Rationalizing Design Sensitivity
The advent of digital technology has created a radical shift in execution tools within the realm of graphic design. This has turned out to be a blessing and a problem in relation to the context and the user. Working with traditional tools, like the brush, ink, paper or pencils, which were simple to use, fortunately allowed errors while executing a task and indirectly promoted learning and sensitivity. More was understood by doing, sharing and observing each other, in comparison to computers, which nowadays, only permit individual participation from the user. Today’s new tools and software offer error-free execution, making a task easier for an individual to create a layout, use a typeface, choose a color or an image with ‘utmost insensitivity,’ particularly among novice learners of the discipline. Apparently, it leads them to demand more rational approaches to understanding graphic design sensitivity.
Considering the above issue as an impediment to explorations in foundation design courses, this article focuses on enhancing dual processing modes, with the introduction of a tailored course for teaching visual order in two-dimensional graphic design. The reference is to issues in graphic design (typography) dealing with sensitivity; which at times seem difficult to rationalize.
Design assignments in these days are criticized, as they usually have a more artistic bent and at times completely lack a methodological and scientific approach. Debatable among different school of thoughts, this leads to dominance of one kind of thinking over another. Most of the time, this discourse is more vocal about which approach is more effective for modern graphic design education, rather than suggest empirical methods to create new paradigms for design education. To balance rational and lateral thinking modes, this article supports a method for criteria based design education (making it more comfortable for rational minds) as well as at the same time extending the range for exploration, that in turn encourages lateral thinking.
“Alcheringa” is the cultural festival of IIT Guwahati held every year, with many events and sponsorships. A billboard announcing the event tries to find its analogy with ten subjects and their visual order. This served its purpose to explain the syntactic of design elements affecting the resulting solution. The example in figure explains the lack of order, too many elements results in chaos, make it difficult for the user to perceive the message. The whole exercise confronts us with the question of whether communication of information can afford to be ambiguous in nature, when designing billboards, brochures, pamphlets or even websites.
Its all information and hierarchies of information we arrange around us. As designers, our sole aim is to facilitate ease in communication for the user. Creating interesting visual order to persuade the user to comprehend sometimes a hidden visual order or at times to guide him through a well-defined visual order. If the information was in an interactive mode such as a website, one could imagine these subjects in visual order, as clicks or hyperlinks of a website. When you click over a subject, the subject talks back to you or perform a gesture, which could resemble a mouse-over in a website. In this case the visual order of preference could be considered dynamic rather than static. Depending on the choice of the user, visual order could be shuffled to animate itself to the preference of the user, imitating interactive menus.
Reason seems to be a prime concern of today’s modern world. The link from theory to practical application is difficult for designers to grasp, because the nature of the design discipline itself is very subjective and contextual in its solutions, which sometimes demand more lateral thinking when juxtaposed against vertical. This link becomes difficult as the student tries to seek rules (formulas) that can be applied to the problem solving activity, trapping him- or herself in the dilemma of right and wrong in design. Quantitative results seem more pleasing in such cases compared to qualitative, since they are easily articulated by a rational mind. Comparison provides insights, not results, as they are based on learning through perception. Design assignments today, are currently under pressure to rationalize and at times, reason out acts as an incentive to make someone work towards a goal. Exploration finds it difficult to flourish within such environments, as they are based on a foundation of interests, rather than reasons. Therefore new assignments balancing both modes of thinking need to be designed for students learning design.
In most of the earlier traditional practices, “not knowing” was never related to the domain of ‘tools,’ but always focused on the ‘task.’ With new tools of execution, maximum effort is spent on understanding the tool rather than involving oneself in the depths within the task, as a result the communication objective as well as learning becomes distorted. It is extremely important for a designer to familiarize with the lateral side of the design discipline, yet try to satisfy their rational side through medium of analogy.
