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| The avant-garde or the underground with their 'productions' are removed from the mainstream culture. But their highly experimental visual language is absorbed by advertising, mass media or alike. What do you think about the use of their languages in extremely commercial contexts? |
| RVDL: Allow me to quote myself from something I wrote in Emigre 34: ''Instead of always looking at it from the point of view that mass consumption is a bad thing, and anything assisting it is guilty by association, perhaps a bit of credit is due to the mainstream for taking some risks, and to the avant-garde for infiltrating mainstream culture. What, otherwise, is the purpose of an avant-garde, and what is expected of mainstream culture if both are continually expected to play out their stereotypical roles of fringe innovators and greedy but clueless copycats? I'm not saying here that the avant-garde exists simply to supply the commercial world with the means to sell more products, but I do think it can be beneficial for both to occasionally share ideologies.'' |
| Can graphic design be a cultural force for producing social change? Do designers have a special mission as communicators? |
RVDL: Ideas and action produce social change. Graphic design can only enhance these ideas. But, if done badly, it can just as easily diminish good ideas and consequently hamper action and social change.
Regarding the second part of your question, our mission as communicators is as important as the messages and clients we associate ourselves with. |
| What do you think about the impact of philosophy on the graphic design of 90's? |
| RVDL: It was largely ignored. |
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Compared with theory in architecture there is not much to read regarding theory in graphic design. Without Emigre it would have been even less most probably. Why do you think, this is the case? Do graphic designers think less? |
| RVDL: Actually I think there is a lot of design theory published these days, but it's difficult to find it, because it's usually produced by smaller publishers. Larger publishers and distributors and the general design audience still prefer full color coffee table picture books. That's what we see in the bookstores. That's what sells. But I don't think designers think less. In general designers are well-educated people, but they're primarily visual as opposed to verbal thinkers. That's why they become graphic designers. |
| What would you look for when picking an award-winning design, if you would be judging a design competition? |
| RVDL: I have judged one large design competition, the 17th Annual 100 Show of the American Center for Design. I tried to pick work that appealed to me on a purely personal level. Work that resonated with me. In my eyes that work had either a high level of originality or an amazing level of craft or both. The problem with judging design competitions is that you can only respond to the visual aspects of a design. There's no time to get a deeper understanding of the work, because it's impossible to look and read 3,000 pieces in one day. |
| What do you think about design competitions in general? |
| RVDL: It's a way for the profession of graphic design to take it's own pulse. It's a way to say to each other what we think is good work at that particular moment in time. It's meant as an encouragement. It is about peers congratulating each other. It's all very harmless, which is perhaps also its weakness. |
| What are the qualities of good design criticism? |
| RVDL: The design criticism that I enjoy reading knows how to place its subject in a broad historical and cultural context, or is a purely subjective and highly personal knee-jerk response to the subject. |
| What do you think about self-promotion in design? |
RVDL: It's quite necessary and healthy. How else do you tell the world you exist?
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| Jeffery Keedy has said: ''As a designer I realized there is no escaping being post-modern, since the typefaces available are very old or are based on very old models. Even when you try to do something contemporary, you rely on these old typefaces and conventions.'' (Jeffery Keedy, Emigre 15, p.15) Aren't contemporary typefaces sometimes an easy way out to give a contemporary look to design? Don't the meanings of typefaces change in the contexts they are used? And with this change of meaning don't we perceive them in a different way anyway? |
| RVDL: I don't see what's wrong with using contemporary typefaces to give a contemporary look to a design. That seems to me a very reasonable thing to do. Actually it's what Emigre has been doing for the past 15 years. And whether that's ''an easy way out'' is debatable too. If all it takes to create a contemporary design is to pick a contemporary typeface, than designers may just as well retire. I think it's a bit more complex than that. |
| What makes a typeface contemporary? |
| RVDL: The way it is used. |
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