November 3, 1994: Vol26n9: VIEWPOINT: A New Generation of Designers

By BILL KINSER
Reprinted with permission of Step-by-Step Graphics, copyright 1994,
Volume 10, No. 3, 6000 North Forest Park Dr., Peoria, Illinois 61614,
(800) 255-8800.

I wrote the broadsheet, not as a manifesto, but as a response to my
students' work: what they are doing, how they are doing it, why they
are likely the first of a new generation of designers.
	For one thing, I feel they have more respect for words than
previous generations of design students had and the present generation
of designers have. I've found that most of them aren't fond of, for
instance, designers like April Greiman who began using computers
rather late in their careers. My students don't particularly like
their work because, according to them, the words are unreadable and
illegible. Also, because they are so adept with computers, computer
tricks simply don't intrigue them. This is certainly not an attack on
Ms. Greiman by a bunch of snotty-nosed, arrogant students. They all
can see the quality of her work.
	I think that the students respond this way partly because they
have given up on the fine arts, indeed on the visual arts as a guide
to design, as they find their own way. Perhaps it's a more
conservative way, or perhaps they are simply returning to older
conventions, when designers were hired to stage words rather than to
obscure them in favor of visual drama. If this is so, we do have a new
set of designers, one that might intrigue you.
	I don't know what these changes mean. Maybe you do. We are,
however, developing a unique curriculum, a new way to teach -- out of
necessity, perhaps, rather than out of any genius on our part.
	Well, here we are again, trying to make sense of, find forms
for, and discover a useful theory for a new communication technology.
Like Jenson in 1465, Aldo Manucci in 1488, William Morris in 1890, El
Lissitzky in 1920, and William Paley in 1930 and 1940, we're still
stumbling around in the dark. But, just for now, try this.
	In the mid '80s, some of us predicted a design revolution
driven by the computer. We said revolution, but we meant evolution.
With hindsight, we can see that what is happening now is all perfectly
logical, and obvious, and that it's just the beginning.
	One of the things we should have expected was the shift from
an emphasis on visual art to a new kind of writing, albeit one that
includes visual communication. This is the beginning of a new kind of
design because computers demand digital logic, not analogical logic --
the detailed, linear, step-by-step logic of words, not the sensuous,
spatial logic of the artist. And the new media -- hypermedia and
telematics -- demand a knowledge of scripting, an affinity for
programming languages, an affinity for the logic of language.
	In this postmodern world, computer-educated designers return
to the logic of writing as a primary process, a way of thinking
instead of looking to the visual arts. And I consider our present
design students the first generation to practice what we think of as
the new writing.
	Writing can be defined as the invisible process by which
writers string words together to give meaning to the world, and as the
formal marking of words (read ideas) on paper (now on screen) for the
purpose of presenting them in other places and at other times. In the
past, words were sometimes complemented by images chosen to clarify or
illustrate in concrete form meaning left vague by words alone. This is
in contrast to the notion many moderns entertain -- that visual
statements are primary (pictures being worth 10,000 words and all
that).
	Communication technology chooses the communicator, not vice
versa. As we think in our spoken language, we define reality one way.
And as we think in a technological communication language, we define
reality another way.
	There is a kind of "law of least resistance" at work here. We
will want to do what the language in which we think makes it most
comfortable to do. On a simple level, we will design what is easiest
to design today, with today's tools, and that will be acceptable
design.
	The old, art-centered design methods will necessarily fall by
the wayside.
	Most designers working today are sensualists. We love objects.
We love the shape of an old car, the glint on the edge of an enameled
tin, the rough, pebbly surface on a piece of watercolor paper in the
glancing sunlight of the late afternoon.
	Like fine artists we were always involved with objects: paper,
pencils, colors in different lights, textures....We were artists
because we had to be and because our tools demanded it. Remember how
it was in the old days? Remember the feel of a 2B pencil on layout
paper, the small joys of a well-executed felt tip comp or beautifully
kerned type, our delight in a press proof on Kromecote, the smell of
the ink?
	And from the beginning we directed our attention toward the
final, perfect, finished, visual object. We worked from sketch to
finish, from general shapes to completed shapes; like an artist at his
canvas, we moved around the pad, refining this, touching up that. Even
those gray lines representing type were just visual elements, never
actual words. What we did was all physical, all hand-eye coordination.
	To the computer-trained designer, the object is a temporary
event, not the goal. Looking at it through his or her eyes, all those
beautiful objects look so -- well, so decorative, so refined. So much
labor devoted to realizing an object, which, after all, is only one of
an infinite number of variations. Printing, film, and videotape are
objectifications of thought. If talking is like writing on water, then
using computers is like writing on air; the designer's thought doesn't
exist as objects unless he or she wants it to. The computer encourages
infinite flexibility, and more than ever before keeps the work in the
realm of thought -- as it has always been for writers.
	For our student designers, nothing is finished until it is set
in type, or recorded on tape. And even then, what is finished today
still exists in the ephemeral space of the computer's memory. It
exists, not in the tactile, objectified sense, but almost as a
theoretical work -- an idea halfway between gnosis and praxis, on one
edge or the other of completion, waiting in pieces to be resurrected
and modified tomorrow, as print, as tape, as hyperstack.
	So what if the type isn't perfectly kerned. It's a temporary
condition. Someone will develop perfect kerning tables someday soon.
Tomorrow is another day and another revision. And who can afford
Kromecote in these times of rolling revisions and replacements?
	Our students begin and end their college careers in front of
computers. They sit in front of that barren bluish glow like clerks in
a typing pool or monks in their cells.
	They choose, erase, move, crop, paint, step forward and back.
They scan and click and drag and rubber stamp. They do it in the
precise order demanded by the machine. Some wouldn't know a T-square
from a hammer except for the requirements of one production course.
Manual skills are redundant. So our best students tend to be those
with intellectual, abstracting, prowess rather than artistic skills.
	Of course, we are in a stage here at UB that's a little ahead
of most schools that teach design. We've been working with computers
since 1978 so maybe we see results that are a little different than
those produced elsewhere. Computers are completely integrated into our
program. From the first course to the last, our students work almost
exclusively on computers. They take courses in Freehand, Director,
Photoshop, Supercard, and XPress. This year we introduced a course in
telematics. These are not software training courses, but courses in
which technology is integrated into the design process.
	Electronic calligraphy might be a good metaphor for what we
are doing today: ephemeral, personal, idiosyncratic -- something that
contradicts the very idea of standardization and mass production. Like
early calligraphy, much of our student work tends to give words the
dominant, and images the subordinate, role. This is because
computer-based design begins with content and meaning, as defined by
words, rather than with a visual idea, to be embellished with words.
But, of course, much of their work still resembles the old design --
evolution is never instantaneous. Perhaps the next generation will
completely break free from the old. And in some ways, that's too bad.
     
Bill Kinser is associate professor of art at UB.