after The Face. But that would be too simple, boring, and completely counter to the design philosophy of Ray Gun. In fact, I think that was one of your earlier questions »If you redesign the magazine, wouldn’t you lose some of the whole approach?«: to some degree, it would. […]
DC: Just because something is legible doesn’t mean it communicates; it could be communicating completely the wrong thing. Some traditional book titles, encyclopedias, or many books that young people wouldn‘t want to pick up, could be made more appealing. It is mostly a problem of publications sending the wrong message or not a strong enough message. You may be legible, but what is the emotion contained in the message? That is important to me. […]
LB: You are trying to bring into the communication something that is in you, something you care about. It is more like the approach you might get from an artist; it is not a straight response to the job. That suggests you are breaking with ideas of design being some kind of almost scientific process, and instead makes it a little mystical. So what are you bringing in?
DC: It is a very personal, interpretative approach. That makes the end product more interesting—there is no other way you could arrive at it, there are no formal rules you could bring to something I work on and end up with the same solution. This way I think you end up at a more interesting and a more valid point. I am using my intuition, trying to express things I am reading in the way that makes the most sense to me. It is an important distinction to make that I am not trying to find »what it is they want«. […]
LB: This idea of uncertainty, of questioning, of having a free-from nature in which what is done one time would not be necessarily how you approach the problem a second time, seems to me to relate to ideas current across a whole range of areas—the arts, social sciences and sciences—where we have increasingly questioned just about everything we could imagine questioning. The challenge is almost to find the next question: we no longer have faith in finding answers. In other words, we don’t expect finite, neat packages, and this impacts on how design can be viewed.
However, the great majority of communication design does not move with this vision of the Zeitgeist. Instead, graphic design has been working to various historically-linked sets of fixed rules; in particular, we still feel the effect of the
1950s Swiss school which became the 1960s International Style, and its rationalist approach still pervades much of what we see (every airport in the world that I’ve been to, for example). This reductive approach has been pushed to the point at which all over the world rule books enshrine what type in what sizes should be used in any given situation faced by corporate life.
DC: You seem to be on to something there. I believe the next approach, or rules of graphic design will come from outside the field itself. Maybe at some subconscious level things are done to upset somebody—part of me continues to see no valid reason for many of the accepted rules of design. Perhaps that is why I have not bought into many of the accepted rules. We have the potential of an incredibly creative discipline with interesting people, all this freedom and intriguing experiments possible, and yet newspapers, books and magazines have in some ways remained unchanged for nearly a hundred years, with such things as columns, titles, funny sub-titles and the author’s name. Now the computer gives you the width between columns automatically to a measurement some unknown technician has set up for you.
There is all that systemization. On top of that, or with that, it’s so odd that a field that prides itself on its creativity and avantgarde possibilities has an establishment that violently opposes upsetting these rules: instead blindly accepts them.
LB: Perhaps your reaction is a result of not going through the orthodox design schooling. Instead of a four-year course after high school, it wasn’t until later you became interested in the area. You did something else first, studying sociology and then teaching, finally doing some short design courses that gave you a grounding in some of the techniques. But you didn‘t learn the rules at a young impressionable age, so it’s no big thing to start breaking them. Do you think your training gave you something else that was more useful?
DC: If I’d had four years of design school I really don’t think I would be doing what I am doing now. I’m not anti-school, but when I became interested in design I really didn’t know what those rules were and so I just became fascinated by exploring the look and feel of the subject. I became somewhat obsessed, with a bit of a tunnel-vision that has cost me a relationship and even my health from time to time. I lack knowledge of some of the preconceived rules: you are supposed to need to know the rules to break them, but I didn’t; I apparently do break them, and I do it by working from a different starting point altogether.
I set out to do things in an emotional way. When I turn to a page in a book, to a magazine, to any graphic design, I want an emotional reaction. That’s probably the basis for how I judge it. I want to be taken aback, have my breath taken away by what I see. I then explore this and try to find something more. That’s what is in the pieces I like best. Whether I’m judging at a design show or looking out of the window, it is the same kind of thing, it is the same thing you need to start. […]
LB: […] What’s separate in design from the technical ability of being able to use a computer loaded with design programs, or simply being able to draw?
DC: A tricky one. I can do a nice, conventional brochure, it can be fine, but I would be bored with it. I can do the beautiful easy-to-read brochure, but I wouldn’t be very interested in that. Life’s too short. I have to do something that interests me. There’s an underlying life belief that comes through in the work: it’s why I enjoy traveling to give talks, even though people often don’t pay anything. It’s about life experiences, about personal growth. It’s not my job to do something new every time, it is just what I want to do.
My big training was on Transworld Skateboarding magazine: 200 pages full-color every month, and I had this personal thing that told me that if I was going to get something out of it, grow in myself, then I couldn’t repeat myself. I always had to do something different, I never used the same approach for any two openers. I think this curiosity is a piece of the whole puzzle of why I do what I do. […]
LB: […] We do seem to have some debate here about the politics, or the philosophy perhaps, behind the »look« of a designer’s work. I think that if you look at many of the design movements, be it
Bauhaus or Swiss graphics, then so often we have had a heavy order being projected in design theory, a sense of rigorous control. This is not apparent in your work. So what values are you projecting?
DC:
Doing things in some constant, orderly way seems to me horribly irrational: if it was rational once it certainly isn’t today. Bruno Monguzzi [Italian-Swiss designer] was saying this the other night. He was pointing out that the supposed rationalism of these grids and other formatting, just flowing stuff into this fixed structure, is not at all rational really given the world we live in. Saul Bass told me a funny story of how he was always suspicious of grids and in his early days he would invent the grid after he had done the design in order to help sell it to the client. And Kathy McCoy [former graphics head of the Cranbrook school] said that perhaps the things we read that we remember most are the things we spend more time with.
In both of those remarks I see indicators of what I am trying to do.
LB: […] Why do you think there is a tendency to what has been described as
»deconstruction« graphics? What’s going on—is this the Zeitgeist from where you are standing?
DC: The first time I came across deconstruction was when I read the word in a piece about my work. I’ve been doing magazines for ten years, there’s been an environment of experimentation for me in that period, and I suppose various schools also experienced this at some points. The changing technology is relevant to a point. Actually people make these comparisons sometimes with Ray Gun, where I feel the work I do is actually very dissimilar, with different concerns, in a different category to the work that came out of those schools, you look at the opening spreads of articles in Ray Gun, and to an extent Beach Culture, the work has become much more personal, not something that you can teach. Sometimes it is too personal. The focus of my work has become quite dissimilar in theory and practice to those schools. Perhaps some of the small regular sections of Ray Gun, which are often done by an intern, the content is not explored as much and there is more of a style work: when you do that there is a lot of similar formal experimentation. You see similarities with techniques and fonts then, but that is not the guts of the magazine.
LB: But what you all have in common is that you work in the same period of time with similar new technology. And you are all exploring the fact that this mass media culture we are in now is a very different one from that of 20 years ago, now we have so much more television, computers doing all sorts of things with CD-Rom, Internet… we are aware that we are not dealing with the same linear presentation of information, which you get from a film or program or a book (not that people necessarily
read books that way). We have come to the awareness of the immense choice we have in all media, and the ways in which we browse, or graze, on this material. This appreciation of the very different way in which we take in information today, and how it is changing fast to something different tomorrow, this seems to be interacting with the way of transmitting the information. It determines the chopped-up, repeated styles of news broadcasts, the hot points on an Internet page—or perhaps the self-conscious
order and disorder in new graphics. Yes?
DC: Ralph Caplan, the design critic, said that I was »experimenting in public«, and that it was perhaps the most dangerous kind of work because of that. It was unlike the safety of being on a small graduate program where a small group of people and their instructor look at each other’s work and then it gets filed away. I’ve been doing it in a very public place; some of it works and some doesn’t, but it interacts with all the readers. So clearly the work hasn’t taken place in the same medium as these schools and that difference alone would suggest something quite different is at work.
I’m certainly not the only one who is realizing that the visual orientation of people is changing, that they are
reading less—and I don’t say that is good or bad, but as a designer you address that, CD-Roms, the Internet, the thousands of television stations: you interact with all this in a different way. There is a group of designers, in which I include myself, that has started to address this. But in my own case a little less directly; I think I have a way of working that doesn’t consciously come out of those issues, it is a more personal thing, but it addresses these concerns in passing.
Of course, I’m partly a product of these media anyway: I absorb the media. I have no other training, I just sit down and start doing these pages…
Format & Konzept
Printing Revolution
Johannes Gutenberg’s (c. 1397 - 1468) revolutionary printing method, first commercially exploited in the 1460s, had many political, economic and cultural implications. First of all, it helped to spread ideas and information faster and in greater quantity and, secondly, accelerated the production process, which in time made it more affordable to buy books.
Prior to this invention, spreading information was limited to handwritten texts and oral messages. The tise of the printing press changed the same for literature, politics, religion, science and many more.
Ideas became more easily accessible but at the same time more vulnerable to criticism. The art of printing enabled people to choose their own right from wrong, or even to develop and spread their own ideas around the world.
Replacement by the Codex
The Romans invented the codex form of the book, folding the scroll into pages which made
reading and handling the document much easier.
Legend has it that Julius Caesar was the first to fold scrolls, concertina-fashion, for dispatches to his forces campaigning in Gaul. Scrolls were awkward to read if a reader wished to consult material at opposite ends of the document. Also, only one side of a scroll was written on, while both sides of the codex page were used.
Eventually, the folds were cut into sheets, or »leaves«, and bound together along one edge. The bound pages were protected by stiff covers, usually of wood enclosed with leather. Codex is Latin for a »block of wood«: the Latin liber, the root of »library«, and the German Buch, the source of »book«, both refer to wood.
The codex was not only easier to handle than the scroll, but it also fit conveniently on library shelves. The spine generally held the book’s title, facing out, affording easier organization of the collection.
The term codex technically refers only to manuscript books—those that, at one time, were handwritten. More specifically, a codex is the term used primarily for a bound manuscript from Roman times up through the Middle Ages.
From the fourth century onwards, the codex became the standard format for books, and scrolls were no longer generally used. After the contents of a parchment scroll were copied in codex format, the scroll was seldom preserved. The majority of those that did survive were found by archaeologists in burial pits and in the buried trash of forgotten communities.
Designing Books
Wozencroft 1988
From a design point of view, books are primarily about establishing a clear typographic system. Book design is of course a very different proposition to working on magazines, which have a different structure and a much stronger bias towards the use of images. Except in such cases as the Re-Search publications and similar music books where publishers have tried to marry the two media, photographs are sometimes used in books to provide »breathing spaces« within the text, whereas in magazines they generally carry a lot more editorial momentum.
The design is largely a matter of pure common sense. The grid must be well proportioned on the page, with adequate inner and outer margins. You must find out in advance how the book is to be bound, so that you know whether its pages will open easily or whether you must exaggerate the margin away from the spine. Each book’s character is largely developed out of detailing, such as the placing of headings and the choice of typeface. The jacket or cover is either the first or the last thing you do, and should signal the design and content as a whole.
It is important to remember that as a designer you are working not only with a different temporal requirement, but, in most cases, a more deliberate and personal kind of expression. With this in mind, the design has to strike the right balance between passivity and intrusion. In the case of magazines that are around for a limited period, the design of an article or feature must immediately
encourage the reader to read it. You can never take it for granted that this will happen. With books, you can, or at least you should be able to. Book design must support the act of reading its printed pages, which naturally demands more time than it takes to get through a double-page spread in a magazine.
Space is as important a factor in a book as it is anywhere else. The design must be finely weighted so that the type has an impressive overall appearance, but not so much that it encourages the reader to stare at the page at the expense of the words themselves. If you are going to choose a typeface other than a sympathetic book fount like Garamond, Times, or Bodoni Book, then you must be sure that the content supports such a deviation. The subject matter might be so indistinct that it helps to produce a more expressive element—a typeface such as Corvinus or Rockwell, for example. As usual, you work to the given task, not to the given norm.
There is another side to book design which does not usually arise in magazine work—the choice of paper stock. The
texture of the paper should support the book’s literary style and the typeface(s) chosen for it. For example, it would be no use selecting Bodoni, with its very fine serifs, if you planned to print on a rough matt surface—unless, of course, you actually intended the type to break up. Once again, if you are going to opt for a more distinctive design, you have to consider the book’s potential lifespan. With any design, a good question to ask yourself is »What will it look like in five years time?«
I must say that I much prefer doing a cover to designing an entire book. Who wouldn’t? Designing a 200-page book involves a great amount of work for what is usually a small return. Some publishers are their own worst enemies—although it is important to »never judge a book by its cover«, the opposite most often applies now. The inside design is still somehow taken for granted, as if the writer had already designed the page. When the designer’s function is encouraged as a profession, not unlike that a doctor or a solicitor, it becomes a service industry that keeps it apart from the creative process.
The future of the book as a means of communication is itself in the balance. Perhaps it has already been lost to the more »democratic« emotions of popular music. More and more information, once the domain of books, is being transferred to computer disc and microfilm. You cannot browse through data banks.
Inhalt und Gestaltung im Buchraum
Pamminger 2018
Ergibt es Sinn, über ein altbewahrtes Medium gestalterisch neu nachzudenken? Kann und soll es
zeitgenössisch gestaltete Bücher geben? Wie kann aus einem Buch wieder etwas Fremdes und Unvertrautes werden?
Anhand solcher Problemstellungen begann ich vor fünfundzwanzig Jahren mit etwas, das ich heute »konzeptionelles Buchgestalten« nenne. Darunter verstehe ich zunächst einmal den Versuch, Strukturen des Inhalts im weitesten Sinne mit der spezifischen Struktur des Buches in Einklang und intensiven Dialog zu bringen – ausschließlich mit grafischen Mitteln und dabei die Potenziale des Mediums zu erweitern. Unter Inhalt verstehe ich den Datenbestand, den der Auftraggeber zur Verfügung stellt – den ich als gestalterisch vorgeformt, vielfältig strukturiert, kontextabhängig und damit: instabil ansehe.
Der Ausdruck »konzeptionelles Buchgestalten« lässt an »concept art« denken. Die berühmte Definition der »concept art« Sol LeWitts paraphrasierend, meine ich: Im »konzeptionellen Buchgestalten« ist die »Idee« der entscheidende Aspekt. Dies impliziert, dass entsprechende Pläne und Entscheidungen bereits bestehen, bevor die gestalterische Ausführung, im Sinne einer souveränen, handwerklich professionellen Umsetzung, erfolgt. Das leitende Konzept, die Idee, liefert den Grundriss und fungiert als die »Maschine«, welche die eigentliche Gestalt produziert.
Die Idee soll dabei kein Selbstzweck sein. Es geht darum, bedeutsamen Strukturen eines Inhalts, ob sie zutage liegen oder nicht, gestalterisch Ausdruck zu geben. Daher gibt es zwischen »concept art« und meinem »concept design« auch große Unterschiede: Ohne genuin künstlerische Ambition leitet mich ein spezifisches Erkenntnisinteresse, das die spätere Umsetzung bestimmt; darüber hinaus ist mir ein Datenbestand vorgegeben, der angemessen repräsentiert werden muss.
Da meine Arbeitsweise eine intensive Auseinandersetzung mit dem jeweiligen Thema und seinen medialen Gegebenheiten voraussetzt, geht mein Werk in viele verschiedene Richtungen. Um es zu umreißen, erscheint es mir fruchtbar, einige grundlegende, kategorische Unterscheidungen zu treffen: Buchgestaltung bzw. das Layout beruhen demnach auf zwei unhintergehbaren, einander ergänzenden Praktiken, nämlich der »Modulation« und der »Konfiguration«. Diese lassen sich zwar theoretisch als Pole einander gegenüberstellen, sind aber in jedem Zeichen in unterschiedlicher Gewichtung präsent.
Die gängigen gestalterischen Problemstellungen gehen vom Pol der Modulation aus: Dazu zählen etwa Wahl der Schrift, der Proportionen oder die
Spezifikation des Papiers. Grundsätzlich sind diese Aufgaben mehr oder weniger gut lösbar, da sie letztendlich auf einer Selektion beruhen. Konfiguration bedeutet ein gegenseitiges räumliches Bezogensein unterschiedlicher Teile aufeinander. In unserem speziellen grafischen Zusammenhang handelt es sich dabei in erster Linie um signifikante Relationen: um das Zusammenspiel von Textkomponenten, Abbildungen und/oder ihrem papierenen Trägerfeld.
Für konventionelle gestalterische Ansätze stellt auch diese Kategorie keine große Problemlage dar, da man dabei auf historisch gewachsene, bewährte und ausdifferenzierte Konfigurationen zurückgreifen kann, die als Typologien bezeichnet werden können. Dieses Repertoire an erprobten Typen ist bereits durch Fachliteratur und einschlägige Ausbildungswege kanonisiert, und so stehen diese in Form ausdifferenzierter grafischer Anordnungen zur Verfügung: »Das Lexikon, der Ausstellungskatalog, das Sachbuch, die Prosa …« Auch meine Grafiker und ich bedienen uns partiell dieser entwickelten Kultur. Sie liefert dem Anwender ein vielfältiges Inventar an Möglichkeiten der Selektion, Aufbereitung und Variation.
Bisweilen gibt es jedoch Aufgabenstellungen, denen mit gängigen Typologien nicht beizukommen ist. Oder es kann passieren, dass man auch bei scheinbar einfachen Aufgaben Probleme entdeckt, denen man mit typologischen Lösungen nicht gerecht werden kann. Genau hier setzt mein Interesse ein, mit konfigurierenden Gestaltungskonzepten neuartige Ideen zu entwickeln, aus denen zwangsläufig individuelle Problemlösungen resultieren. Mein buchgestalterischer Part liegt daher primär in der Entwicklung eines räumlich-gestalterischen Konzepts, das – im Voraus, mit zeichnerischen Entwürfen und Texten – in eine »konzeptuelle Maschine« mündet. Diese gilt es dann, gemäß der entwickelten Topografie, in enger Zusammenarbeit mit Grafikdesignern meiner Wahl zu realisieren – wobei die Initiative zur Zusammenarbeit natürlich von beiden Seiten ausgehen kann.
Woraus lassen sich nun grafische Konfigurationen herleiten, wenn man nicht auf gängige Typologien bauen kann oder will? Zur Veranschaulichung meiner Praxis nehme ich Anleihen aus der
Architekturtheorie. Dort wird dem »Typus«, der konventionalisierten Lösung, der »Topos« als Quelle der Form gegenübergestellt. Der griechische Ausdruck »Topos« meint Ort, kann aber in einem weiteren Sinne auch Raum bedeuten, sodass sich sowohl Assoziationen zur konfigurierenden Anordnung wie zum individuellen räumlichen Kontext ergeben. Der »Typus« hingegen entspricht den oben geschilderten Typologien. Oder mit den Worten des Architekturtheoretikers Tomás Valena: »Der Typus tendiert zum Optimalen, Idealen, Allgemeingültigen.« »Wenn Typus das Allgemeine bedeutet, dann bedeutet Topos das Individuelle, das Besondere und Einmalige.« »Die kontextuellen Besonderheiten sind nur am jeweiligen Ort gültig und relevant. Tendiert der Typus zum Idealen, so konfrontiert uns der Topos mit der Realität.«
Im Buch können beide Aspekte nebeneinander bestehen oder ineinander übergehen. Für eine topos-orientierte Herangehensweise stehen zunächst die konkreten Bedingungen des Inhalts im Vordergrund: Damit meine ich die dem Zeichenbestand immanenten räumlichen oder zeitlichen Strukturen – die auch verborgen sein können und sich insbesondere auf semantischer Ebene finden, wie das Sujet, seine Kontexte und medialen Ausgangssituationen, je nachdem, ob es sich um Film, Ausstellung, Text oder etwas ganz anderes handelt. Darüber hinaus können aber auch die Bedingungen der Buchproduktion generell fokussiert werden: Beispielsweise bedeutet dies die Hinterfragung der Übertragungswege von Abbildungen und Texten. Meine Auseinandersetzung zielt von Anbeginn an darauf, den vielfältigen Voraussetzungen, Gehalten und Bedingungen des jeweiligen Projektes Rechnung zu tragen.
Dies hat zur Folge, dass jedes Projekt von Grund auf neu überdacht und singuläre Lösungen gefunden werden müssen, ohne ein abstraktes, vorgefertigtes Raster in Anschlag zu bringen. Die Konfigurationen von Text, Bild und Buchkörper werden unter Berücksichtigung des Inhalts immer wieder neu bestimmt, sodass jedem Titel eine eigene, unverwechselbare topografische Form zukommt.
Nicht selten führt die Konfiguration zu einer Entlastung der typografischen Codierung, indem sie semantische Gehalte auf das Feld der Topografie verschiebt.
Dies lenkt den Blick auch auf die Tatsache, dass der Datenbestand, der dem Gestalter zur Verfügung gestellt wird, immer bereits gestaltet ist. Im Zuge der Manuskripterstellung werden von den Autoren oder Herausgebern durch Aneinanderreihungen, Konjunktionen oder Konstellationen konfigurierende Entscheidungen getroffen – so selbstverständlich und typenkonform sie auch erscheinen mögen. Diese Arbeit wird nicht von Grafikern geleistet. Daher wird man, theoretisch gesehen, den Begriff »grafische Gestaltung« ausdehnen müssen: auf eine Praxis, die nicht alleinig auf die sogenannte Berufsgruppe bezogen ist. Insofern ist die Konfiguration in zweifacher Hinsicht eine Zone des Dazwischen: Zum einen teilen sich diese Autoren, Herausgeber, Auftraggeber und die Gestalter; zum anderen stellt Konfiguration das Bindeglied zwischen Ausdrucksebene und Inhaltsebene dar. Ändert man beispielsweise die Konfiguration einer Textzeile – die Anordnung von Buchstaben oder Wörtern – so wird sich auch der Inhalt signifikant verändern. Modifiziert man hingegen die Modulation (innerhalb eines gewissen Rahmens), so wird die semantische Ebene davon weniger tangiert. Die Konfiguration jedoch konstituiert den Inhalt, der nicht bloß als Aufsummierung des Datenbestandes gedacht werden kann.
Grundsätzlich ergeben sich daraus u.a. folgende Problemstellungen: Wie lassen sich die relevanten Strukturen im erhaltenen Datenbestand identifizieren? Welche dieser Strukturen überträgt man, welche nicht? Wie lassen sich diese Strukturen übertragen? Lassen sich Korrespondenzen zwischen dem Buch, das als Trägerobjekt räumlich weitaus differenzierter geformt ist als Tafelbild oder Monitor, mit der Struktur des jeweiligen Inhalts herstellen? Wie kann man Inhalte von Medien, die völlig anders formatiert sind als das Buch – wie beispielsweise Filme, Bauwerke, Kunstwerke – darstellen? Kurzum: Wie kann man den inhaltlichen Strukturen, ob bekannt oder nicht, durch ihre Gestaltung im Buchraum Rechnung tragen? All diese Fragen setzen die Einsicht voraus, dass auch Bücher in ihrer selektiven und konstruktiven Kraft nicht »harmloser« als andere Medien sind. Dieses manipulatorische Potenzial gilt es zu erkennen, zu nutzen und im Rahmen der Gestaltung auch aufzuzeigen. Dabei darf nicht vergessen werden, dass Medien generell Inhalte einerseits unterschiedlich darstellen und verknüpfen, sie andererseits auch unterschiedlich unterbrechen und verdecken. Auch Buchgestalter sind immer mit Inhalten konfrontiert, die jeweils bereits medienspezifisch konfiguriert sind. Sie sollten in Anordnungen gebracht werden, die sich bloß mit den genuinen Mitteln des Buches erzielen lassen.
Für einen solchen Ansatz des Gestaltens ist es unabdingbar, den
medialen Raum des Buches als eine vielschichtige Voraussetzung zu begreifen. Es erscheint mir daher notwendig, diesen Raum aus vier verschiedenen Blickwinkeln zu beleuchten.
Ich habe ein kleines Zelluloidblatt gekauft. Es nannte sich Motivsucher. Ein rechteckiges Mittelfeld war mit dünnen schwarzen Linien in zweimal drei Quadrate unterteilt; darum eine schwarze Umrahmung. Dieses Hilfsmittel, wie simpel es auch sei, hat eine lange Geschichte in der bildenden Kunst. Ich kann das Blatt zwischen mich und die Welt halten, um ein mögliches Motiv einzugrenzen. Denn das menschliche Auge, das beweglich und unruhig ist, nimmt immer ein breiteres Blickfeld wahr.
Das Buch, das ich immer öfter sehe, gibt sich als Ausschnitt einer Welt aus, die sich über das Buch hinaus erstreckt; die Abbildung wird nicht, als isolierte und formal begrenzte Fläche, in die
Architektur der Seite aufgenommen. Oft sind Details oder Texte als Fenster auf ganzflächige Abbildungen oder Farbflächen gesetzt. Bei Stéphane Mallarmés Un coup de dés – übrigens ein rein typografisches Buch – bot die Doppelseite eine neue »landschaftliche« Erfahrung des Universums durch die Bedeutung des Gedichts hindurch. Doch das neue Buch wird eher wie jenes von Weiner sein: städtisch.
Ich denke, dass
das Buch von morgen kein »Lesebuch« im traditionellen Sinn mehr sein wird. Die Seite wird immer seltener eine architektonische Struktur aufweisen. Die Ränder – die im Grunde architektonische Elemente sind – werden allmählich ihre schützende und den Text strukturierende Bedeutung verlieren.
Die (Doppel-)Seite wird zunehmend als ein Ganzes aufgefasst werden, als ein Raum, in dem Text- und Bildelemente gleichsam appliziert werden. Um sie trotzdem auf eine bestimmte Weise zu artikulieren und formal zu begrenzen, wird man diese Elemente, wie vorhin erwähnt, mit frames oder »Rahmen« versehen.
Die einzelne Seite als Gebäude wird Platz machen für die Doppelseite als unbegrenzter Raum. Das Panorama-Buch – so könnte man es nennen – wird mit Details von Abbildungen oder Referenzabbildungen oder Textfragmenten gefüllt, jeweils ausgewählt und platziert vom Entwerfer.
Ich gebe die beiden Modelle – das architektonische und das Panoramabuch – sehr schematisch wieder. Es sind rhetorische Figuren. In der Praxis wird man sie miteinander oder nebeneinander anwenden, in einem Buch, das als eine Partitur gedacht ist. Ich selbst bin eher Architekt als Regisseur, doch das ist hier nicht so sehr von Bedeutung. Auch wenn ich davon träumen darf, Tempel zu bauen: Die Notwendigkeit von Flugplätzen und Bahnhöfen ist größer.
About Irma Boom’s Living Archive
Lommen 2022
Jan Tschichold’s Penguin paperbacks are design icons. In the late 1940s his strict composition rules set high standards for the book as a mass-produced product. Yet from printing’s earliest beginnings books did more than bring uniformity to the machine à lire. Fortunately there have always been printers, binders and later also designers who strove for innovation in type and typography, in the relation between image (including photography) and text, in the use of paper and in finish The Allard Pierson in Amsterdam book and graphic design collections document that evolution from Nicolas Jenson, Albert Magnus, Giambattista Bodoni and William Morris to El Lissitzky and Jurriaan Schrofer. That is what made the 2003 acquisition of Irma Boom’s [IB] »living archive« so relevant: she, too, explores new paths in the tradition.
Her design and editorial style emerge from her own individualistic ideas, which bind content and form inseparably. That makes her oeuvre unique.
IB studied at the architect in Enschede, in the eastern Netherlands. This Academy of Art & Design was founded in the late 1940s to provide design talent for the then flourishing local textile industry. It was a small, intimate school, with a progressive and autonomous character. IB originally wished to become a painter, but at the academy a love of book design quickly took root and grew. While attending the multi: day AKI FluxFest including performances and an exhibition, she came in direct contact with this movement, which continues to fascinate her. She graduated as a graphic designer, and on Jurriaan Schrofers advice she began work in 1985 at the Government Printing and Publishing Office (SDU) in The Hague.
Her first commissions, still as a trainee, were for the corporate identity of the Ministry of Welfare, Health and Cultural Affairs, designed by Walter Nikkels (1940). The collaboration with him inspired her, and in the early years of her career, one can certainly see Nikkel’s influence and that of other leading figures in graphic design. Soon, however, IB set off on her own tempestuous course. This is already clear in the annual reports she made for the Dutch Arts Council for the years 1987 and 1988. The Council gave her a free hand (who reads those brochures anyway?) and she made full use of that freedom. The reports show several design elements that were to appear repeatedly in her work. That of 1987, for example, in a Japanese binding—inspired by the art magazine Wendingen—shows a foredge in colour. Noteworthy in the report for 1988, in addition to its full-page colour compositions, is the wide range of sizes of type used fort continuous texts, set in extremely long lines and printed in three colours.
The publication that was to establish IB’s name was Nederlandse Postzegels 87 + 88 (1988), two volumes in an extensive series about postage stamp issues, with earlier volumes by Karel Martens, Wim Crouwel and Anthon Beeke. In these catalogues for the then state-owned PTT (now PostnI), IB demanded, and was given, plenty of space to go deeper into her chosen theme of »inspiration«. She worked intensively for three months on the research and design, much of it devoted to selecting and planning the illustrations. It became clear she would overrun her budget considerably, but the client agreed to go ahead with the project. All possibilities of Japanese binding were explored here; thus the inside of the transparent paper has also been printed. Incidentally, the volumes were not perfect bound—an option not available for larger runs at the time—but the two parts were stapled.
Images and text run across the fold, providing an extraordinary kinetic effect when leafing through the book.
Anyone could see that these postage stamp books paid no heed to the generally proper and respectable design of the earlier volumes, which had also been produced in a somewhat smaller format (IB still shows preference for broader book formats in her work today). The personal freedom of the designer, which up until then had been limited to trendy magazines, posters and covers, now manifested itself in a serious catalogue for collectors. The
rules of readability were provocatively violated: these post modern books tend towards
autonomous design, while their function as a reference work becomes secondary.
They reaped both praise and scorn.
»A brilliant failure«, reckoned the jury of the Best Dutch Book Designs. Only in the mid-1990s would ideas about the »designer as author« really pay off. The uproar didn’t deter the CPNB (Collective Propaganda for the Dutch Book), who turned to IB to design the catalogue The Best Book Designs 1989.
She presented a rock-solid plan. By using
paper that was glossy on one side and by trimming the margin slightly closer on every second leaf, she allowed the reader to flip through the leaves from front to back for the jury reports or from back to front for the full-colour glossy images of the selected works. At her request, the often blandly interchangeable jury reports for the awards were replaced with excerpts from the jury’s deliberations, providing insights into the selection process. For IB this catalogue remains one of her personal favourites.
After more than five years, she left her employer. Anthon Beeke had roused her to action and in 1991 she set up as an independent designer in Amsterdam’s Jordan quarter and began working on an Apple Macintosh. She deliberately limits the staff at her office to a minimum, with generally no more than two permanent employees.
In 2015, current and former interns and assistants described in an entertaining publication how challenging, demanding and educational they found working with her. The office has about fifteen book projects in various stages of completion going at any one time, along with many other commissions. From the outset most of the clients came from the cultural world, such as smaller art centers like De Appel (Amsterdam) and later the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, and international institutions like the Fondazione Prada in Milan and the Bard Graduate Center and the MOMA, both in NYC. She designed numerous catalogues for De Appel from 1990 to 2005. One of her finest publications for them is certainly the modest The Spine (no. 53): seven separate quires held together by the long threads of the sewing in the folds.
Since the late 1980s, making small scale models has been part of IB’s design process. As she works from outside to inside, the models are also useful in that respect. Of course these minis often are, comparatively, extremely thick, but is loves voluminous books. One of her bulkiest volumes to date is certainly the 1996 SHV Think Book, according to many her magnum opus. This huge commission came from entrepreneur Paul Fentener van Vlissingen (1941 - 2006). He was then CEO of the multinational company SHV, a trader and distributor in the fields of energy and consumer goods. She first designed a private publication on the occasion of Van Vlissingen’s fiftieth birthday in 1991. Soon afterwards, he gave her and art historian Johan Pijnappel the commission to mark the 100th anniversary of the family firm in 1996 with an »unusual« production.
Van Vlissingen offered them plenty of leeway as well as his full trust in their judgement. »For Irma and Johan,« he said in 2004, »it must have been an extraordinary commission, allowing them to devote not just a few weeks but a five years to a subject. What lies at the heart of the SHV? What happens there? How do people there interact? Where do they come from? Why are they active in the coal trade? Why are they active in the Makro wholesale stores? Where are decisions made? How does it relate to personal circumstances? They spoke to many people in the firm and after a while everyone knew who Irma and Johan were.« Three and a half years were spent on research before the actual design began. The format and extent of the book were already established at the beginning of the project. The monumental book appeared in May 1996: 2136 pages presenting a nonacademic history of the company in reverse chronological order by means of widely varying material, such as photos, reports, advertisements and other archival documents. IB and Pijnappel do not skirt around the painful departure of SHV Makro from South Africa in the mid-1980s, forced by a Dutch action group’s arson attacks, which brought SHV much negative publicity at the time. This is a book made for non-linear reading, for browsing, and page numbers are therefore deemed unnecessary. That
»digital« characteristic is strengthened by the rendering of the wide variety of images as if they were stills from a video. Lots of more or less hidden graphic treasures await discovery here. The title on the white linen cover, for example, becomes visible only after intensive use. Truly spectacular are the printed hidden foreedge images: fanned slightly in one direction the edge shows a field of tulips, in the other Gerrit Achterberg’s poem Bolero van Ravel. This exploration of the edge has become one of IB’s trademarks. In addition to the English edition, there is a Chinese edition bound in black linen.
The book never appeared on the market, but was distributed to a small circle of shareholders. (What would a fair trade price have been?) Although the private commission of art and design has a long tradition and by design, where IB is concerned. When Koolhaas signed copies of S, M, L, XL at an Amsterdam bookshop in December 1995, she stood among the many fans along the canal waiting for a signed copy. She also took one along for Van Vlissingen, and was somehow shocked that a book this size just got finished before theirs. A few years later, IB and Koolhaas began collaborating on projects. S, M, L, XL and the SHV book incidentally seem to have initiated a trend in hefty design monographs. Pentagram Book Five (1999) runs to almost 500 pages, Mau’s Life Style (2000) is over 600 pages, and Alan Fletcher’s The Art Of Looking Sideways (2001) is over 500 pages.
For the production of her books, IB prefers to work with a fixed group of innovative Dutch firms she can rely on. It allows her to guide and oversee the printing and binding at close range, which she considers essential. Unfortunately, the number of Dutch printing firms and book binderies has dramatically declined since the 2000s, a downhill spiral that continues to the present day. IB, however, doesn’t allow a concept of hers to be constrained by any technical issues.
Only by breaking through them, she believes, can the book medium retain its vitality. The only technical obstacle she has not yet managed to overcome is the thickness of a book. A mechanical book bindery can only manage up to eleven centimetres. She almost never considers hand finishing as an option: industrial production is used as a matter of principle. In her own words: »I don’t build villas, I build social housing.«
Zugang & Kuration
Massen an Büchern
Bose 2013
Ein Buch entsteht durch die feste Verbindung seiner Lagen, die wiederum ein Umschlag vor ihrer Auflösung schützt. Als visuelles und greifbares Erlebnis mag es ganz nach den Umständen, dem Licht, den Stimmungen, dem Geruch oder der
Weichheit des Papiers anders wahrgenommen werden, es bleibt dennoch ein gefügtes Ganzes. Bücher sind Gegenstände. Sie beanspruchen Raum. Ob eng nebeneinander im Regal stehend, ob auf dem Schreibtisch gestapelt, ob auf dem Boden aufgetürmt oder verstreut, ob achtlos liegengelassen oder kunstvoll drapiert. Sie lassen sich nicht »in der Luft verstecken«
3, sondern bleiben der Schwerkraft unterworfen. Sie stehen oder fallen, und es mag vorkommen, dass Regale unter ihrer Last zusammenbrechen. Obwohl man sie verschenken oder verlieren oder schließlich sogar wegwerfen und zerstören kann, solange man nicht ganz auf ihren Besitz verzichtet, werden sie eine Last sein. Bücher gibt es nur im Plural, ihr Erscheinen ist auf Vervielfachung angelegt.
4 Die Zahl der gegenwärtig etwa 90.000 Titel, die jährlich in Deutschland bibliographisch erfaßt werden, steht für nicht weniger als eine Milliarde tatsächlich gedruckter Exemplare.
Die Angst, die wachsende Zahl der Bücher könne ihren Lesern den Raum zum Leben nehmen, wie sie Wolfgang Menzel schon 1828 spürt, scheint abgeklungen. »So baut sich um uns die unermeßliche Büchermasse, die mit jedem Tage wächst, und wir erstaunen über das Ungeheure dieser Erscheinung, über das neue Wunder der Welt, die cyklopischen Mauern, die der Geist sich gründet. Nach einem mäßigen Überschlage werden jährlich in Deutschland zehn Millionen Bände neu gedruckt. […] Wohin wir uns wenden, erblicken wir Bücher und Leser. Auch die kleinste Stadt hat ihre Leseanstalt, der ärmste Honoratior seine Handbibliothek. Was wir auch in der einen Hand haben mögen, in der anderen haben wir gewiß immer ein Buch.«
5 Menzel, ein streitbarer Geist des deutschen Vormärz, hat es noch miterlebt, wie ein ganzes Volk in weniger als einem Jahrhundert vollständig alphabetisiert wird und
die Gesamtzahl der in deutscher Sprache verlegten Bücher sich nahezu verzehnfacht, von den 2.594 Titeln im Jahr 1800 auf 18.875 Titel im Jahr 1890 anwächst.
6 Zwischen 1911 und 1950, hat Hans Ferdinand Schulz Jo berechnet, erscheinen in Deutschland nicht weniger als insgesamt 854.394 Bücher, darunter sind 151.086 Titel [24,4 %] als Neuauflage bereits vorher veröffentlichter Bände.
7 Nach Sachgruppen differenziert, entfallen 18,3 % auf die Belletristik, 12,2 % der Bücher sind den Rechts- und Sozialwissenschaften, der Politik oder der Verwaltung zuzurechnen, 8,2 % der Religion und Theologie, 7,5 % sind Schulbücher.
8 Schulz Fleiß- und Zählarbeit findet keine Fortsetzung. Zahlen zur Buchproduktion in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts liegen nicht vor. Die von Menzel beschworenen Büchermassen sind mehr ein literarisches Phantasma als Realität. Tatsächlich war der Bücherbesitz äußerst gering. Einen Markt für Bücher gab es in Deutschland in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts nur in sehr bescheidenem Umfang. In den Jahren vor der Revolution 1848 schien er fast ganz zu kollabieren: »Die reichen Leute, welche sonst Bücher kauften, hielten ihr Geld fest, da sie stets einen Umsturz erwarteten«, berichtet ein Zeitgenosse. »Die Zeitungspresse nahm Alles in Anspruch, es hatte Niemand Zeit etwas Anderes zu lesen als Zeitungen.«
9 Statt sich mit großen Bücherlasten zu beschweren, sitzt man auf leichtem Gepäck, um, sollte es nötig sein, das Land schnell verlassen zu können. Bücher werden in Deutschland nicht gekauft, sondern ausgeliehen. Die Reichen halten sich mit Käufen zurück und wollen nicht verstehen, wie »Jemand die Wand mit Büchern tapezieren« kann. »Alle Bedürfnisse sind ja für wenige Pfennige in der Leihbibliothek zu befriedigen.«
10 Die Klage des Buchhändlers Wustmann wird von amtlicher Seite bestätigt: »Ein Deutscher, der ein Buch kauft, ist ein besonderer Mensch«, heißt es in den Preußischen Jahrbüchern.
11 Das »große Bedürfniß nach Lektüre« und die »ausufernde Production« entsprechen sich nicht. Was sich nicht schnell genug verkaufen läßt, muss, um die eingesetzten Kapitalien zu sichern, unter Wert verkauft werden. Leipzig, die Stadt der Verlage, heißt auch die Stadt der Schleuderer. Arbeitern und Handwerkern fehle um die Jahrhundertmitte selbst das wenige Geld für die Leihbibliotheken. Ende des Jahrhunderts leben immerhin noch fast 20 % der Bevölkerung unter dem Existenzminimum. 1872 wird der Gesamtumsatz an Büchern im Deutschen Reich auf acht Millionen Taler beziffert, kaum achtzig Pfennig pro Kopf. Das Lesepublikum hält sich nicht an Bücher, sondern an Journale und Zeitungen. Sie sind billiger und leichter zu erreichen. »Die Lektüre« sei, stellt 1842 der preußische Innenminister fest, »unleugbar zum Volksbedürfnisse geworden«.
12 Befriedigen läßt sich das Bedürfnis allerdings nicht in Bibliotheken, auch nicht in den preußischen, denn dort gilt immer noch die Regel, daß ohne »eine gehörige Sicherheit« niemandem ein Buch in die Hand gegeben wird. Vom Zugang zu den »Schatzkammern des menschlichen Geistes«, wie Leibniz die Bibliotheken einmal nannte, bleiben die meisten Menschen ausgeschlossen.
13 Volksbüchereien, wie man sie in Amerika schon kennt, verbreiten sich erst im letzten Viertel des Jahrhunderts. Bis dahin sind es die Leihbibliotheken, die von der erwachten Leselust profitieren und ihr erst den nötigen Stoff liefern. Beim größten Anbieter im deutschen Kaiserreich, der Firma Fritz Borstel in Berlin, stehen 1880 600.000 Bücher bereit, ausgeliehen zu werden. Vom Erfolgsbuch des Jahrhunderts, Gustav Freitags Soll und Haben, sind bei Borstel nicht weniger als 2.315 Umlaufexemplare vorhanden, von Joseph Victor von Scheffels Ekkehard 1.317, von E. Marlitts Goldelse 1.285 und von Gottfried Kellers Grünem Heinrich immerhin noch 758 ausleihbare Bände.
14 Mit Einführung der Gewerbefreiheit nimmt die Zahl der Leihbibliotheken weiter zu. Im Jahr 1865 erfaßt das Adreßbuch des Börsenvereins 617, 1880 schon 1.056 Leihbibliotheken. Wittmann geht in seiner Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels
15 von einer wenigstens doppelt so hohen Zahl aus. Erst die starke Konkurrenz, die dem Buch durch illustrierte Blätter wie Die Gartenlaube (1853-1938] oder Über Land und Meer (1858 - 1923) und durch die weiter steigenden Auflagen der Zeitungen erwächst, bremsen die Expansion der Leihbibliotheken.
Um 1900 haben sie ihre großen Zeit schon hinter sich. Das Bild des Buchhandels und der Lesekultur verändert sich, seit Ende der 1860er Jahre beginnen Verlage, Bücher von einfachster Ausstattung, oft nur broschiert, in Reihen erscheinen zu lassen. Weil auf Verlags- und Urheberrechte von Autoren, deren Tod dreißig Jahre zurückliegt, keine Rücksicht mehr zu nehmen ist, kann das Erbe der Klassik jetzt nach neuen Maßstäben vermarktet werden. Reclams Universalbibliothek, 1867 gegründet, von der bis ins Jahr 1898 allein 3.810 Nummern vorliegen, beginnt programmatisch mit der Veröffentlichung von Goethes Faust I und II. Schon in den ersten Monaten nach Erscheinen werden 20.000 Exemplare verkauft. Von Friedrich Schillers Wilhelm Tell, dem erfolgreichsten Buch der Reihe, können bis 1917 nicht weniger als 2,3 Millionen Exemplare abgesetzt werden, die Ausgaben von Ibsens Dramen bringen es auf 4,5 Millionen Exemplare. Die Nationalbibliothek sämtlicher deutscher Classiker des Verlags Hempel wird für zweieinhalb Groschen je Lieferung verkauft und startet mit einer Auflage von 150.000 Exemplaren, ist aber weit weniger erfolgreich als Reclams Reihe.
Mit zeitgenössischer Literatur lässt sich nur im Zeitungsformat Geld verdienen. Ihre Romane je als Buch gedruckt zu sehen, können Autoren nur hoffen. Die Auflagenhöhe bleibt in jedem Fall moderat; denn absetzen lassen sich die Bücher zunächst nur an Leihbibliotheken.
»99 Procent der Deutschen Roman- und Novellen-Schreiber verdanken ihren Namen und ihre Existenz nur den Leihbibliotheken, zu welchen sie in dem Verhältnis der Fabrikanten stehen«
16, konstatiert 1883 Otto Glagau. In der häuslichen Bibliothek stellt man Romane nicht auf. Sie werden buchstäblich zerlesen oder wandern zurück in die Leihbibliothek. Zum üblichen Bestand der besseren Haushalte gehören auch Ende des Jahrhunderts nur Bücher, die einen längeren Nutzen versprechen: ein Meyers- oder Brockhaus-Lexikon, einige Fachbücher, eine Goethe-, eine Schiller-Ausgabe, wenige illustrierte Werke und Sammelbände der populären Journale.
Im 19. Jahrhundert sind die meisten der in den Wohnungen vorhandenen Bücher eher Hausrat als aktueller Lesestoff.
17 Viele dieser zumeist religiösen Werke, Bibeln, Gesangbücher oder Hauspostillen, werden seit Generationen vererbt. Literatur kommt nicht vor. »Eine Hauspostill, ein Gesangbuch und ein Calender, und alle drei oft erbärmlich eingerichtet, das ist die ganze Leserei unserer meisten Bürger«, bemerkt 1774 Schubart.
18 Rund 90 % der Arbeiter und Handwerker, der Soldaten, der unteren und der mittleren Beamten haben um 1800 in Frankfurt nur minimalen oder gar keinen Bücherbesitz. Selbst die Hälfte aller Kaufleute besitzt nicht ein einziges Buch.
19 »Bis weit über die Jahrhundertmitte fällt nahezu die Hälfte der Gesamtbevölkerung als Leser aus.«
20 Noch im Jahr 1886 beurteilt die Deutsche Schriftstellerzeitung die Zustände, als hätten Jahrzehnte der Alphabetisierung wenig oder nichts bewirkt: »Weit über die Hälfte der Bevölkerung Preußens ist für die Literatur verloren. Vielleicht ist es einem kommenden Jahrtausend vorbehalten, auch dieses tiefste Proletariat zu heben und heranzubilden, heutzutage aber ist es eine Unmöglichkeit.« Immerhin kostet ein Roman um diese Zeit gerade soviel wie das Abonnement einer Zeitung für ein Vierteljahr. Das lesende Publikum im 19. Jahrhundert, das die materiellen wie die intellektuellen Voraussetzungen für Lektüre und Bucherwerb mitbringt, sei allein der »obere Mittelstand, das Bürgertum im eigentlichen Sinn« gewesen, schreibt Reinhard Wittmann.
21 Nach dem Steueraufkommen bemessen, weisen 1890 die Statistiken 2,75 Millionen Familien als Angehörige dieses Standes aus, 22 % der gesamten Bevölkerung des Deutschen Reiches.
Tatsächlich ist der Ertrag aus Religion, Wissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur unter den Menschen des 19. Jahrhunderts ungleich verteilt. Während in den meisten Stuben selbst das bescheidenste Bord für Bücher fehlt, wird es in den Wohnungen gebildeter Bürger schon um 1880 eng. »Bei der Bildung einer Privatbibliothek darf heute ein anderer Umstand von Wichtigkeit nicht übersehen werden, das ist die Platzfrage. Unsere Wohnungen haben wenig Platz für die Aufstellung großer Büchermassen.«
22 Daß sich unter solchen Umständen die Gunst des Publikums »von den schönen Folianten und Quartanten« abwendet und darum der »Compilation, den gedrängten Ausgaben oder solchen in kleinem Format« mehr Beachtung schenkt, kann als selbstverständlich angenommen werden. Drängender noch als die Notwendigkeit, Raum zu sparen, wird die Entscheidung für die richtigen Bücher: »Wer ist im Stande, bei der heutigen Überproduction eine richtige Auswahl zu treffen? Man fragt sich mit Recht, was wird aus alle den Hunderten und Tausenden von Büchern werden, die jetzt in Mode sind? Wie viele von ihnen werden wohl ihr Leben über die nächsten fünfundzwanzig Jahre hinaus fristen?« - Bange Fragen. Trost läßt sich aus der Geschichte nicht ziehen: »Von den etwa 50.000 besseren Erscheinungen des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts geniessen heute etwa nur noch 100 Werke ein hohes unbestrittenes Ansehen und von den 80.000 hervorragenden Erscheinungen des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts hat man kaum 300 Werke durch einen Neudruck in unserer Zeit für werth gehalten, vor der Vergessenheit und dem Untergange bewahrt zu werden.«
23 Auf der 1895 in Dresden abgehaltenen Versammlung der Association Litteraire et Artistique Internationale, zu deren Gründern 1876 Victor Hugo gehört, diskutiert man die Erarbeitung einer Bibliographie sämtlicher seit Gutenbergs Erfindung erschienener Bücher. Grundlage der kontroversen Debatte sind die Berechnungen zweier französischer Bibliophiler. Charles Nodier hat die Zahl aller bis 1820 erschienener Bücher mit 3.277.000 Bänden angegeben, Gabriele Peignot dagegen rechnet für den gleichen Zeitraum mit nur 3.681.000 publizierten Büchern. »Die Berechnungen sind«, muß 1896 der Antiquar Mühlbrecht zugeben, »natürlich ganz uncontrollirbar.« Sie reizen ihn dennoch, die Zahlen Nodiers zu einem eindrucksvollen Bild zu verdichten: »Nimmt man an, dass jedes Werk durchschnittlich in dreihundert Exemplaren gedruckt sei und dass jeder Band einen Zoll breit sei, so würden alle diese Bände neben einander gestellt eine Länge von 18.207 geographischen Meilen haben, also das Doppelte des Erdumfanges.«
The Order of The Whole Earth Catalog
Brand 1971
The operational word on the cover of the CATALOG is access. Ultimately that means giving the reader access from where he is to where he wants to be. Which takes work,
work takes tools, tools need finding, and that’s where we come in. A good catalog is a quick-scan array of tools, where you can find what you want easily, with detailed information where you’re interested. Our attempt to fulfill these requirements led to use-based section headings (Shelter, Land Use, Communications, etc.), an alphabetic index, and page-theme layout. On each page we try to have one graphic which »keys the page«, tells with a glance what’s there. The hardest thing we had to learn was providing simple dear demarcation between items—an unadorned line. We publish considerable detailed information—fine print. Sorting among that is aided by a consistent code of type-faces (reviews are always »uni vers italic«, access is always »teeny«. Divine Right is always »bold teeny«, and so forth). The IBM Selectric Composer makes this an easy matter. Still we’re not as consistent as we should be. In descending order of importance, our layout guidelines are:
accuracy
clarity
quantity of information
appearance
Glamorous
white space has no value in a catalog except as occasional eye rest. I figure the reader can close his eyes when he’s tired. I keep coming back to the reader/user because that that’s who the editor represents. I’ve had to feel that my obligations to Portola Institute, to staff, friends, relatives, and to myself are all secondary. So are obligations to authors, suppliers, publishers, other editors. Usually there’s no conflict, but when there is the editor has to see that the reader wins. The editor’s main mechanical task is determining efficient use of production time and page space. It’s like spreading hard butter on soft bread, best if you cut the task into workable hunks and distribute them evenly. I use McBee cards, one for each item, for rough editing. I know from looking at previous CATALOGS and the new material approximately how many pages should be in the, say, Nomadics Section—61 pp. So I take the stack of McBee cards punch-coded for that section and break them down into categories—mountain stuff, car stuff, outdoor suppliers, survival books, etc. Then those subpiles are put in some sensible sequence. Then on a big table the cards are separated further into 61 little page-stacks, by pairs (the reader sees 2 pages at a time, not one). The contents of those piles are written on my desk dummy. The cards are stacked in page sequence, and I’ve got a section rough edited.
Schrift zwischen Patriarchalismus und Emanzipation
Flierl 2022
Wir leben in einer Schriftkultur: Als Kinder lernen wir Lesen und Schreiben und wachsen in einer Gesellschaft auf, die angewandte Schrift als selbstverständliche Grundvoraussetzung zur allgemeinen Verständigung akzeptiert. Sie wird auch zur
gesellschaftlichen Ordnung benutzt, welche beispielsweise auf allen Ebenen durch schriftliche Verträge organisiert ist. Dabei war die Schrift schon immer eng mit der Kultur verknüpft: Historisch wurden Schriftzeichen im kulturellen Kontext genutzt, um Wertvorstellungen, wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse und geschichtliche Ereignisse, die in Niederschriften manifestiert wurden, an
nachfolgende Generationen weiterzugeben. In der neueren Geschichte besaß Lesen und Schreiben eine Deutungshoheit, die Aristokraten und Geistlichen vorbehalten war. Schriftstücke und Bücher waren in der Regel nicht für gemeine Bürger*innen zugänglich, wodurch die damit zugeschriebene Allwissenheit der höheren Stände noch untermauert und Machtansprüche gefestigt werden konnten. Mit den Worten von Michael Giesecke ausgedrückt ist Wissen »ein Spezialfall von Information, der sich u.a. dadurch auszeichnet, dass er von der kulturellen Gemeinschaft als wichtig für die kulturelle Reproduktion erklärt und zum Gegenstand von organisierten Lehr- und Lernprozessen gemacht wird.«
Die vermeintlich neutrale wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisgewinnung spiegelt also immer vor allem die Sichtweisen der dominierenden Gruppen wider – vorwiegend bestehend aus männlichen Personen – die dieses Wissen generieren und somit auch beeinflussen können. Eine Hierarchisierung von Geschlechtern innerhalb der Gesellschaft wurde früher ebenso wissenschaftlich begründet. Emilia Roig verdeutlicht: »Lange Zeit wurde sie [die Wissenschaft] als Rechtfertigung für die Unterdrückung verschiedener gesellschaftlicher Gruppen genutzt. Pseudowissenschaftliche Theorien hielten Frauen von Machtpositionen fern. […] Wissenschaft war nie nur neutral oder objektiv – sie ist von denjenigen, die dieses Wissen produzieren, weitestgehend geprägt.« So bestimmen die Entwicklung und Ausprägung des sprachschriftlichen Kommunikationssystems die Wissenstradierung und damit die Diskriminierung von Menschen, die nicht lesen und schreiben können. Diese Unterdrückung innerhalb der Gesellschaft aufgrund von Analphabetismus und beschränkten Bildungsmöglichkeiten liegt dementsprechend auch in der Verwendung von Schriftzeichen begründet. Das Bildungssystem war zudem lange Zeit fast ausschließlich für Jungen zugänglich und förderte somit patriarchale Strukturen, in denen weiblich gelesene Personen von der Karriere und dem Einkommen ihrer Männer abhängig waren, weil ihnen selbst die meisten Berufswege verwehrt blieben. Die Entwicklung neuer Drucktechniken seit Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts erleichterte breiteren Massen den Zugang zu Büchern und ermöglichte durch die sinkende Analphabet*innenquote innerhalb der Bevölkerung eine zunehmende Bildung.
Die Demokratisierung von Wissen – welches vor allem schriftlich gespeichert ist – ist ein ermächtigender Schritt in Richtung gesellschaftlicher Emanzipation. Deshalb stehen auch heute besonders Type Designer*innen vor der Herausforderung, inklusiv und intersektional zu arbeiten, indem sie beispielsweise Schriften gestalten, die möglichst weltweit einsetzbar sind. Der Zeichensatz der Noto Typeface von Google
deckt mittlerweile mehr als 1.000 Sprachen ab. Das Bedürfnis nach einem umfassenden Language Support wird daran deutlich, dass sich die Zahl der in der Schriftart abbildbaren Sprachen 2022 im Vergleich zum Vorjahr verdoppelt hat. Die Type Designerin Lisa Huang gestaltete im Stil der Noto die erste Version von Nüshu, der sogenannten Frauenschrift, die um die 400 Zeichen umfasst und bereits im 9. Jahrhundert in der südöstlichen Provinz Hunan in China entstanden ist. Die Silbenschrift basiert auf der Phonetik des regionalen Dialektes Tuhua und ist die weltweit einzig bekannte geschlechtsspezifische Schrift, die ausschließlich von weiblich gelesenen Personen erfunden und benutzt wurde. Da ihnen eine Schulbildung verwehrt blieb und sie das offizielle Schriftsystem nicht erlernten, entwickelten die weiblich gelesenen Personen autodidaktisch ein eigenes Zeichensystem zur Kommunikation mit ihren Freund*innen und weiblichen Verwandten, die in anderen Dörfern oder Städten lebten. Auch das Schreiben eigener Texte, Tagebucheinträge oder Gedichte wurde zum traditionellen Kulturgut, das über Generationen hinweg weitergegeben wurde. Die Kalligrafie-Werkzeuge der Männer durften sie nicht benutzen, also dienten ihnen Holzstücke als Stifte, verbrannte Asche als Tinte und Fächer als Papier. Die strukturelle Ungleichheit der Geschlechter bedingte durch die benutzten Hilfsmittel zum Schreiben somit auch die Form der langgezogenen Zeichen der Moskito-Schrift, wie sie von den Schreiberinnen selbst genannt wurde. Durch die fortschreitende Alphabetisierung im letzten Jahrhundert hat die alte Schriftsprache zunehmend an Bedeutung verloren, rückte aber durch die Forschungsarbeit von Prof. Zhao Liming in das Öffentliche Interesse. Nüshu wird in den Medien oft als eine Art Geheimschrift beschrieben, die den unterdrückten weiblich gelesenen Personen dazu gedient haben soll, sich über ihr Leid auszutauschen. Tatsächlich war die Kommunikation alles andere als ein Mysterium, da sie keineswegs heimlich praktiziert wurde und außerdem laut vorgelesen die regionale Mundart wiedergab – ihr wurde bis dato schlichtweg kein Interesse beigemessen. Die Journalistin Ilaria Maria Sala kritisiert diesen medialen und mittlerweile auch kommerziellen Umgang mit der Geschichte: »I felt people were reading into it what they wanted, regardless of what it meant, at times for personal profit. Isn’t this the standard definition of cultural appropriation?« Die Legendenbildung um eine
geheimnisvolle Schwursprache ist ein eindrückliches Beispiel für die Instrumentalisierung des Patriarchats, die eine strukturelle Unterdrückung reproduziert und verstärkt.
Durch den Fokus auf eine visuelle, schriftliche Speicherung von Wissen werden heute noch immer bestimmte Minderheiten von großen Teilen des gesellschaftlichen Lebens ausgeschlossen: (Funktionale) Analphabet*innen oder Personen mit Sehbehinderung, die im Alltag durch existierende Barrieren nicht bedacht und diskriminiert werden, da sie sich beispielsweise nicht mithilfe von klassischen Orientierungssystemen zurechtfinden können. Nicht nur deshalb wächst das Bedürfnis nach Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten durch bildhafte Zeichen, die allgemeingültig und vor allem leicht verständlich sind. Im Öffentlichen Raum gibt es immer mehr Bildsymbole, die das alltägliche Zusammenleben vereinfachen sollen, beispielsweise durch den Einsatz von Piktogrammen im Öffentlichen Nahverkehr, die darauf hinweisen, dass bestimmte Plätze beeinträchtigten Personen vorbehalten sind. Obwohl die verwendeten Symbole vermeintlich neutral gestaltet sind, geben sie trotzdem meist Aufschluss auf das gesellschaftliche und kulturelle Verständnis, in dem sie auftreten. So werden Frauen in Piktogrammen in westlichen Ländern meist in knielangen Kleidern dargestellt, im arabischen Raum mit Hijab. Für diese visuelle Übersetzung von heteronormativen Stereotypen in
Universalsprachen gibt es verschiedene Beispiele. Der avantgardistische Gestalter Karl Peter Röhl (1890 – 1975) schaffte 1926, dem Universalitätsanspruch der Moderne verschrieben, ein piktogrammartiges Zeichensystem, welches er für verschiedene gesellschaftliche Institutionen entwickelte. Durch den Einsatz im Öffentlichen Raum sollte die ikonische Symbolsprache möglichst allgemeingültig gestaltet sein. Ein Versuch neuer Berufszeichen visualisiert aber auch eine patriarchale Dominanz, bei der der Arzt durch ein quadratisches Kreuz dargestellt ist. Die Ärztin dagegen wird durch das gleiche Zeichen repräsentiert, allerdings mit einer negativen Aussparung, an der Stelle, an der die beiden sich überlappenden Balken überschneiden. Dadurch wird sie zu einem mangelhaften Abbild des Mannes. Die bildhafte oder symbolische Abbildung einer Leerstelle als weibliches Geschlecht geht auf Sigmund Freuds Theorie des »verlorengegangenen Penis des Weibes«. aus dem Jahr 1915 zurück, bei der die weiblichen Genitalien als Loch und damit Defizit gegenüber dem Mann interpretiert wurden. Mitte der 1950er Jahre erarbeitete auch der Chemieingenieur Charles Bliss (1897 – 1985) mit seinen Blissymbolics den Versuch einer visuellen Universalsprache, welche jegliche Möglichkeit zum Machtmissbrauch ausschließen sollte, welche er selbst durch die Nazi-Propaganda im Zweiten Weltkrieg erfahren hatte. Die einzelnen Wörter werden durch ikonische Zeichen und semantische Assoziationen dargestellt. Trotz des Bedürfnisses nach Universalität und Inklusivität weisen die Symbole aber reproduzierte strukturelle Diskriminierungen und phallogozentrisch aufgeladene Analogien auf, deren verknüpfte Bedeutungsebenen ebenfalls auf bestimmte Art und Weise sozialisiert sind. Die Glyphen für Frau und Mann veranschaulichen dabei eine gesamtgesellschaftlich verankerte, sexistische Ideologie, welche einer Universalsprache nicht gerecht werden kann. Während sich das Zeichen für Mann aus einem vertikalen Strich und dem der Bedeutung für Action zugeschriebenen Zeichen zusammensetzt, besteht jenes für Frau aus der gleichen Linie und dem Zeichen für Creation, einer Darstellung des weiblichen Schoßes. Der Mann ist aktiv, die Frau passiv – beides stereotype geschlechtsspezifische Zuschreibungen.
In der heutigen
digitalen Kommunikation ist die Entwicklung eines Zeichensatzes aus Emojis ein Ansatz für eine Verständigung auf internationaler Ebene, die nicht an bestimmte Schriftsysteme gebunden ist, welche im kulturellen Kontext erlernt werden müssten. Trotzdem muss auch hier betont werden, dass ein Konsortium, welches die Aufnahme und die Gestaltung neuer Zeichen in den Unicode bestimmt, über diese entscheidet. Es ist unmöglich, alle Menschen mit ihren kulturellen sowie individuellen Hintergründen durch eine solche Gruppe zu repräsentieren und abzubilden. Obwohl beispielsweise circa 550 Millionen Menschen einen Hijab tragen, wurde erst 2017 ein entsprechendes Bildsymbol in Unicode umgesetzt, nachdem zwei nicht-repräsentierte Musliminnen die Aufnahme initiiert hatten. Auch Emojis können also einer universellen Anforderung nicht entsprechen, da bestimmte marginalisierte Gruppen nicht oder nicht ausreichend vertreten werden können. Der stetige Zuwachs an Emojis mit variablen Hautfarben oder gesellschaftsspezifischen Details zeigt aber deutlich, dass die Bedeutung der einzelnen Symbole nicht nur über die Ebene eines vereinfachten Sprachverständnisses an sich hinausgehen, sondern auch eine gesellschaftliche Relevanz in sich tragen.
Digitalität & Kollaboration
Coding as a Playground
Lorusso 2022
Coding occupies a weird place within the field of graphic design. While it is recognized as a practice that profoundly shapes our artificial environment, its actual adoption within schools and studios is still minoritarian, to say the least. Moreover, as some of the interviews in this volume show, graphic designers are not always capable of perceiving the computational virtues of a project, such as an elegant workflow, or an ingenious generative process.
I speak from experience: in almost five years of teaching, I’ve caught a few students outsourcing the programming part of their projects. Several of them expressed frustration with and disinterest in coding, which is often framed as the mere execution of a creative idea. Sadly, a gendered component is also likely to be in play, probably as a result of women’s internalized estrangement from the so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). In fact, most of the students who at the very outset disclose to me that »coding is not their cup of tea« are women.
On the bright side, I have had the pleasure of seeing many complex code-heavy projects made by women designers. These projects were not about the Promethean hubris that code often inspires, or the proud display of the »power« of programming. Instead, they focused on the sociocultural aspects of coding as a practice that brings people together with machines and through machines. More on that later.
Should this practice be within the designer’s domain? This has been a question that has elicited ongoing and heated debate for as long as I can remember. The question, simply put, is »should designers have to be able to code?« For some notable practitioners, the answer is a hard yes. One of them is John Maeda. His position is unsurprising, since he created
the language Design by Numbers, Processing’s predecessor, and he could be considered a pioneer of computational design. Computational design is, according to Maeda, design that uses the fabric of anything involving computing, sensing and actuating. In his view, computational designers would not, at least in the near future, replace »classical designers« but simply work on different challenges.
Another position is more down to earth: sure, coding skills are nice to have, a skill that facilitates the dialog with developers, but in practice, the place of graphic, UI and even UX designers is the wireframe, the mockup, the clickable prototype designed in
Illustrator or (goosebumps) Photoshop; and more recently in Figma, Sketch or Invision, with the occasional venture into CSS or SASS territory.
I don’t mean to offer yet another take on this vexata quaestio, but rather to zoom out on the frameworks we adopt when we consider coding as a practice. I hope to indicate two paradigms which influence and reconfigure each other. I will refer to them as Learn to Code and Code to Learn.
A clarification, before we start: in this essay I use the terms »coding«, »programming« and »hacking« interchangeably as the difference between them and their relative hierarchy is often fuzzy and artificial. However, as I will explain, they are ideologically attached to the paradigms.
Learn to Code
In 2021, the economic imperative to train and retrain has never been so strong. After the pandemic’s dramatic impact on artists’ economies, a skepticism about »creative« work is emerging, portraying it as unproductive daydreaming, and a wholly unessential industry. The emphasis is now on hard labor and effectiveness. The fundamental idea of Learn to Code is that the ability to program is a historical necessity for people working at a useless or obsolete job, and that these people must serve the economic imperatives of capitalism. This servitude is referred to as »retraining«. Perhaps it is useful at this point to briefly reiterate the distinction between coders and programmers. While programmers are recognized as having an acknowledged and relatively arcane expertise with a correspondingly high salary, coding is increasingly perceived as semi-skilled labor. The programmer belongs to a profession, the coder to a workforce.
Back to design. Currently, public recognition of graphic designers is not so different from that of journalists. Both are now perceived as entire professions that it would be good to automate once and for all. Jobs meant to become buttons. According to this scenario, coding emerges as a professional panacea linked to the rhetoric of skill obsolescence and employability. Coding becomes a skill, in the most reductive sense of the term: something to add to your CV, better if exploded into discrete units. HTML and CSS: good, JavaScript: basic. The book Graphic Design Surveyed shows that US and UK students consider coding the third most useful skill to acquire (after networking and idea generation).
In 2014, German media theorist Florian Cramer dissected
the various meanings of the term »post-digital«. One of them was »the contemporary disenchantment with digital information systems and media gadgets.« The Learn to Code meme suggests that disenchantment does not only revolve around the tools of the trade, but also around the trade itself. Coding, in the light of retraining, doesn’t seem to be so emancipating.
Another understanding of post-digital Cramer highlighted has to do with the revival of old media. This might be a bit of a stretch, but what is more »old media«, more 20th-century, than the idea of a workforce to be forged for the good of the nation? Of course, the Learn to Code narrative hints at the fact that jobs, skills and aspirations do not exist in a vacuum. However, due to a combination of disenchantment with programming and old-media labor rhetoric, coding emerges as a post-digital manifestation of capitalist realism, forcing graphic designers, journalists and coal miners alike to deal with their situations. All of them must go through mandatory updates, just like software. Is programming itself immune to this logic? Not really, it would seem, as the angelus novus of AI promises or threatens (depending on whom you ask) to automate the coder as well.
Code to Learn
Ted Nelson once said: »The computer is as inhuman as we make it.« The fact that coding is a cognitive activity does not make it intrinsically humane. It can also become a tedious, repetitive, industrialized exercise. This is what the jobs of a »new collar« workforce might look like, especially if such a workforce were a coercively retrained one. What then is coding beyond the not very empowering economic imperative of »learning to code«? Coding—whether it consists of writing HTML and CSS, posting a Javascript snippet on Github Gist, tweaking a Processing sketch, or publishing a Python module—can be not merely the content of a learning process, but its very medium. Thus, it can be a craft and a culture, or even better, a cultural meeting point. Who would we find there? A community of practice.
Learning with Computers
In a time when much is being said about the creativity of autonomous AI-powered machines, it is good to reconsider Licklider’s notion of human-computer symbiosis. When you code, you instruct the computer to execute a more or less complex task, which is then immediately performed. You do not always know what to expect: the result might awe or disappoint you, allowing you to reorient or even redefine your initial goal. Part of the symbiosis is intrinsic to
the language shared by user and machine—namely, code. Creativity unfolds through this micro-iterative learning process: it is neither in the mind nor in the machine, but rather in the continuous scripted dialogue between the subject and their extensions. The computer is just one of those extensions, but a particularly powerful one, since it is, to use Alan Kay’s term, a metamedium, that is, a medium capable of simulating all others. As such the computer should be a thing that can be shaped and transformed. When it becomes less malleable, the computer is fixed within a stable media, which is perhaps more efficient, but also less surprising, less »creative.« You do more but you learn less. Fundamentally, creativity is a question of time. Mostly of our daily activity with computers happens through hopefully speedy but ossified software. We use the computer in »speedrun mode.« This is the paradox of creative coding: the coding part is supposed to make things faster, the creative part requires that things go slowly. According to permacomputing principles, one might say that Learn to Code is very »yang«, and Code to Learn does also value the »yin«: it »accepts the aspects that are beyond rational control and comprehension. Rationality gets supported by intuition. The relationship with the system is more bidirectional, emphasizing experimentation and observation.«
Learning through Computers
Coding does not just manifest as a relationship between a user and a computer, but also between users through computers. Users exchanging techniques in real life or on Stack Overflow, appreciating each others’ solutions, using coding as an excuse to just hang out, or building upon each other’s tools. The input of this process is patience and a capacity for listening; the output is fun and a sense of belonging. Coding can also be a bridge linking us to past users. We see this in Ted Davis’ assignment to recreate pioneering computer works or with the Re-Programmed Art Project, where a series of contemporary designers reinterpreted »analog« works of the Italian collective Gruppo T, active in the 1960s.
Coding as a Craft
While Learn to Code turns coding into a resumé-ready skill, Code to Learn is about coding as a craft. My understanding of craft is wide-ranging: »a good job well done,« as Sennett defines it. A craft is a savoir faire that is capable of stabilizing and consolidating one’s identity. In a time when designers are urged to constantly decorate their bio with strategic labels, a craft is a reflective activity, in the sense that the crafted things and the
tools for crafting are a reflection of their maker, who generally recognizes themselves in them. This is also true of coding. As Roberto Arista, creator of the Python for Designers course, puts it: Programming then can become a way to escape [the confinement of desktop publishing software], connecting different regions and patiently rebuilding the workshop within the tools that effectively destroyed these regions.
The craftsperson enters their own physical or digital workshop—a local hackerspace, a custom i3 setup, a DIY CMS—and feels at home. This is where they code and learn, learn and code. This is where they can forget, for a while at least, if they are lucky, the pressures and economic necessities of daily life. Without neglecting Learn to Code’s stressful refrain of employability and professional obsolescence, Code to Learn helps by considering the coding activity in itself, and not merely as an inevitable destiny. Opting for one model over the other in a graphic design school also means determining how to teach programming. When I speak of coding in and of itself I do not mean it as an index of technical notions (variables, loops, etc.). That is precisely the instrumental reduction of the Learn to Code attitude. Rather, I mean it in a broader sense: coding as a social activity and a cultural domain. This is what Code to Learn is all about.
Programming in Graphic Design
Blanc & Maudet 2022
The ethics of free and open source software, a profound transformation of practices
All of these programming practices have a certain ethic in common, a programming culture that is not solely technical. The place occupied by programming in the field of graphic design today cannot be fully understood without understanding its connection to the culture of free software that originated in computing. In his 2012 text, Kévin Donnot already mentioned free software and hacking as a noteworthy aspect of programming. Ten years later, one can see that free and open source culture has spread widely through
the world of digital graphic design.
One of the most important aspects of free software culture is the possibility of having access to the code of the program or software one is using. This implies a simultaneous
rejection of tools and software whose mechanics cannot be inspected for the purposes of understanding both their potential and their limitations. Thus graphic designers who work with programming often seek to use free and open source software, i. e., software whose license allows the inspection, modification, and duplication of the code.
24 This aspect, although fundamental, is not the only role played by open source culture, which has also impacted ways of working by encouraging collaboration. In a graphic design environment that is extremely connected to the notion of the author, open source culture has encouraged the development of collectives. We have already mentioned a number of them: Open Source Publishing (OSP)—a pioneer of open source graphic design, already mentioned ten years ago in Graphisme en France—is certainly one of the most familiar. Though its members have evolved in the meantime, the collective is still active and continues to pursue its approach. Other collectives have also emerged, such as Bonjour Monde, and Luuse. The use of programming facilitates both collaborative and simultaneous work, in particular through the use of Git version management software
25, which, although not really adapted to graphic work
26, greatly simplifies collaboration. This facilitation is all the more surprising as the classic Adobe suite still struggles to allow collaborative editing of documents. At the same time, the open sharing of source code for projects created by graphic designers on platforms such as GitLab, or GitHub, clearly shows a willingness to be adopted and modified by others. For example, the typeface Avara, initially created by Raphaël Bastide, was explicitly designed to be reworked. The possibilities of versioning, simultaneous work, and reworking of source code used in programming are then new approaches for graphic design. They can influence ways of working, and even graphic forms themselves, which are impacted by the possibility of observing the work of others at different moments in the design process.
Today, in the field of graphic design, the amount of resources available and shared under open source licenses on the Internet is considerable, ranging from pictograms to illustrations. However, it is more specifically the field of typography that has contributed primarily to the spread of free and open source culture among graphic designers, mainly in France and Belgium. Many typefaces are distributed under a free license, just like open source software, that allows them to be reused and modified.
27 The adoption of royalty-free typefaces has thus strongly developed in schools and in professional practices, especially since 2010 and the foundation by Frank Adebiaye of the now-famous Velvetyne foundry. Nevertheless, it is regrettable that this enthusiastic use often occurs in the context of a consumer relationship, where fonts are chosen because they are freely available, without any real understanding of the issues at the heart of free and open source culture. This question is similar to the ones that are quite familiar, and widely discussed throughout the programming world, and that are unavoidable for graphic designers: though many consume open source software, the number who actively contribute to it is much smaller; what then of the spirit of community and autonomy of production advocated by free culture?
This culture, with its strong ethical dimension, also raises other questions. The
rejection of non-open source tools can sometimes reach the level of mimicry when it comes to the culture of certain programmers, to the point of a paradoxical rejection by graphic designers of graphic interfaces
28 and thus DTP software. Among other things, this contributes to aggravating the rupture between graphic designers who program and others who don’t. It is utopian to imagine that every graphic designer could code, despite the issues of open source culture being increasingly present in educational discourse. It is still necessary to
invent a repertoire of intermediary tools that incorporate various modes of interaction (textual and/or graphic)
29 and that make it possible to respond to the development of increasingly hybrid practices.
The Web introduces specific issues for graphic design
It now seems that the Web, in its hybrid position of both publishing tool and medium, sits at the junction of specific issues that exist within a landscape of graphic designers who have adopted coding practices, and yet, at the same time, this is rarely the subject of discussion.
Over the last ten years, the increasing
diversity of digital devices has led to the multiplication of both sizes and types of screens upon which web pages can be displayed (computers, tablets, smartphones, but also projectors, televisions, etc.). The conditions of consultation of any given site therefore vary considerably from one reader to another. One of the main characteristics of the design of a website is to adapt the design (functionalities, interactions, and layouts) to the different parameters or characteristics of the device on which the site will be displayed, as well as the environment in which it will be consulted. The most familiar principle is the need to adapt the graphic design to the size of the screen, but it is theoretically possible that readers themselves could define their own display styles, something that has been possible since the early days of CSS. Thus, readers now have some control over the display of content, if only by changing the window size or by setting a »dark« mode on browsers. While graphic designers have become accustomed to having complete control over the final printed form, these different points mark a radical change in their approach to their discipline.
30 In order to respond to this multiplicity of displays, the Web is based on a principle of separation of content and form between HTML and CSS, which we have already mentioned. Elements coded in HTML do not change, and it is in CSS that the way they are displayed according to the size of the screen is defined. The same information is consulted from one device to another, but its formal components are organized differently so as to make navigation ergonomic, and reading optimized, in all circumstances. Design is now marked by a paradigm shift for graphic designers who must describe the possible behavior of elements using a range of principles proposed in
web languages: templates, contextual style sheets, semantic structuring, the notion of flow, etc. However, the
tools available today for designing visual prototypes for publication (Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD, Webflow) lack most of these principles because they are too closely modeled on DTP layout software dedicated to print and/or fixed media. Only the mastery of the technical aspect of the Web, and thus of these languages, makes it currently possible to understand its potential, and propose adapted and creative graphic forms. Graphic designers must therefore accept a certain lack of control over the forms they produce in order to suit the intrinsically fluid and open character of the Web.
This design of graphic formatting, which forces one to think outside the limits of the page format, has profoundly transformed recent practices, while at the same time reviving ways of working on formatting that predate the appearance of DTP software, where graphic designers could only work from templates and style sheets. In a recent article published in the magazine Design Arts Médias, this hypothesis was formulated as follows: »The notion of style sheet that gave rise to the name CSS is defined as ›a set of rules that associate properties and stylistic values with the structural elements of a document, thus expressing the way in which the document is presented‹.
31 This is a definition that is entirely compatible with the production of printed books. It reminds us that before the advent of DTP, the work of designers and typographers consisted in providing
the printer (lead typesetting) or the operator (phototypesetting) with a set of stylistic rules and constraints that defined the template of a book and the characteristics of the blocks of type. Coding in CSS consists of providing this same information to the web browser«.
32 In a second article in this same publication, we argued that in this sense, the DTP era was ultimately just a parenthesis in the history of graphic design, a specific moment during which there was no longer a strict separation between page layout and text layout.
33 Current programming practices, particularly when it comes to web technologies, therefore invite us to write a new page in the history of graphic design, rooted in the long history of its technical evolution.
Whereas ten years ago, code practices were relatively rare in the landscape of graphic design in France, they are much more present today, focusing on specific registers. Some of the projects cited in this text have now formed a school of thought, and the practices of OSP, LUST, and G.U.I. are widely cited by art school students as references. Thus, in recent years, a community and a culture of graphic design who use programming has formed, one that is relatively specific to Western Europe, with a real and growing synergy between France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Holland. While they experienced difficulties when it came to establishing a place in this landscape, web design and web-to-print now find a particular echo in these communities, forging a movement recognizable by its attention to »artisanal« practices supported by the challenges of open source culture, and those specific to the fluidity of the Web.
So graphic designers code in order to be closer to the mediums for reading and communication with which they work. They contribute to extending the field of practices of graphic design, pursuing a movement that began in the era of phototypesetting and that already signaled »the gradual enlarging of [the typographer’s] prerogatives far beyond the simple management of the typographic sign, to the very extensive field of graphic design, associated in the second half of the century with a global mastery of visual communication, and the multiple forms of encounter between text and image«.
34 At the same time, these coding practices contribute to overcoming approaches arising from graphic interface software, which led graphic designers to adopt
computers as their main tool in the early 1990s. However, outside of the Web, this culture of programming in graphic design is struggling to develop, as it has a very limited audience. Apart from the aforementioned examples of Prototypo and TexTuring, programs and tools dedicated to a specific project or task are difficult for non-programmers to appropriate, as they remain attached to the direct manipulation that graphic interfaces allow. In order to
open up digital culture to a greater number of graphic designers, it is therefore necessary to consider hybrid approaches that allow the relationships between code, tools, and graphic design to be understood in a collective manner.
About Creative Coding with Talia Cotton
Weaver 2023
Based in New York City, educator, designer and coder Talia Cotton is the Founder and Creative Director of technology-driven agency and design consultancy, Cotton Design. Created after Cotton’s stint at Pentagram Design where she developed algorithmic and data-driven brand identities and websites, this relatively newcreative company prides themselves on »pioneering the possibilities of designing with code [and] pursuing inherently purposeful work«.
I feel incredibly blessed to have interviewed Talia, the concepts, perspectives and principles of how not just herself, but her company approaches code in the context of design has been incredibly inspiring, and I hope you enjoy reading this just as much as I did. So, without further ado, meet Talia Cotton of Cotton Design.
Amber Weaver: Hi Talia, it’s a pleasure to speak with you! Cotton is a brand new agency, and I’d love to know more about its conception.
Talia Cotton: TYPEONE team, the pleasure is all mine! If someone had told me I’d be leaving Pentagram and starting an agency but three months before the launch of Cotton, I would have had a good laugh, immediately followed by an extended crisis. I never wanted to start an agency; I practically had to.
The inception of Cotton came following a period of a couple of years of traveling internationally giving talks about my work as a designer/coder. In the process, I had the privilege to meet and hear from a wide range of audiences: from students to CEOs, designers to developers, in small group settings and thousand-seater venues. I noticed a catch-22 in the design world:
more and more designers were graduating with a knowledge and passion for coding. Likewise,
more and more client companies were becoming digital-first or driven by technology. In contrast, I also noticed that studios were scrambling to understand how to guide technology-driven projects. It’s a skill that takes years of exposure to become an expert at, and there was a lot of bewilderment around it.
Meanwhile, I had been coding for as long as I had been designing. I developed those skills in tandem. I had also been leading many projects in design and code for a variety of professional clients. I knew I had the rare background needed to lead the charge on the new medium.
So I lept way out of my small comfort zone at Pentagram and started Cotton, because it was clear to me that the design industry was craving the experienced direction I was in the unique position to offer within this emerging medium.
AW: When you established the agency, what were some of its core values and how were they informed?
TC: Cotton has five core values, which are all informed by the nature of the design & code industry:
1) Make meaningful work. It’s so easy in creative coding to impress people with fancy moving graphics and »cool« looking things—mostly because it’s still a novelty to most. To us, that’s a design flaw. In contrast, we think that coding creates a whole new realm of possibilities for design. If we were to stop at cool graphics, we’d be missing out on a world of potential. That’s now how boundaries are broken. That’s why we’re committed to using code to make meaningful work. We don’t see enough of it, and feel it is our duty to set the standard.
2) Be open to—and ready for—change. This one has two values in disguise, addressing both openness and readiness. »Openness« is a response to the world around us. To be a good designer is to be open-minded, to challenge personal biases, and to be able to design for any and all audiences no matter how different they are from you. »Readiness« stems from the nature of the tech industry. New technologies emerge overnight, and as designers who are also technologists, we need to see them coming, and to be ready.
3) Value others’ perspectives. This one relates to both design and development. In terms of design, we want to remember that our clients know their product or company better than we ever will. If we spend months on an idea to be told by a non-designer that it is bad, then that is a perspective we should value. In terms of development, we believe that just as everyone creates differently, so too does everyone code differently. When coding is a design medium as it is for us, we value peoples’ diverse ways of coding as part of the creative process.
4) If we are not enjoying the process, we reassess. This principle is simple: When we love what we do, our work comes out better. Something designers can own that is rare in other professions is that our profession is founded on a love for our practice. This is even more applicable to designers who code. Whoever chooses to pursue coding does so because they’re in love with the cycle of frustration and victory. We were founded on this love. If we don’t love it, we’re doing something wrong.
5) Uphold excellence for its own sake. It’s easy to get away with just 90 %. Excellence, on the other hand, takes time and patience. As such, excellence requires a self-governing appetite. We pursue excellence in our work not because people ask us to or for external validation, but for its own sake. Everyone on our team takes pleasure from making good work.
AW: Cotton fuses design and technology in pursuit of purposeful work, what kind of technology are you using, and how are you applying it to design work?
TC: When we talk about technology as being meaningful, we are referring to the various functions that coding affords, and what that means for design. For example, using one of several serverless databases, a design can be community-driven. Using web sockets, a design can be conversational. Using interaction through JS events, a design can be relatable. Using APIs and databases, a design can be ever-changing, or always relevant. Using random generation, a design can represent the masses. The list goes on and on. We have our own tested philosophies—the above included—for what’s possible, but most importantly, we hope to continue discovering new ways, either through our own work or by inspiring others to do the same.
To address the part of the question about technology, most of our work ends up being web-based for easy sharing, even if it isn’t a website. For that reason, we work mostly in Javascript.
AW: What’s your software workflow when coding, and why does it work for you?
TC: People are surprised when I tell them that many of my projects are composed of vanilla Javascript. P5 is the only library that I use on occasion, but even that I tend to avoid because it can be heavy. And frameworks are rare. To me, the best designs are the simplest designs. All they need is a strong concept. As far as workflow goes, unlike teams that separate the design and development process, I dive into code as quickly in the design process as possible. Just as when you
move a sketch pen-and-paper into something digital it starts to fell different, the same works for a sketch that is static and then coded.
When it comes to other software, I do often use Figma for getting information about elements that I’m turning into code, especially more complex ones like shapes with bezier curves.
AW: What is Cotton’s approach to creative coding in the context of graphic design?
TC: To get really academic, our approach comes from a concentrated awareness of the oxymoronic nature of »coding as design«:
Where creative coding is different from every single other field of design is that in creative coding, the designer is always forced to sacrifice their control over the final output to a certain degree. The output is either impacted by input from the user, values generated by the computer, or numbers dictated by external data. As a result, so much of creative coding that exists today is experimental. Perhaps it is fun, beautiful, or exploratory, but it is often without purpose. In contrast, »design« by definition, is executed with intention. The notion of sacrifice is constitutionally contradictory to the very definition of design.
In business, clients rarely want something that is simply cool; they want something that works—whether it’s to sell a product, tell a story, catch the attention of a certain audience, or better reflect their values.
This is where our approach thrives. In a sentence, we are a rare design and technology agency where the design stems from the formal and strategic branding background, and as such, the creative coding is controlled. My personal skills in design and coding were developed in tandem, and as a result, both are firmly interconnected in our work; our design is made with code; our code is the powerful medium to design.
AW: What are some of its most interesting capabilities of code that you’ve experimented with?
TC: Over the years, I’ve developed a methodology that encompasses five principles for designing with code that we use to inform our work. That is, five ways that coding can enhance design in both form and function:
1) Coding can make design automated. Coding can automate design processes, and execute a very large number of tasks almost immediately.
2) Coding can make design interactive. Design can respond to the input of the user or group of users.
3) Coding can make design data-driven. Design can respond to a live or static dataset.
4) Coding can make design generative. Design can use controlled random values to create many variations on a theme within a system.
5) Coding can make design adaptable. A design can be changed systematically by its viewer or device.
While these tools are powerful, it’s important to note that they are just the first step in making strong work. The hard work begins in deciding when to use each method, and understanding the subtleties and implications to make each one successful. Ultimately, the work we strive for involves utilizing each method to bring added meaning to the design on a deeper level, that perhaps color and typography also fall short of doing.
AW: What has been your most exciting client project (that you can talk about), that utilized creative coding to date?
TC: Guilty by Association was one of my favorite projects I’ve worked on, mostly because it is a concise demonstration of my designing-with-code philosophy: that code as a design medium not only creates new possibilities in form, but can give a design an added underlying meaning that sole typography and color cannot possibly achieve on their own.
GBR is an arts organization that is on a mission to give a platform to underrepresented and undiscovered artists—many of whom are minorities—so as to make the art world more fair and more equal. When they approached me for the design work, I said to myself that I couldn’t possibly fairly design something that is supposed to represent many different people from backgrounds that I haven’t lived or discovered, because no matter how much research I do into it, it will still have my bias embedded within it. Using code as part of the design solution helped to overcome this. The design solution is made to look like a person grabbed a writing utensil of choice and scribbled, doodled, or scratched the letters »GBR« onto any surface, whether it’s the corner of their notebook or a large billboard… and the handwriting is different every single time the logo is seen. What makes the mark so interesting is that I am surrendering its actual creation to the code that makes it, so I have practically no control over how the letters are drawn; whether someone chooses to make their »B« curly or their »A« pointy is now no longer in my hands as the designer, and instead can metaphorically stand for someone who don’t even know exists.
To go back to the design philosophy, since the mark is generated with code, it allows the design to represent many people from different backgrounds without added bias of the designer. The GBR design system demonstrates only one way that code as a design medium can enhance a design at its core, but I firmly believe that there are so many more ways that we have to discover.
AW: Previously, you developed algorithmic and data-driven brand identities and websites at Pentagram Design, what were some of the highlights of those projects?
TC: I loves the work I did at Pentagram because they attract a diverse clientele with interesting design challenges. I loves the work I did with Giorgia because I got to gather and work with data. I loved the work I did with Michael because literally everything we ever got to make was beautiful. I was given full autonomy over the projects I led, mostly because my skill was so specialized. I don’t have any standout project outputs that come to mind because they were all a delight in their own ways. Instead, the projects that stand out are those by which I learned something about myself or my process. Here are two of them.
One example was when I was working on the Plastic Air interactive data project for Google Arts and Culture. While the output is definitely something I’m proud of, that project stands out to me as one that marks an important moment of self-discovery. I was the only designer and developer on the project, and I led the data collection for that project as well. It was for Google, which at that time sounded scary to me (even though I had already done work for them, go figure). The design was ambitious, and I was PETRIFIED that I wouldn’t be able to do it. Looking back, I view that as my »blood sweat and tears« project. I remember distinctly the first moment I had a breakthrough in the coding, when I first had the feeling of »I got this.« That project ultimately reaffirmed to me that everything is possible—both in code, and in personal ambition.
Another example was a project that never got released, but through which I learned perhaps my most valuable coding lesson. We were designing the exhibition graphics for the MIT Museum, and I was on the project for a short period to sketch some concepts that used coding. (A dream, indeed!) At a certain point, I was sharing my work with one of the lead developers at MIT for review, and he was so enthused by my work that he exclaimed we make it open source so that people can see the code behind it. At the time, I didn’t understand why that would be interesting. »The design is what people will want to see!« I protested. He proceeded to explain that what’s interesting about it is how I got there. »There are people behind code,« he said, »and within the code are peoples’ biases, lived experiences, and ways of learning.« Through that project, I learned that the code itself is beautiful.
It’s reassuring to me that most memorable moments at Pentagram had, in retrospect, very little to do with the agency itself, but rather the people for whom I got to create work. That’s an opportunity that I will take with me everywhere, through Cotton, and beyond.
AW: With the rise of AI, Blockchain and new technologies, where do you see creative coding fitting into the graphic design industry over the next 5-10 years?
TC: Creative coding is here to stay, for now. Generally speaking, with the rise of technology comes a rise in designers who design for and with that technology. That’s a truth that has defined our industry since its very beginning. The invention of movable type is a heavily quoted example. The release of the first personal computer is another good one. So as these
new technologies drive more of the workforce, design will follow.
Creative coding is no different. It is now simply another medium that creates new possibilities for creation, which creates new outputs. It will remain current until the next evolution of technology comes through, which may not be in our lifetime. What remains constant are the fundamental principles for how to effectively communicate information using visual techniques—known to many of us as the principles of communication design.
If I’m being realistic, where creative coding is different is that it has a steeper learning curve than other forms of design, but I don’t believe that will make it less relevant. I just think it will just be in higher demand.
AW: Lastly, if someone was interested in learning creative coding, where is a good place to start? And do you have any tips for them?
TC:
Learning creative coding is like learning a new language. You can take as many language classes as you can afford, but the best way to learn it is to immerse yourself in a place that only speaks that language. Sure, you’ll fight through uncomfortable grammatical sentences and make a few mistakes, but you’ll be learning out of necessity. And it works.
Coding is no different. There are several launchpads for how to start front-end coding (the Coding Train, SuperHi, YouTube tutorials) but I would suggest to use them only as a place to get started. What online coding tutorials teach is just that: how to code. They don’t teach you how to design well, nor do they give you opportunities to make useful design work. Coding quickly becomes frivolous without the anchor of design.
For this reason, I recommend students quickly move to self-imposed (or if they’re in design school, instructor-assigned) design prompts through which to explore coding. Design a music poster. Design a logo. Design an exhibition wall. Do everything you would for a typical design project, but do it in code. Through that, students will discover and learn, and ideally, their work will become more meaningful.
From there, I encourage students to ask for feedback from friends and colleagues. From there, the hard work begins. Students will soon find out that it becomes less about making the code work, and more about making a design that works.
Learning to code through the design will happen automatically.
Lastly, by the time this article is published, if all goes well, I will have announced Design Program: an in-person design-slash-coding school in New York. We’ll be offering intro to coding workshops, as well as Crit Classes, which are aimed at helping students develop »real-world« coding work for their portfolios. Design Program stemmed from the substantial number of inquiries I get to teach, and the growing number of designers who are looking to get into code.
AW: Thank you Talia for this insight!