33 Ideas

by Jennifer Morla
Jenny Holzer, the preeminent artist who created her soul-searching "truisms",
made us conscious of the human condition by revealing our frailties:

"Action causes more trouble than thought"

These six truisms make us consider our collective moral conscious. As

1. Design does not live in an aesthetic vacuum. Design is influenced by and influences contemporary society.
2. Design brings content into focus: design makes function visible.
3.  Deign is not solely a marketing device that supports consumerism. It can be a communicator of dissent, it
can market ideology. It can affect change.
4. Design must surprise and inform. Make the ordinary extraordinary.
5. Design can be seductive propaganda. It is our responsibility to be knowledgeable about what we asked to
communicate. We need to make educated choices about what type of work we are willing ot do. Make
decisions educated decisions.
6. Design has a rather symbiotic relationship with style, and style is somewhat precarious. What looks great
today may look silly in 15 years, and maybe if you're extremely lucky and talented, it will look good again
in 20. Great design is, quite simply, innovation that reflects the spirit of an era and becomes a classic
because of its timeless appeal.
7. Question the need for any peice of print communication. It is the most elementary way of protecting the
environment. Often, the communication be executed in a much more meaningful way which goes beyond
traditional design vehicles.
8. Respect the power of printing. A piece of paper doesn't necessarily go away. THAT message, THAT
image, with your name proudly credited in four point type, may last decades. A humbling thought.
9. Multiplicity works. Sol Lewitt knew it when he lined up 100 white boxes on a floor. Bruce Mao knew it
when he put hundreds of big, grainy pictures back to back for Rem Koolhass, and the Gap knows it when
they fill their windows with hundreds of kids' sneakers.
10. Design that moves others comes from issues that move you.
11. Find your own voice. By experimenting, by allowing the time to experiment, and by taking risks. Which is
why being in school is a luxury. School allows you the structured time to research, analyze, synthesize,
ideate, strategize and create. Which is what being a designer is all about.
12. No design is completely original, we are all influenced by the bombardment of visual information we are
exposed to on a daily basis. But understand that influence and plagiarism are two different things.
13. A good designer is a great listener. And if you listen smartly, the client nearly always tells you the solution.
14. A good designer is a great storyteller. Every company service or institution has a story to tell. Explore the
narrative and banish the banal corporate speak we've read a million time before.
15. Typography can be revolutionary and not in a stylistic way. To quote Ellen Lupton: "Mathiew Carter's Bell
Centennial font was designed for maximum legibility at a minimum size. It is used in the US phone books.
Bell Centennial has saved million of trees."
16. Words are as important as images and images can be more powerful than words. And that image is rarely a
stock image. Create your own images, they will always be uniquely yours.
 17. Accidents often produce the best solutions. And accidents are a hands-on experience. Only you can
recognize the difference between an accident and your original intent.
18. To paraphrase Martha, collaboration is a "good thing": with architects or post-production editors, or
photographers, or stylistics, or writers, or clients, or other students.
19. Passion enables us to remain true to our creative vision. ANalyze, synthesize, visualize, but don't
compromise.
20. Extremes work. Really large, or really thick, or really small, or really colorful, or really simple or really
dense.
21. To quote Chip Kidd from his recent novel Cheese Monkeys: "Design must always be in service to solving a
problem, or it's not design, it's art."
22. There are no finites in design, meaning there should never be a subscribed vocabulary for a given audience.
Consider how David Carson reinvented how to manipulate type for "Beach Culture" magazine and how
John Plunkett and Barbara Kuhr defined the look of the dot-com era with 'Wired'. But as radical as these
solutions appeared to be at the time, they were appropriate to the gestalt of the client and spoke to their
audience in a meaningful way.
23. We are the creators of artifacts.
24. Evaluate not only the stylistic structure and content of any given piece, but question the object iteslf. For
example: question the annual report as the defacto delivery vehicle for corporate message and fiscal
reporting. Allow the opportunity to question the form of the communication delivery system.
25. Designing takes time.
26. Ideas come faster the older you get.
27. Asking questions generates more ideas.
28. Practice articulating design concepts without revealing their stylistic approach.
29. Funny works.
30. Dichotomy works. Try juxtaposing opposites: the historical with the vernacular, the rough with the refined,
the brash with the sublime.
31. Design is like architecture: we structure space to facilitate the experience.
32. The space in between is as important as the space occupied.
33. Design can be articulated through action, words, images, or form. All can have equal value and equal
impact.