Monday, June 11, 2007
Paul Rand: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
Paul Rand: From Lascaux to Brooklyn
Like a lot of people, my first few years as a designer were spent imitating other designers, and poorly at that. In retrospect, I think a lot of that was because of my myopic view of design- my work wasn't great because I didn't understand design in the greater context of art and visual communication. It wasn't until my sophomore art history class that my eyes were opened.
Like a lot of students, I wasn't really looking forward to taking art history because it's a lot of memorization, but after a week or so I was hooked. I became aware of architecture, and realized how much it has in common with graphic design. Sure, I'd heard the big names before, but without the professor to guide my along, I never quite made the connections. As obvious as it seems in retrospect, I never realized that Le Corbusier and Brockmann were doing the same thing in two different media, that Tschichold and Gropius were two manifestations of the same idea.
Modernist painters also threw me for a loop. Like a lot of people, I had always just disregarded abstract and non-representational art as self-indulgent hogwash. By studying it in the context of the cultural environment that spawned it, as well as in the context of the styles that came before and after, I came to understand what made it so special. I remember the exact moment when the instructor brought up a slide of "The City" by Leger... I'm pretty sure I actually let out a little squeal. That was the painting that showed me the power of of abstraction, of communicating more by saying less.
I could go on forever, but the point is that a year of art history made me grow more as a designer than anything before or since. The proof of this approach is in the pudding- my work is ten times better.
Rand's book takes the reader on the same journey that I took, looking at work from the earliest recorded visual art (the Lascaux cave paintings), to graffiti in Brooklyn. In exquisitely concise language, he draws parallels between something as simple as a painted fisherman's bouy and contemporary graphic design, often by articulating in a single sentence what people like me take years to realize.
Some examples:
"One quickly realizes that simplicity and geometry are the language of timelessness and universality."
"Modest subject matter, modest means, and modest talent do not always prevent an artifact from offering an aesthetic experience to the viewer."
"The quality of a picture is measured not by how much it adheres to nature but by how far it departs from it."
The book is a fascinating exploration of graphic design as the latest chapter in the history of visual communication. Rather than try to sum up everything Rand says in the book, which would surely fall short of capturing his brilliant insights, I'll point to its impact on my work.
I spent a lot of time doing my best to imitate people like Buck and Shilo (as I'm sure many of us have), usually with lackluster results. The reason why my imitations of their style fall flat (aside from my lack of talent) is that they arrived at that style as the sum of their experiences and influences, while I was just going through the motions, aping their specific stylistic touches without any regard for the content.
Too many people do just that: empty formalism that emulates a style without linking it to the content. "From Lascaux to Brooklyn" is an incredible book because it's nothing less than a guide for a designer to find his or her own voice. I only wish I would have discovered this book ten years ago, although it would have been over my head at the time.
The book couldn't be any more relevant in today's postmodern world. Digital tools allow us to acquire, manipulate, and layer imagery, sounds, and motion like never before. The designer today is less a craftsman, creating elements from raw clay, than a collage artist that assembles existing assets, creating new meaning by juxtaposing the meanings of those elements. Only by deeply understanding the history of all these assets - social, political, cultural, and economic context- can the postmodern designer create meaningful work.
Labels: books, graphic design
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