Design Observer Review 10/9

Wassup, Beatrice
by Lorraine Wild

After having read Beatrice Ward's "Crystal Goblet", this article by Wild makes sense. Ward's original essay likens good design work to a transparent wine glass, where the design is the glass and the content is the wine. In some ways, I can agree with this; good design certainly takes time and craftsmanship to streamline the central ideas. After some time working with a piece, a designer should feel that they have reached a point where the elements of their design has reached a harmonious state of clarity and aesthetic. That being said, I side with Wild's rebuttal in thinking that good design is not "invisible", as good as Wild's analogy may be (margins = stemware... okay, maybe).

Ward goes too far in setting design apart from art, in a way that makes it seem like she's feigning humility in order to enjoy some kind of inside joke in which designers are superior in reasoning to "emotional" painters. Wild, in her response, parodies "This is a Printing Office" in an attempt to vent her own frustrations about prevalant attitudes about design. Her point is valid, that though Ward's conviction (or "assuredness" as she calls it) about design is inspiring, it seems to fall short in today's world of Flash web design, free font sites, and 300-foot digital billboards in Times Square. I think many modern-day designers struggle with the restrictions and implications of our work that Wild expresses: unreasonable deadlines, fickle technology, eccentric/demanding clients, and the insulting notion designers might not be worthy of the scared title of "artist". I believe some design can be beautiful even when separated from the content (although never totally divorced, lest it should abandon its motivation). If taking a printed page from a book and framing it to hang on a wall is a "mutilation", as Beatrice suggests, then I aspire to be a typographic serial killer.