Tom Hapgood

Every house was wired

“Photo-telegraphy allowed any writing, signature or illustration to be sent faraway – every house was wired.”
- Jules Verne, 1863, speaking of the distant future

How Should You, the Student, Design?

Hello student designers! I’m excited to teach three classes this semester, Web Design 1, Elements of Animation, and Typography. I started thinking about what needs to be said to you as you enter these classes, in the interest of enabling you to get the most out of this experience. So, instead of saving it for the first day of classes, with your accompanying blank stares, I hope you read through this.

You’ll be assigned projects in each class that are designed to make you think and work through problems, initially without the computer. It’s true. As you begin to work on a design project, as well as during the design and production, keep these things in mind.

Worth the time.
Has what you’ve designed been worth the time to make it? Will it be worth the viewer’s time to look at it? Spend enough time to make it so. You’ll never have enough time, so use it wisely. Successful design graduates who stand far above their peers in both work ethic and portfolio strength, will have slept very little during their college career. These students spend every possible moment learning, experimenting, sketching, investigating and observing.

Is it new?
Is what you’re doing new? Have you seen it done before? Once? A thousand times? Has the viewer seen it a thousand times? Should you use the very trendy floral or plant-like graphics in the background of your work, combined with the ever-hanging-on subtle one-color gradient? Should you continue to use all lowercase letters, since it seems so rebellious and “designerly”? Should you run words together with one of them bold? Should you use handwritten, illustration-style letter forms instead of the “Type tool”? Look through the latest design mags and blogs to see what’s trendy, both for inspiration and as caution.

Be clever.
As you start the design process with research, word brainstorms, sketches and storyboards, keep in mind the reaction of the viewer. Are you striving to change his or her perception of an issue or idea? Very few ideas seem to be entirely brand new with a population that doesn’t read or discuss many issues at great depths, so many times with your design, you’re attempting to change or reinforce an existing concept with a very time-limited viewer. How to best do it quickly? And don’t design for design competitions. What is a design competition? Isn’t design a very strong vehicle of specific communication goals many times? When a design is entered into a competition, it tends to be abstracted from the process, target audience and success statistics and runs the risk of becoming nothing more than non-contextual, computer-based art.

A good method:
So, how do you make your class and production time work to the best of your ability? Research, discuss and critique. Look into what you’re doing. Take a little time to figure out the issue or idea. Talk with your friends outside of class about your ideas. Put your work up for critique. Listen to the feedback. Give honest, carefully worded feedback to your fellow students. Go into the design process with confidence: make word lists, do sketches and at some point, sit down at the computer and make it digital.