Dialogue Exhibition

Last night I attended the opening night of Dialogue, an exhibition from two LCA Students who go by the name of Yoke (more here).

The idea was that people would submit screen printable work to them that they believe reflected communication to them. One persons work would then be screen printed on top of another persons work, thus bringing creative people together and giving a new way to start conversation between people.

I think the idea was excellent. However, I noticed that the work wasn't labelled with the names of the people who created it, which seems like a bit of a flaw to me, as that would've made it easier for people to talk to each other.

Whilst the work on display was massively varied because of how various people had interpreted the brief, I find it difficult to call the work "design", and more "art" because of how it was displayed in a manner where it's only use was to be seen.

This being said, there were some really nice pieces of work, and I think it demonstrated the difficulty in trying to balance a concept with the aesthetic, which was the main thing I took from the exhibition.

They had also produced some postcard sized prints that people could takeaway. I picked up the two below, as they made sense to me in terms of the brief, as well as looking nice.

Manifesto

We had a session yesterday about being able to identify ourselves as an individual designer from the work you do and how you do it, and how this can be summed up in a manifesto. We had two 3rd year students come in and present their manifestos to us to show us a more literal example of what a manifesto is. 

We were paired up and told to discuss our opinions on design and the issues surrounding it, then to come up with 5 points that we both agree on and then try and work following the rules set by those points.

The 5 points my partner and I came up with were as follows:

1. Work you do should be able to be appriciated by everyone but understood only fully understood by other designers, as this shows a level of skill, as opposed to something anyone could've done.
2. When collaborating work to the same level and intensity as you would do if you were working on your own, as you don't want to let anyone else down.
3. Try and avoid anything of a pretentious nature that borders on fine art. Fine art should be separate to graphic design.
4. Stick to the grid system. It makes things work.
5. Experimentation should be encouraged and not criticised when/if it fails.

We were then set a task. In our pairs we have to produce a piece of work that Ian Anderson, founder of Creative Review, would want to keep forever. We have to stick to our 5 rules.

We came up with this.

First Things First Manifesto

The First Things First manifesto was written 29 November 1963 and published in 1964 by Ken Garland. It was backed by over 400 graphic designers and artists and also received the backing of Tony Benn, radical left-wing MP and activist, who published it in its entirety in the Guardian newspaper.

Reacting against a rich and affluent Britain of the 1960s, it tried to re-radicalise design which had become lazy and uncritical. Drawing on ideas shared by Critical Theory, the Frankfurt School and the counter-culture of the time it explicitly re-affirmed the belief that Design is not a neutral, value-free process.

It rallied against the consumerist culture that was purely concerned with buying and selling things and tried to highlight a Humanist dimension to graphic design theory. It was later updated and republished with a new group of signatories as the First Things First 2000 manifesto.

The First Things First 2000 manifesto, launched by Adbusters magazine in 1999, was an updated version of the earlier manifesto. The 2000 manifesto was signed by a group of 33 figures from the international graphic design community, many of them well known, and simultaneously published in Adbusters (Canada), Emigre (Issue 51)[1] and AIGA Journal of Graphic Design (United States), Eye magazine no. 33 vol. 8, Autumn 1999,[2] Blueprint (Britain) and Items (Netherlands). The manifesto was subsequently published in many other magazines and books around the world, sometimes in translation. Its aim was to generate discussion about the graphic design profession's priorities in the design press and at design schools. Some designers welcomed this attempt to reopen the debate, while others rejected the manifesto.

The question of value-free design has been continually contested in the graphic design community between those who are concerned about the need for values in design and those who believe it should be value-free.[3][4] Those who believe that design can be free from values reject the idea that graphic designers should concern themselves with underlying political questions. Those who are concerned about values believe that designers should be critical and take a stand in their choice of work, for instance by not promoting industries and products perceived to be harmful. Examples of projects that might be classified as unacceptable include many forms of advertising and designs for cigarette manufacturers, arms companies and so on. Adbusters has been a significant outlet for these ideas, especially in its commitment to detournement and culture jamming.