magic napkins

Thanks to a comment, I borrowed from the library The back of the Napkin. Dam Roam, the author, emphasises the power of visual thinking through simple drawings. Beyond the book content, one thing that really got my attention was the used of Napkins to draw: ‘so I pulled a pen from my suit pocket and grabbed a stack of napkins from the table’.
This sentence remains me my years as a graphic design student, when I used to sit in corner-coffee shops and spent hours drawing and brainstorming, trying to solve design tasks. Related to this, Milton Glaser explains that drawing is a fundamental instrument of understanding. Drawing is a way of seeing and organising what it is in our minds. It is not about drawing a piece of art in each piece of paper or napkin; it is just a method for organising ideas and thoughts before moving on to designing itself.

As Roam has stated in his book, technology might be pretty useful sometimes, but, before, it is essential to have a clear idea of what to design, communicate, or visualise: ‘The reason we won’t need computer software or sophisticated data-plotting programs is because every picture we’re going to make will be composed of just a few simple pieces, all of which we should already be able to get down on paper’.

Old Napkins from different places where I wrote down some key ideas, strategies, thoughts...

… the funny thing of napkins is that I keep drawing on them… maybe it can be considered as a (scientific? visual?) method after all.

This post is devoted to a special person who has been always supported me and shares the passion of doing coffee-brainstorming napkins…thanks!

where is the toilet, Sr.?

Let’s analyse some images.

'Toilets' (Photo ©SP)

01. New bus station. Mar del Plata (Argentina). This is one of the biggest summer tourists’ cities of the country. I was there (in the new bus station!) for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and the first thing I noticed was its Wayfinding System (I will discuss it in a different post) and in special the visual sign shown in this picture: ‘Baños’ (Toilets). On the one hand, it can be a design decision to employ typographic signs only, instead of graphic signs to indicate the location of most important elements of a station, such as platforms, toilets, exits, etc. However, I found it useless to have it only in Spanish, as to this bus station are arriving both national and international tourists, and not only in summer time. This new bus station is still underconstruction, hopefully this is only a temporary sign…

'Mujeres. Una mujer es el ser humano de sexo femenino, en contraste al masculino, el varón. El término mujer se usa para indicar diferencias sexuales biológicas, distinciones de género en su papel atribuido culturalmente, o ambas cosas. La palabra mujer proviene del latín muller, blanco. De esta etimología derivan muelle y molusco, lo cual es totalmente irrelevante' // 'Hombres. Sustantivo utilizado para nombrar a cualquier individuo humano, sin importar sexo o edad. En modo alguno esto discrimina lingüísticamente a la 'mujer' (ver al lado) que por extensión debería describir a un individuo de la raza humana también. Un varón adulto de la especie humana. Cualquier ejemplar del género Homo, que incluye a varias especies extintas de homínidos, y a los homínidos en general.' (Photo ©SP)

02. Coffee shop. FrayMocho library. Mar del Plata (Argentina). Automatically, when I saw these doors, they reminded me the previous ‘Baños’ sign. What a difference! I thought…These toilet signs seemed to me to be exactly an opposite example than that of picture 01. Even though written text is in Spanish (mujeres [women], hombres [men], and their definitions), it is supported by both icons and pictures of ‘women + girls’ and ‘men + boys’. Maybe having three languages to communicate a message (toilets location) can be too much, but it has an intention behind of how to communicate and organise the elements.

(Photo ©SP)

03. Central mall. Cambridge (UK). This is a clear image which it is also depicting toilets location, and has a similar meaning than that of the second picture. However, it is extremely more synthetic and simple than picture 02. It has only the minimum graphic elements to communicate, with an appropriate chromatic coding and size. Maybe, it can be said that these signs are focused on young audiences as, probably; the older ones can find them useless or confusing because of their lack of text. Nevertheless, this is another example of a strong design decision and its importance for a design process.

A same concept/word can be visualised with many different visual languages (graphic, typographic, mixed). Some results are more effective than others, communicating without doubts a message to the correct audience. Others, even though are employing an appropriate synthetic visual language are not being simple and clear enough. This means that not for employing only an appropriate language a message is going to be effectively communicated. As Richard Wurman has explained, the how is also a key factor of the design process.

Design Fundamentals

–> “Hasta la publicación de esta obra, un número considerable de artistas (y diseñadores) y estudiosos ha dependido de textos en idiomas extranjeros para satisfacer su creciente necesidad de información con respecto a los fascinantes problemas de la creación plástica (arte, diseño) y su relación con la percepción visual”

He encontrado este texto sumamente interesante, ya que pertenece a un libro (una traducción, en realidad) publicado en la década del 70 en Argentina. Sin embargo, estas líneas bien pueden estar describiendo la realidad actual del ámbito académico del diseño, ya que el mayor número de publicaciones ‘serias’ aun se encuentran en su idioma original (inglés, alemán, francés).

A su vez, es interesante resaltar que esta traducción fue publicada en los últimos años de la que es considerada la última etapa de metodologistas, en la cual el análisis e investigación sobre métodos de diseño iban a la par que la práctica.

–> ‘Since the publication of this book, a considerable number of artists (and designers) and academics had had to employ foreign references to obtain information about fine arts (art, design) creation and its relation with visual perception’

I have found this text extremely interesting as it belongs to a book (actually, its translation) published in the 70s in Argentina. However, its meaning can also be describing the current academic design environment. The majority of ‘serious’ academic design books and journals are still only been published in non-Spanish languages (English, German, French).

Moreover, it is also worth to notice that this edition was published at the end of what has been defined as the ‘last decade of methodologists’, where design research and design practice were almost going for the same track.

- Scott, R.G. (1974) Fundamentos del Diseño. Argentina: Victor Leru S.R.L.
- Scott, R.G. (1958) Design Fundamentals. New York : McGraw-Hill