D e s i g n I n q u i r y

D e s i g n I n q u i r y '03(the Fifth Business)

OFF THE PAGE …type in Motion
July 28 — August 8 2003 Portland Maine, Maine College of Art

You are invited to LECTURE • DEBATE • EXHIBIT • RESEARCH • PERFORM • WATCH • WORK •

DesignInquiry* is a crossroads of shared interests. In an exchange of individual (interdisciplinary) projects, a fertile environment is generated where Knowledge, Practice and Play converge to engage a topic in Graphic Design.
The best this place has to offer is the exchange …all experiences will be recorded and revealed in a publication on this year’s topic: DesignInquiry : OFF THE PAGE …type in Motion.

*the condensed and evolved MSIGD : Maine Summer Institute in Graphic Design Maine College of Art: MECA

>SPONSORS >WORDS ON THE TOPIC >DAILY SCHEDULE >WHO ELSE IS COMING >WORKSHOPS >ADD TO THE ISSUE >QUESTIONS/ANSWERS >SIGN UP FOR THE AFTER-PUBLICATION >ORDER A POSTER >APPLICATION >COSTS >CREDIT >HOUSING >CONTACT US

OFF THE PAGE …type in Motion, an introduction

! ^ * ( ) _ + { } : | ~ ? - [ ] ; \ ` . / ⁄ ‹ › · ‚ — „ ´ ¨ ˆ ” ’ » ` ¸ „ ˜ ¯ ¿ Ø ˜ ¯ (Don’t say it, -though i know you are able to read it.) (No, it’s not a sound.)

With continuing possibilities and subsequent needs of the web, cell-phone and car-displays, complex traffic signs and computergames: -where the presentation of a text is non-physical, framed and time-based-, the number of parameters the designer has to decide on changed enourmously when compared to print design.

In a profession where: position, length, wideness, size, weight, pattern, color, direction and shape seemed to be enough to describe a result; now, with motion; dimension, time, movement, morphing, sound, linearity versus non-linearity and even interaction becomes urgent.
Wow!

Looking at type in motion from the last decade, it is easy to be seduced. But the codes of conduct of gesticulating type is still under construction while we are hardly aware of its particular history or paths designers instigate.

Because language is a part of daily life and typography is a visual counterpart, it is evident that next to typographers, designers and typedesigners also ‘others’, are challenged and occupied with the articulation of text _off the page_. But a difference by technology, the kind of document and the intended audience does not shut the door for an exchange of thoughts or experiences. Therefore we gather: designers, moviemakers, poets, performers, dancers, typedesigners, critics, musicians, traffic-managers, … who are able to tell or show each of us more about this subject. Each from another point of view. Each from the heart of it. Each to the heart of it.

DesignInquiry does not want to repeat the expected, but is willing to engage the search; escape the obstacles and the serious gaps in ones knowledge by defining questions often hidden in results.
DesignInquiry wants to unravel this magic; make clear what has (always) been known,

With love,
Melle Hammer

read also
communicative design by Ewan Lentjes & Jan van Toorn
recommended sites by Max Bruinsma, Steve Bowden

Add to the issue

As you will understand, the summer gathering of DesignInquiry 2003 is continuously under construction:
Our aim is to organize twelve loaded days and bring about a kaleidoscopic view on this year’s topic: OFF THE PAGE …type in Motion.
Please provide us (email Margo or Melle) with essays, articles or just short thoughts (no problem if it’s been published before). Give us a link to an interesting website, the title of a movie, a clip or a play, names (and addresses) of performers, writers, artists, designers, architects, composers, ‘whatever‘s’, who you would like us to introduce to the DesignInquiry.

Consider to apply to come for one week or two weeks or a weekend this summer or sign up for the after-publication.

check this site again, it is regularly updated

PROGRAM : DesignInquiry 2003
July 28 — August 8 2003 Portland Maine
check this site again, it is regularly updated
mon jul 28
10.00 OPENING: How and What and Who of DesignInquiry
INTERVIEWS/participants present their project/what they brought with them
INTRODUCTION WORKSHOP TOPICS
21.00 BAR: with music/visuals
check this site again, it is regularly updated
tu jul 29
INTERVIEWS/participants present their project/what they brought with them
FEEDBACK WORKSHOP TOPICS/CASE HISTORIES
21.00 MOVIE: explained and discussed
check this site again, it is regularly updated
wed jul 30
INTERVIEWS/participants present their project/what they brought with them
14.00 FEEDBACK: DesignInquiry
21.00 MOVIE: explained and discussed
check this site again, it is regularly updated
thu jul 31
11.00 WORKSHOP TONIGHT’S PRESENTATION introduced and coached
20.00 PRESENTATION at Portland Museum of Art
- explanation of designinquiry - movie and: what we have done so far
21.00 BAR: music/visuals
check this site again, it is regularly updated
fri aug 01
INTERVIEWS/participants present their project/what they brought with them
20.00 DINNER (mussels) with the new arrived guests
21.00 BAR
check this site again, it is regularly updated
sat aug 02
11.00 OPENING ‘a festival of lessons and carols’
–lectures, debates, presentations, performances
check this site again, it is regularly updated
sun aug 03
11.00 OPENING ‘songs of innocence and experience’
–lectures, debates, presentations, performances
20.00 EVALUATION
check this site again, it is regularly updated
mon aug 04
10.00 OPENING: How and What an Who of DesignInquiry
INTERVIEWS/participants present their project/what they brought with them
INTRODUCTION WORKSHOP TOPICS
21.00 BAR: with music/visuals
check this site again, it is regularly updated
tu aug 05
INTERVIEWS/participants present their project/what they brought with them
FEEDBACK WORKSHOP TOPICS /CASE HISTORIES
21.00 MOVIE: explained and discussed
check this site again, it is regularly updated
wed aug 06
INTERVIEWS/participants present their project/what they brought with them
14.00 FEEDBACK: DesignInquiry
21.00 MOVIE: explained and discussed
check this site again, it is regularly updated
thu aug 07
11.00 WORKSHOP TONIGHT’S PRESENTATION introduced and coached
20.00 PRESENTATION at Portland Museum of Art
- explanation of designinquiry - movie of what we have done so far,
21.00 BAR: music/visuals
check this site again, it is regularly updated
fri aug 08
EVALUATION / ‘…everyone knows: this is not the end.’
20.00 DINNER, DRINKS, PARTY
check this site again, it is regularly updated
mon .. – fri .. aug
10.00–17.00 live projection of Margo, Melle (and some Helpful Assistants) editing and designing the after-publication.

read also
application form part 2

Guestlist/Participants in alphabetical order

Steve Bowden | may 9 - 1972, Maine
website-contribution
Upon graduation from Maine College of Art in 1997 Steve attended Bennetton’s Fabrica in Treviso, Italy. In 1998, he relocated to New York City where he was won in a poker game by The Chopping Block, Inc. In 2001 he and his wife Allison returned to Maine to start their own design shop 8.5x11 dedicated to humor and humanity in life and work. Steve is currently an adjunct professor of New Media at Maine College of Art and is probably working on this site at this very moment.

Max Bruinsma
website-contribution
max.bruinsma@xs4all.nl Leading international critic of graphic design. Former editor of Items (Amsterdam) and Eye (London) design magazines, he is based in Amsterdam. His upcomming book, ‘Deep Sites - intelligent innovation in contemporary webdesign’ (Thames & Hudson, March 2003), scrutinises the design- and cultural implications of the web. Among many other things, he is currently researching new methods for ‘enhanced on-screen reading’, in collaboration with interface designer Joes Koppers http://www.usemedia.com. A generous selection of Max’s earlier writing can be found on his personal site: http://www.xs4all.nl/~maxb.

Harold Groot | Attending nov. 4 - 1972, the Netherlands
July 28 – August 8
Left university (majoring in cont. history and journalism) in my final year to study New Media at the Dutch Film Academy. Graduated with a game concept focusing on storytelling. Co-founder of the new media studio Shosho in 1998, together with Thaumar Rep. Over the past four years we’ve created numerous programs, installations and film and video effects for broadcasters, companies and museums - both in the Netherlands and abroad. Together with Thaumar Rep; your computer/programming assistant.

Margo Halverson | sept. 16 - 1956, North Dakota
Attending July 28 – August 8
alicedesign.com | mhalverson@meca.edu : Founder with Melle Hammer, Margo was the Director of the Maine Summer Insitute in Graphic Design for the past 10 years. Now she moves the program to the next place with Melle. She teaches graphic design at Maine College of Art full-time, designs books and other and is mother and vigelent observer of Jack and Cora, 4 & 6 with Charles Melcher.

Melle Hammer | march 17 - 1956, the Netherlands
Attending July 28 – August 8
xc2me@xs4all.nl : Together with Margo Halverson redeveloping the summerprogramm of Maine College of Art. Typographer. Designer. Teacher. Lingering between art, design and advertising. Easily seduced to design a table, a chair or a stage set. Every now and then: a movie or a poem comes out. Always: questioning ‘the spot’. On and on surprised, incenced or in love. Lost? Found!

Ewan Lentjes
website-contribution
Ewan Lentjes is a publicist and one of the editors for the designmagazine Items. He teaches design theory at the Arnhem Institute of Arts. Contributed, in collaboration with Jan van Toorn, with an article mentioning some urgent notions on type in motion.

Thaumar Rep | june 28 - 1973, the Netherlands
Attending July 28 – August 8
Attended The Noordelijke Hogeschool Leeuwarden (college of professional education) and studied New Media at the Dutch Film Academy. Graduated with a game concept focussing on character behaviour. Co-founder Shosho, a new media and visual effect studio. Since 1998 we’ve worked on numerous programs, installations and film and video effects for broadcasters, companies and museums - both in the Netherlands and abroad. Together with Harold Groot; your computer/programming assistant.

Sponsors in alphabetical order

Millennium Graphics, Norwood MA: poster (printing)
Monadnock Paper Mills, Inc.: poster (paper)

DesignInquiry advisors in alphabetical order

Anne Bush
Anne Bush is a graduate of Yale University and chairs the design program at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. Her work spans writing, graphic design, and site-specific installations. Her writing on design has been published by Emigre, Visible Language,Design Issues, the American Center for Design Journal, and Visual Communication. Her design work has been recognized by I.D.Magazine, the AIGA, Print, the American Center for Design, and EYE. She has been a fellow at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France and a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome.

Peter Hall
Peter Hall is a writer and design critic based in New York. He is a contributing editor for Metropolis magazine and research fellow for the Design Institute at the University of Minnesota, where he edits the online conference review, Knowledge Circuit. He also teaches a seminar on design theory at Yale School of Art’s MFA graphic design program. He has written widely about design in its various forms, from TV graphics and neon lights to bridges and spaceships for publications including Architecture, Creative Review, The Guardian and The New York Times. He wrote and co-edited the books Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist and Sagmeister: Made You Look and co-authored Pause: 59 Minutes of Motion Graphics.

Doug Lloyd
www.flat.com : Doug Lloyd lives and works in NYC. He is a Founding Partner of Flat Inc., a design firm founded in 1996. Flat has worked on projects that are educational, political, industrial, artistic and entertaining in nature. Doug, with Flat co-founder Tsia Carson, were profiled in International Design Magazine’s ‘ID’s 40 under 30’ (40 influential designers under 30 years old) in 2000. He has taught at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Parsons in NYC and is currently a Lecturer at Yale in the Graduate Program for Graphic Design. Doug serves on the Board of Directors for the Church of Craft and is volunteering time to help start a foundation for social enterprise with the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School Alumni Associations.

Douglass Scott
Douglass Scott is Design Director at the WGBH television and radio in Boston. He is also consulting Art Director of Davis Publications, an art education publisher in Worcester, Massachusetts.In addition to his WGBH work, he has designed books, identity programs, exhibitions, and publications for many clients.
Scott teaches graphic design, exhibition design, typography, and graphic design history at the Rhode Island School of Design (since 1980) and teaches graphic design and design history at the Yale University School of Art (since 1984). He has also taught at the Boston Architectural Center, Harvard University, and Maine College of Art. Since 1989, Scott has been actively constructing and exhibiting paper collages and sculptures.
Since 1978, Scott has given over 150 lectures on the history of design and printing at various colleges, universities and symposia, and has been curator of many design exhibitions.

Nancy Skolos & Thomas Wedell
Skolos & Wedell Design,Charlestown, MA USA
skolos-wedell.com : Skolos/Wedell is an interdisciplinary design and photography studio. Clients include Digital Equipment Corp., boston Acoustics, Kloss Video Corporation, Sensimetriscs and Viewlogic, EMI Music Publishing, Walker Art Center and Hasbro. Skolos/Wedell’s work has been widely published and exhibited both here and abroad. Posters are included in the graphic design collections of MOMA, NY, The Isreal Museuum, Jerusalem and the Museum fur Gestaltung, Zurich. Both are faculty in Graphic Design at RISD.

Lucille Tenazas
tenazasdesign.com : Lucille Tenazas is principal of Tenazas Design, a multi-disciplinary design firm based in San Francisco. Her design reflects an interest in the complexity of language and the overlapping relationship of meaning, form, and content. By merging the poetic and the pragmatic, she achieves a fluid and flexible approach to design, one that is human as well as critical. Educated in Manila, the Philippines, Lucille studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC) and received her MFA in Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Lucille is currently the Chair of the newly established MFA program in Design at CCAC responsible for shaping its three-pronged curriculum in the areas of form-giving, teaching and leadership. As an educator for the last 17 years, she has been a visiting faculty at various art and design colleges here and abroad. In 1995, she was honored as one of the I.D.Forty, I.D.Magazine’s third annual selection of 40 of America’s leading design innovators. Retrospectives of her work have been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1996) and most recently at the Ayala Museum in her native Philippines (1998). In 1998, Lucille Tenazas became a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI), joining a select few designers invited to represent the United States. From 1996-1998, she served as the National President of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), representing the first presidential appointment made outside of New York in the organization’s 80-year history.

Julia Whitney
Ms. Whitney is currently the Director of Interactive Design at WGBH in Boston, where she oversees a staff of 20 designers producing Web sites for a number of PBS television series, including NOVA, American Experience, ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre, ZOOM, Arthur, and Between the Lions. In previous positions at WGBH she designed CD-ROMs, interactive TV projects, and Web sites for programs such as This Old House and Mystery! She also designed and co-produced award winning Web sites for the PBS miniseries A Science Odyssey and Culture Shock. Ms. Whitney received a B.A. in Mathematics from Brown University in 1988 and an M.F.A. in Graphic Design from Yale University in 1994. From 1996 to 2001 she taught graduate-level interaction design at the Yale School of Art’s Graphic Design program, where she continues to serve as a guest critic. Ms. Whitney has spoken widely on design at conferences and symposia for organizations such as the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and Yale University.

Janet Zweig
Janet Zweig is a New York-based artist working in sculpture, book-art, and installation. Zweig’s work with words, sentences and reading is an outgrowth of her earlier work with book-art. Her work is visually as well as conceptually tied to electronic media. Zweig has exhibited in a number of group shows as one-person exhibitions. She has been awarded the National Endowment for the Arts visual Fellowship: Sculpture, and the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Fellowship: Artists’ Books, and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship; and is a Visiting Critic at Yale University. She has also been a faculty member at Rhode Island School of Design. Zweig is represented in several permanent collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. She received her BA from Cornell University and her MFA from the Visual Studies Workshop.

Sign Up : DesignInquiry 2003 : OFF THE PAGE …type in Motion

5.5”x8.5”/black+1 color/128 pages/1000 copies/edited and designed by Margo Halverson and Melle Hammer

read also
application for admission
add to the issue
order a poster (the 1st quire)

We will make the book available at the lowest possible price. But we are still in search for a publisher. If you sign up now this will be very helpful to find one. We will confirm your order before shipping.

To reserve your copy, email Jeanne with your name, address, phone number and email address. We’ll contact you with the price and schedule when this information becomes available.

email Beth with your address and email address and we’ll send you a poster.

(Folded it is the 1st quire of the after-publication)
18”x24”/black and yellow, designed by MH

sponsored by: Madnock Paper Mill Inc.: paper
Millennium Graphics, Norwood MA: poster (printing)

Application for Admission

Applications will be reviewed beginning March 15, 2003.

make your choice
> $ 895 July 28 — August 3 before
> $ 895 August 2 – August 8 after
> $ 1,500 July 28 — August 8 complete program
> $ 3,000 July 28 — August 8 complete program for 3 BFA credits
> $ 300 August 2 & 3 THE WEEKEND

Credit
Three college credits are awarded for the complete program which includes pre and post research TBD. Maine College of Art is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges and by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. Insuring credit transferability is each participant’s responsibility.

Refunds
100% of tuition charges will be refunded for withdrawal from the Institute before June 29 and 50% refunded for withdrawal between June 30 and July 22. No refunds will be made after July 23. The application fee is non-refundable. All withdrawal requests must be made in writing to Director of Special Programs, Maine College of Art, 97 Spring Street, Portland, ME 14101, or Beth Panzini.

Payment
Full payment of all tuition and fees is due on or before June 29, 2003.

Administration
Beth Panzini, Director of Special Programs
Greg Murphy, Dean of the College, VP for Academic Affairs

Maine College of Art does not discriminate against any individual on the basis of sex, race, color, religion, age, handicap, national or ethic origin, or sexual orientation.

Admission
Admission is based upon 1 evidence of eagerness in the topic, 2 project proposal 3 evidence of talent and 4 assumed capability of working in collaboration, through a 5 portfolio review

To Apply
1 Complete the application forms 1&2.
2 Send ZIP DISC or CD with your portfolio in a slide show format or a URL with an online portfolio.
3 Send a $40 non-refundable application fee, check or money order made out to Maine College of Art.

You will be notified of acceptance no later than three weeks after we recieve your application. The Maine College of Art reserves the right to withdraw or modify the DesignInquiry at any time. Participants will be notified in advance.

Application for Housing

make your choice
> $255 Double occupancy/per person July 28 — August 3 before
> $305 Single occupancy* July 28 — August 3 before
> $255 Double occupancy/per person August 2 — 8 after
> $305 Single occupancy* August 2 — 8 after
> $480 Double occupancy/per person July 28 — August 8 complete program
> $570 Single occupancy* July 28 — August 8 complete program

read also
procedures/policies

Confirmation and housing assignment will be sent by mail. Full payment is due prior to occupancy. The room deposit is not refundable to applicants who withdraw after room assignments have been confirmed (no later than June 27). Housing through MECA is limited and on first come, first served basis. (The weekend will fill up quickly, we can assist if need be before getting into the dorm August 4 for the August 2-8 session.) Most rooms are double occupancy. Only a couple single occupancy rooms are available and cannot be guaranteed. Maine College of Art remains the final authority in all housing decisions.

read also
visitportland.com
mainetourism.com

Procedures/Policies

The dates of occupancy will be verified in a confirmation mailing. Room deposits are non-refundable applicants who withdraw from the program after the room assignments have been made (no later than June 27, 2003).
· Maine College of Art is the final authority on all room assignments. The College will do its best to place participants according to their wishes.
· The College reserves the right to make changes in residence hall room assignments and the right to change living arrangements when circumstances necessitate such action.
· Rooms are furnished with beds, dressers, lights, desks and chairs. Other accouterments must be supplied by the student. Holbrock House offers cooking facilities and supplies, laundry facilities, and common areas. Residents are responsible for bringing their bed linens and towels.
· A Resident Assistant is an occupant of the residence hall and is available for assistance and information.
Roommates will be of the same sex, though a couple may apply to share a double-occupancy room.
· Upkeep of the rooms is the responsibility of the occupants.
· Residents are liable for the damage to rooms beyond normal wear and tear. Each resident is responsible for the conduct of visitors he or she allows into the residence hall, and assumes full responsibility for any damage.
· The College cannot assume any responsibility for loss or damage to personal property.
· No overnight guests are allowed without the written permission of the Director of Student Services.
· All residents are expected to honor other residents’ rights to privacy and to peaceful and quiet use of the facility.
· Holbrook House is a non-smoking facility — no smoking is permitted inside the building.

Fifth Business …definition

Those roles which, being neither those of Hero or Heroine, Confidante nor Villain, but which were nonetheless essential to bring about the Recognition or the dénouement, were called the Fifth Business in drama- and opera-companies organized according to the old style; the player who acted these parts was often referred to as Fifth Business.

Tho Overskou, ‘Den Danske Skueplads’.

When MH and MH, founders of the DesignInquiry, read this definition they immediately recognized their (and the participants) task and decided to add ‘Fifth Business’ to the name of the gathering.

The Ampersand as a place

Although I know that I worry over problems which are so simple that they are often not considered to be problems at all, perhaps you will agree with me that an assignment next to its own objectives, accommodates another, personal objective. This is a private matter. And the words to describe it are often hard to find. But there is no law against us talking in the dark.

Without clear objectives design makes no sense. Equipped with the proper tools, some knowledge of history and its conventions, a healthy curiosity for the changes in typographic and social constraints, it is possible to produce accurate typography. This doesn’t guarantee good design. And ‘good enough’ is no good at all (unless you decided to make an impressive blunder).

What I have in mind now is not a simple enumeration of private projects, nor a tea-party, but a cross-roads or a market-place of different insights, interests and questions.

By bundling the energy of ‘eager colleagues’ an agreement arises. The foundations for a structure are exposed at which it is possible to question, coach and teach the design of words and images; to build a dynamic social environment in which (real) practical assignments offer the opportunity to focus on all aspects of the design process. Including all those side roads, ‘false’ trails and dead ends, which are apparently necessary to get to where you have to be. Because here every part of a piece of work can be directly discussed out loud and tested for effectiveness, this building site might generate the right level of tension for other questions and new answers. This ‘place’ does not want to take over anyone’s individual responsibility of a study. But to offer a shelter with a view: a clearly-organised site where anything can happen. To be used. A place without status. Not concerned with commanding respect or satisfying any audience. Because the assignments are supposed to serve the study and not (Perhaps in the end, but this is not our goal) the other way around. –We have a license to get lost.

By loosening the grip of The Curriculum individual projects generate the program for the totality. The work of one person becomes the environment for another. Guests, lectures, workshops and symposia might be directed towards a specific project, but will always open to all, in the belief that what is a learning experience for one person, can be entertaining or inspiring for another. The collectively generated program and the sharing of results eventually form the quality of this ‘academy’. The most this place has to offer is not facilities, but exchange.

In doing so such an institution will no longer be The Inventor, but The Caretaker’, looking after the areas where the research-projects can take place. enabling a systematic approach to acquire some knowledge of method rather than work by intuition or accident. And because madness is a rule in groups. The Organization’s responsibility is to accommodate change and evolving needs, to formulate and defend the conditions by which this ‘fluid state of affairs’ can continue to exist. To tend to the garden, organizing it in such a way that everyone can cross each other’s paths. …again and again.

2002 Melle Hammer

This article has been published in ‘in alphabetical order’ a book about a particular approach to (design)education / the Werkplaats Typografie, Arnhem

Space

Aware but not connected with the busy center of town. A room with the qualities of a desolate nobodysland, like parking-lots, store houses and factories A temporally housing. A big ‘boring’ box with a use-stricken floor and pipes along the ceiling. In which movable walls form a labyrinth and the visitor has to find his own way around. In this believe that architecture leads towards another type of concentration and presentation. In a space without any status any presentation is possible. In a box like this any story can be told in any way. There is not one parcourse. There are more. The story is not a logic or coherent tale but a mixture of different insights that cross each other or meet, agree or contradict. As knowledge and development should not be defined/presented like a story with a start a middle and an end, but as a plot of many false starts, false tracks, side roads, dead ends, halfway returns and reconsiderations. Every architecture that does not define nor force or instruct how to use it is an open invitation that serves anything possible to happen. It provides many ways of use. It demands the energy of the beholders. Whatever happens is as good as the participants can offer in collaboration. This will not result in a process with a clue, but in a search

Space
38 Congress street
Portland Maine

Friday

Feed the mussels the last time: put them in the washingwater and sprinkle some flour on the surface. The flour will sink. (The mussels like this.) And as they will poop before eating, they’ll clean themselves from the last sand and dirt. Remove the dead and broken animals.

A big splash of olive oil, roughly chopped garlic and a small chilipepper into a big iron pot. Let it simmer so the taste gets into the oil. Remove garlic and pepper after 5 mnts and turn up the heat to the max without burning the oil. Add the mussels straight from their bath. Temper the fire again and wait until they are open.

Mix spoons of cooking water with creme fraiche, add some fresh garlic and black pepper and fine chopped parsley.

You can either use the sauce for some tagliatelle (a small plate) or dip the mussels in it.

Drink Orvieto.

Cheers,

Words on the Topic

OFF THE PAGE, …an introduction by Melle Hammer
communicative design by Ewan Lentjes & Jan van Toorn
recommended sites by Max Bruinsma, Steve Bowden
check this site again, it is regularly updated

Communicative Design
by Ewan Lentjes & Jan van Toorn

position of graphic design
Graphic design is everywhere. It relates to everything we do, everything we see and everything we buy. lt’s on billboards, in Bibles, magazines, railway timetables and websites, on stamps, identity cards, credit cards and cash, gift vouchers, certificates and bills, traffic signs and direction systems, letterheaded paper, logos, lettertypes, leaders, exhibitions, packaging, inserts … Graphic design is the complex interplay of words, pictures, graphic images, photography and illustration required by the educated eye to collate all these elements into a recognisable, functional, playful or surprising message. Graphic design is, in the words of Jessica Helfland ‘the art of visualising an idea’.

Identity plays a central role in graphic design. Cultural and social identity, but also the more formal corporate identity – everything is presented from an individual angle. For decades it has been this that determines the quality of graphic design in the Netherlands. Enthusiasm for form, inventive use of image and humour are the result. And that goes for contemporary design as well. In fact, the tone is more subdued than it was a few years ago, when its very newness led designers to employ every computer trick in every design. Today’s generation has grown up with computers and has therefore passed the awed-reverence stage. Nowadays the computer is a tool and a medium. The complexity of our information- and entertainment-oriented society is the context, and this doesn’t need redesigning. We aren’t, after all, visual illiterates. While avoiding primness, austerity or moralising, the resultant designs allow information to come into its own in a challenging editorial form.

new kinds of approach
With the development of technology in recent decades, information has acquired a greater significance in social intercourse. Memory banks, databases and access to complex information networks are crucial. Reality is increasingly complicated and controlling this complexity has led to extensive professionalism in everyday life. With the demise of traditional moral and religious systems, their attendant terms of reference have come under pressure. Convictions are not a fact anymore; they need to be (re)produced continuously. In a world in which permanent values and truths have disappeared, authenticity is hard to find. Social cohesion and identity are now part of a professional strategy, for which the expertise of graphic designers is required. ‘Design’, according to Hugues Boekraad, ‘is a metaphor for post-traditional life’.
Graphic designers function on two levels. They are commissioned to devise and produce a particular visual form for certain information. At the same time, graphic design contributes to the formation of a collective worldview. As each new form appears, it reinforces a particular identity (Hi – I’m Ben; Just do it!), while simultaneously submerging everyone in a McWorld mass-culture.

The increasing dissemination of information and consequent expansion of choice seem to enhance the democratic level of society. However, two factors limit this growth of choice. The unprecedented availability of information is confusing: public spaces are deluged with signs, symbols and signals – we can’t see the wood for the trees. At the same time, this expansion has a powerful cultural effect: information is increasingly articulated on one and the same level. Whether it’s culture, public spaces or public debate in the media: the same market forces apply. It is a force field in which visual communication plays a key role.

changing role of graphic design
With communication employing an increasingly limited idiom, a way has to be found to create space for a broader approach. In Dutch graphic design, visual communication has always been employed to enhance the quality of culture in the wider sense. With the development of new, interactive media the quality of information and information communication has acquired a growing importance.
We live in a digital age. Information can be transferred globally, sampled and processed at rapid speed. This communications revolution has led to new forms of research and innovation. The structure of the new electronic media has enabled links between various disciplines. Image, text, typography, movement, sound, video, animation, illustration; today’s design employs all these, opening possibilities for multi-disciplinary idioms.
Editorial and organisational skills are vital for this type of multi-disciplinary approach. The opportunity to surf information in different ways gives users greater freedom to manoeuvre, but this can be confusing. In today’s design world it’s essential to be able to navigate and structure information. That requires the right visual signs and symbols, helping the user find and identify information. Graphic designers are trained in providing complex information structures. Yet visual communication involves more than just categorising. First and foremost, it should ensure that the information content comes across and that it has some cultural significance.

This is a key point. In fact, in modern design, content seems increasingly to coincide with route. Users need to be able to find their way and survey all their options. So information is increasingly compact and presented as form. Highlighted fields, animated symbols, directional typography and audio clips are intended primarily to point users to alternative fields on the information route. Traditional ways of communicating information in text play a far more modest role. ‘Accents in text, image and structure complement each other in new visual idioms’, as Max Bruinsma comments: ‘image has become word and word image’.
Today, visual communication involves more than just the ability to visualise an idea. As intermediaries, graphic designers present an image of reality in the continuity of their designs that is based on a vision; whenever well-presented, this invites interpretation, so that the information acquires a meaning in the complexity of everyday reality.

multi-idiomatic information
As media has developed, the need has arisen for an interdisciplinary approach and an image-oriented focus, with various specialisations being integrated to create a new competence with visual content. The actual skills needed involve more than just building complex information structures. Visual communication goes far beyond simple categorisation. It affects social structures and contributes to the quality of image creation and public opinion.

One significant result of the rise of new electronic media is the increasing emphasis on non- verbal aspects of information transfer. Visual communication is no longer confined to a strictly logo-centric context: it is more than just the metaphorical extension of a textual reality. Visual communication in the new media is explicit multi-idiomatic information. The integration of various disciplinary approaches has to meet specific requirements. A visual concept is more than the sum of text, image, sound, space, time and movement. Visual culture is not the natural product of informative and opinioned image creation – as the spectacular rise of image, with its cultural uniformity, demonstrates. 1t is a form of ‘infotainment’ intended principally to create customer loyalty and to legitimise the status-quo. It unites producers and consumers in an aesthetic rhetoric that forms a seductive backdrop to our virtual existence. In a word: lifestyle. It is an imagery typified by a classical, formal and stylised visual idiom which has nothing at all to do with the reality of everyday life.

visual orchestration
Reality is complex and operates at different levels. The continual reformulation and confirmation of basic principles in today’s post-traditional culture requires editorial intervention, vision, ideas and opinions. There’s no such thing as immediate understanding. Simply describing an experience is not enough. That’s just the first, passive stage in the development of a concept. The next is active and reactive: the stimulation of interpretation and articulation of experience. This requires a visual idiom sufficiently intriguing to raise questions.
Design has to contain a diversity of layers, providing access to a vision that exceeds and enriches everyday reality. This requires forms of communication that dynamically map out reality in a kind of narrative: a compilation of facts and commentary (i.e., fiction) that stimulates interpretation based on individual experience. It is part of a unique tradition in art, architecture, theatre and design. The profoundly distorted perspective of Piranesi, Lissitzky and Grapus or the shifting scenes of Brecht, Godard and Koolhaas are examples of the kind of multi-sensory experience tapped into in communicative design.
The aim is to establish a link between the unrestrained development of the individual and its inclusion in key collective contexts. That is not the same as optional contextuality. To borrow Walter Benjamin’s phrase, it means restoring the balance between the private and public domains. With its concept-oriented approach, communicative design therefore contributes to other notions of identity. Identity is no longer the changing and interchangeable attribute of a uniform reality, but rather a melange of unconventional terms of reference. The rhetoric of excess information and design is countered by a voice: an authentic voice that asks questions stimulates and searches for illustrative examples. Not only does this enrich public debate with an array of perspectives; it opens up a dialogue that contributes to the interpretation of experience.

The challenge for communicative design is to forget the one-sided conceptual, textual methodology of specialisation. Today’s designers are visual orchestrators bringing together the idioms of text, image, space, time and sound in a narrative, interactive form of communication. This is no longer anchored in the certainties of a classical, stylised approach. Instead, the principles of the various disciplines and media are combined and focus on a broad cultural terrain. The result is an internal dialogue which, in addition to superficial perception, also offers the potential for reflection, complementing description with interpretation. It is a form of communication that offers the opportunity to arrive at an independent opinion related to the individual’s own experience and background. In this sense, graphic design is more than just ever-present, it actually focuses the use and interpretation of, and therefore the quality of today’s communication.

This article has been published in the BNO-annual 2000-2001

Ewan Lentjes is a publicist and one of the editors for the designmagazine Items. He teaches design theory at the Arnhem Institute of Arts.

Jan van Toorn is a designer. He was a professor of graphic design and visual communications at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam and the director of the Jan van Eyck Akademie, Centre for Fine Arts, Design and Theory in Maastricht. He works for the graduate program of the Rhode Island School of design in Providence, USA.

read also
recommended sites by Max Bruinsma, Steve Bowden
OFF THE PAGE, …an introduction by Melle Hammer

Recommended sites

Recommended by Steve Bowden: I meant to send this before, I love these guys. Particularly the new ‘ultralove ninja’ and in the work section there’s a bunch of beautiful stuff. ‘Sweater Porn’ is the one that turned me on to them: http://www.mk12.com

This guy is really talented too: http://www.gmunk.com/2001_NYC_update/(the motion links are over on the right) my favorite piece of his is here: http://www.gmunk.com/2001_NYC_transit/FINN_QT.html. And, this guy is amazing (but there’s no moving examples on his site):
http://www.jeremyhollister.com (note the MTV 2001 movie
awards)

Recommended by Max Bruinsma, from: ‘Deep Sites’ - intelligent innovation in contemporary webdesign’, Thames&Hudson, maart 2003:
http://www.yhchang.com client: Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries, Seoul, South Korea design: Young-hae Chang on line: 1999. Artistic, critical, intelligent and fun, Young-hae Chang’s site is also basic, consisting of just type, movement and music - elementary Flash. Although Chang, an artist and translator living in Seoul, is as she fears the only web artist in South Korea, she received the prestigious Webby Award in the art category in 2001. Her site is a collection of web-based text pieces, little stories that are raunchy, ironic and absurdly sexy. Dancing, it seems, on the steaming rhythm of 1950’s jazz licks, words and sentences hit the screen, black on white, and carry you along relentlessly in a stream of thoughts that heats up with the music. The quality lies not as so often in virtuoso software manipulation (although the pacing is pretty stunning), or in visual exuberance (quite the contrary), but in a rather old-fashioned category: literature, and quite witty as well! At the same time, it is the kind of writing that uses every aspect of the medium in which it is published to its best advantage. It has been a while since I have seen a combination of text, typography, movement and music that is so well balanced in terms of content and form. However, that does make the stories very hard to reproduce in any other medium - you will have to experience them on line.

http://www.bornmagazine.org/projects/storyproblem
For the makers of Born, ‘The lines between reader and artist, sound and word, motion and image are ours to play with.’ Luckily, they are generous enough to allow the reader to play along, sometimes in the essential role of the ‘text performer’. Such is the case in a delightfully interactive adaptation of a poem by Terri Ford, ‘Story Problem’, interpreted or, should I say, directed by digital media artist Erik Loyer. The poem unfolds over a three-note left-hand piano chord, freely modulating from scale to scale. Moving the mouse over the small Shockwave window draws out the words and also governs the right-hand movement on the piano. The mouse’s speed, direction and location controls elements of rhythm, volume, colour, size and motion. Gradually, users begin to ‘feel’ the interactive possibilities, which raise such questions of performance as ‘shall I play this line as a fast, mellow riff, or would it be more appropriate to interpret it as a line of staccato syllables’? It is possible to do both, save the ‘results’ and play them back to see and hear which one you prefer. A superb example of engaging the reader or player with the making and performance of the artwork!

read also
communicative design by Ewan Lentjes & Jan van Toorn
OFF THE PAGE, …an introduction by Melle Hammer