1 The problem is the problem
This book is about ordinary graphic problems and how the problems themselves can lead to surprising, original graphic solutions.
Provided the designer is prepared to let go of any preconceptions about how design is supposed to look.
The first time I practiced what this book is preaching was in 1954. Here’s how it happened. More or less.
I was asked to design a title card for a television comedy called Private Secretary about a stupid secretary.
I wanted to do something that was original. But I kept thinking of ideas based on images I had already seen. Then I realized that it was inevitable that my ideas had to be based on previous experiences What else could possibly be in my consciousness but previous experiences?
I would have to go outside of my head to look for an original idea. I decided that getting involved in the new problem was the most likely way of going outside. Of having a new experience.
If I could express the uniqueness of what the problem was trying to communicate with an image which was valid only for that problem, then I would have invented a unique image.
In other words, defining a unique problem would inspire a unique solution.
2 Interesting words need boring graphics
Take a statement like: we cure cancer free.
It isn’t necesary to make a statement like that look interesting. It is interesting, Because it is important.
If you try to make an interesting statement look interesting, the way it looks competes with the statement. The look doesn’t make it easier to see. It makes it harder.
When you have a statement which isn’t particularly interesting like: a rose isn’t like anything else, it can be more interesting by expressing it in a more poetic or imaginative way:
A rose is a rose is a rose.
Again, it isn’t neccesary to make that statement look interesting. It is interesting Because it is poetic.
The examples in this section are all jobs where I thought that the words were sufficiently important or poetic or amusing not to need additional interest from color or typography or layout.
I deliberately made the design elements boring so that they wouldn’t compete with the words.
There are thousands of images competing with your design for your audience’s attention. If and when your audience finally gets around to yours, make sure that the elements within your design don’t compete with each other.
3 Think first. Then draw.
The next time you pick up a pencil to make a drawing, wait a minute. Think about what you want to say. Or what you are feeling.
Drawing (illustration) is just like design. It’s a process. A means, not an end. Both are a way of making statements. So unless you have a specific point of view about something, don’t even begin the process.
As soon as I have decided (or the problem has dictated) what I want to say (or feel), then I can begin to invent the right lines, tones, textures, patterns and compositions which will help articulate the statement.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be using a pencil at all? A 4-inch brush or a delicate crow quill pen might be more appropriate. Do I want a mechanical, uniform line or a very wild, expressive line?
What about color? Is my statement best made in black and white or in gold leaf and day-glo or in some other color(s)?
Should the drawing reveal the minutest detail or be very simple? Realistic or decorative or abstract? If abstract, then hard edge or not? If decorative, what sort of decoration: Tantric, Art Nouveau, American Indian, Medieval or any one of hundreds of other possibilities?
Every kind of drawing evokes a special atmosphere which will either enhance or detract from the message.
Think about it
4 Stealing is good.
People have been making images for the past eight million years.
Images like x-rays, flags, NASA moon photographs, comic books, paintings on cave walls, theater masks, engineering drawings, pub signs, grafitti, Civil war daguerreotypes, engravings, Christmas cards, the Mona Lisa, exit signs, etc.
These images, depending upon how they are used, can transcend their original narrow purpose. They can represent a period of history or a cultural attitude. Or they can symbolize very precious ideas.
If a designer finds one of these images (say, an engraving of an Edwardian couple dancing) and it communicates perfectly what he wants to say, why bother to invent a new one?
Why not use (steal) the engraving?
What makes a designer’s work personal and original is the way he uses images to communicate and to solve problems. His ideas. Not necessarily the images themselves.
I didn’t invent any of the images in this section. They were all stolen. But by using them in a new context or by altering them in some way never conceived of by their creators, I made them mine.
Warning: you will probably have your right hand cut off for stealing in Saudi Arabia. Check with a lawyer in other countries.
5 Boring words need interesting graphics
Designers are not usually very good copywriters.
Most copywriters aren’t much good, either. So chances are that the words a designer has to deal with are not going to be very inspired.
If this is the case, then a designer is better off letting the graphics do all the attention getting and letting the words give the information in the most straightforward way.
On the other hand, as I said in Section 2, if the words are attention getting, then the graphics should be straightforward.
The most important thing is to make sure that the words and the graphics never compete with each other.
6 Less is more.
This section demonstrates that it should always be possible to take any two subjects or images and, however unrelated they seem, make one, simple image out of both of them.
I could have written more, but…
7 More is more.
The most or the biggest or the tallest anything is fascinating. If you’re in doubt, take a look in the Guinness Book of Records.
Who can fail to be overwhelmed by the case of thousands in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the WIll of by a perfect scale model of the Eiffel Tower made out of 6,300,521 matchsticks by a retired locomotive driver?
What does any of this have to do with graphic design?
Don’t ever do anything in moderation. If your solution calls for color, then use more color than ever seen by anyone. If the type is supposed to be big, then let it be really big.
Take any idea or graphic direction as far as you can take it. And then after you think you’ve pushed it as far as you can go, you’ll find that you can push it much farther.
Remember: it’s not natural to go to an extreme in anything. That’s why I’m recommending it.
8 “I was following order.”
The reason that most graphic design and advertising is so predictable and vapid is because of the philistine clients. That’s what the designers say.
Perhaps. But I always assumed that getting imaginative work accepted by clients was as much a part of the problem as solving the problem, that there’s no such thing as a bad client. Only a bad designer.
What designers really mean when they complain about their dumb clients is that their clients don’t have the designer’s patrician art school tastes.
That’s true. But the conflict between the clients and designer is healthy. It has produced many remarkable creations, including the Sistine Chapel, the Volkswagon advertising campaign and Citizen Kane.
If designers had their own way, we’d be living in an even more homogenized environment than we do now. Anyone who’s seen an English New Town (a new community built from scratch) will confirm that well-meaning designers designed the life out of everything they could get their hands on: street signs, shop signs, bus timetables, local governments leaflets, etc. They succeeded in eliminating the “lows” of design, but they also eliminated the “highs.”
I know that it’s impossible to produce work of quality and integrity which also satisfies every single real (or imagined) commercial requirement every time.
So what. Designers can do no more than their best. If a client wants less than the designer’s best, that’s the client’s problem.
We must learn to say “No” sometimes.
In the end, if subway stations and newspapers and magazines and billboards are polluted with banal, dishonest images, it’s our own fault. Not the client;s.
The clients only pay for the images. They can’t make them.
For all the rules you ever learned about graphic design. Including the ones in this book, by Bob Gill