Unpacking What Good Design Means to Me
What happens when I attempt to analyze what I like and what I find appealing?
The hardest thing to ask yourself is why.
That’s what I am attempting to unpack with my design manifesto.
For my first visual design assignment, I have started to think about the arenas I’ve inhabited as a designer. My background allowed me to gain exposure to designing for print and digital spaces, but I never really fed myself in a way that allowed me to creatively problem solve in these roles.
This is going to involve a bit of an archeological survey and reflection on where my design roots are, and figure out a way to creatively present it. Here is my diary of that process.
Wednesday, February 3, 2021
The concept of purpose and what I set out to do has been on my mind a lot lately. I was always looking for intention in my work, but it feels a bit like grasping at air, looking for a thing that isn’t fully formed and that I don’t have the expertise to will into existence.
In trying to make sense of this, I decided that I wanted to create an inspiration that would live on my online portfolio. This is an idea I got from Alexa Herasimchuk where she catalogues artists and creatives who have inspired her along the way as well as videos. I like the idea of paying homage to those who inspire us and whose work we admire.
It wasn’t until this morning that I started to think about how Alexa’s page might inspire my manifesto, and so it made sense for me to start with something that looks like a mess map to try and distill some of the works I like and what goes into them.
I set a timer for a minute and let myself free-associate what I thought good design is. I then went back and gave each word a color, separating it into four categories:
- Blue — Functional
- Red — Essential
- Green — What it can be
- Purple — Design Goals
After I went back and annotated the list I added a second set of words off of the bubbles and also looked for connections between them. This was my final result.
This gave me a good foundation for what I think good design is at its core, and I wrote a few statements in Microsoft Word to crystalize my thoughts and give me a place to start.
Coming from a background where I write a lot, I was also very aware that these thoughts needed time to marinate, so I resolved to return to them tomorrow after reading some manifestos and seeking out a few from literary journals to see if that could lend any additional influence.
Thursday February 4, 2021
As I expected I hated what I wrote down yesterday; not in sentiment but in craft. So, after reading the manifestos assigned I started thinking about how they presented their intention.
I noticed one stark difference between what the authors of the manifestos seek to do and what I am trying to do. They are parts of a larger movement. These manifestos may have been penned by someone, but there were other influences driving them. In a way, that’s not unlike my thoughts on inspiration from yesterday. After all, all of these movements were looking at the world around them and responding to it.
In the Typephoto manifesto particularly interesting, since there is a perfunctory moment when the author states what’s wrong with type today and how their movement can fix it. This is what I feel that a good manifesto should do, make observations and then attempt to present a solution.
The manifestos we read sound a lot like the about us or submission pages I often find on literary magazines. While some give a summary of the magazine’s founding and what their editorial vision or mission is, some of them turn and make it a very artful experience to read.
With all this in mind I returned to my word document and started toying with my prose for the manifesto.
Version 2 ends up reading a little more like a poem. Still on one page, and very short, but it gets the point across. In the moment, I really like the direction this is taking, but I’m going to wait another day before I decide if I want to move forward with it.
Friday, February 5, 2021
I am still okay with what I have written so far for my manifesto. Taking into consideration how I’ve laid it out in a word document I’ve begun thinking about how I might translate it into a visual medium. To assist with that I’ve drawn a few content maps.
The top left is one that I imagine would also be easy to translate into an accessible web page. The design would be set up in five stages, each depicting a different series of words. I am not sure I need the numbers on the left side, they may not add anything to the overall effect of the manifesto.
The top right is a bit more artful and aesthetic. I imagine a big idea in the center and then a word cloud of sorts behind it.
The last one puts the pieces together a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. To be honest, this feels like the most cluttered solution to me, and I am not sure I’ll be experimenting with that this week.
My next steps will be coming up with a color palette. To do that, I started thinking about a mood board, and for that I turned to Pinterest.
I’ve never been one to really make aesthetic boards, but since this is supposed to be about what I think design should be I started trying to curate some influences from my life. Recently that’s been Doctor Who, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and Wynonna Earp. Taking those screenshots I started to think about what aesthetics might compliment them, and I gravitated toward witchy/supernatural aesthetics.
Those aesthetics also tended to include other things that have been coming up in my life as well such as gothic novels and tarot cards.
To top off the mood board, I browsed some fonts and color swatches, before adding and removes pieces as necessary.
What I gained from this was understanding that this would probably be a “dark” theme with light text and embellishments and that I would likely be leaning into some whimsy to make this manifesto truly embody who I am.
Saturday February 6, 2021
Feeling confident to start laying things out on the page.
I spent some time adding more pins to the mood board last night and I have a nice breadth of material to work with now and what I think is a slightly more cohesive aesthetic.
Going into layout and working with this board, I am realizing that one of my assumptions was wrong. I thought darkness dominated the board, but I think that I could use an off-white or even paper texture and get an affect that fits this aesthetic.
I decided to do this assignment in Photoshop, although I think if I was truly designing for print I would likely make all or part of it in Illustrator.
To start off, I looked for paper textures on Unsplash. I eventually found this one by Henry and Co. I laid that down and sized it to fit a letter sheet. I then placed the text on it, and several boxes set to multiply at 75% to get an idea of how the piece would look on the page. I set each box to be various colors selected from the mood board.
I was not a fan of the stark white so I used Gaussian blur at a 2.6 setting and blurred it three times, then duplicated the layer and added a sepia-toned filter
While I liked it enough so far but the text was too plain. I used Adobe Typekit to locate a horror font called Sybarite and two type-style fonts. For the roman numerals I used Westsac, and for the text itself I used LiebeRuth.
I increased the roman numeral size to 24 pts and that seemed to bring slightly more cohesion to how the typefaces looked against each other.
Sunday February 7, 2021
After sitting with this for a day I realized that the blocks were way too thick and heavy, I wanted an overall lighter feel so instead I made “tabs” of color that would pair with each section.
I then aligned each section to go right and left. This layout suited my overall goals well because it allowed for the background to add some movement.
I did feel like there was too much white space in the center though and decided that some faded arrows might help lend direction. I found this pack from Adobe Stock.
I downloaded an SVG file, and proceeded to past different arrows in at different angles and manipulate them using the free-transform tool.
I didn’t want them to take center stage compared to my words, so I took the opacity down to between 25 and 40 percent depending on color.
After that I started playing with glyphs and the way that different words were displayed. I made some words italics, some bold, and underlined others.
I also decided to add some weight to the bottom right hand corner, summarizing the main points of the manifesto.
I decided to eliminate one of the fonts at this point, and use Westac for the main title and the bottom right hand corner.
I then increased the size of the roman numerals to be 36 from 24 points. I also added line padding at 36 points and I made a few text changes.
I also toned down the arrows a little bit more, hoping to get them a little bit subtler.
Looking at these again I realized that the final point should have its own tab as well, and I tweaked the placement just a little and extended the rectangles down the entire side. I think this made the final product flow a little more.
Final Thoughts
This was an interesting exercise. I had been thinking about who I am as a designer and my role in the process, but not about design itself. The thing this project and this week’s readings unearthed for me is that as much as I love working in design; I ultimately have to create things that can stand on their own.
I think that my background as a writer will help in this endeavor. As a writer, I am constantly sending things out to be judged. It’s made me very good with rejection and with critique of my work, but it can still be hard, at times to not invest myself completely in the project I’m working on.
Having this manifesto will be a good reminder as to what I need to keep in mind, and I am very interested in seeing everyone else’s thoughts on design.
