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Since a while, we (closest design friends and me) discuss about the current situation of design—design environment, community, design industry, work, clients, etc. To some extent, we think that design has become too serious. Yes, I know, I write a serious-approach-to-design blog, but this doesn’t mean that design does not have to be enjoyable and rewarding at the same time. We (designers) spend long hours working in our laptops (desiging, admin tasks, emails, etc.), doing and looking for challenging projects. Have designers had to be serious to be considered ‘good’ designers?
Last week we went to a Creative Design event at the Tate Britain. We didn’t know exactly what it was going to be about. Exhibitions, and digital and manual versions of Dadaism were the main activities of the event, and mostly students and new design graduates. At the beginning, when we (the senior serious designers!) were standing in front of lots of markers and intimidating white, big pieces of paper, our first thought was to stay as observers and not taking part of that ‘collective activity’. But, after a while, we left aside our ‘serious-hats’ and ended up drawing the rest of the evening.
Here some’masterpieces’ and funny moments of that event:
Co-drawing: three people had to draw a part of the body (head, body, feets) without knowing what the others were/had been drawing. Here the final piece. (Photos by Lubna Keawpanna)
Co-drawing: three people had to draw a part of the body (head, body, feets) without knowing what the others were/had been drawing. Here some final pieces. (Photos by Lubna Keawpanna)
Sometimes, I think that we, designers, should do this more often; just leave our serious-design hats at home, and get more fun as in the old university times. It’s good to do something purposeless, from time to time, isn’t it? Without meaning that design should be considered a less rigorous discipline.
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! 
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.
Data Store is an interesting section of The Guardian where everyone can submit their own diagrams and information graphics. The aim of this section is to make complex information more accessible to people. Facts and figures are published using accessible tools that enable everyone to download raw information for creating visualisations.
Diagrams can be submitted to the Guardian and can be seen in a new Guardian Data Store Flickr group.
This is an effective manner to bring closer diagrams to the people, and show how powerful tools diagrams can be in terms of visual communication and education, making the complex easier and adding new points of view.
Some visualisations created with information of Data Store can be seen below:
Information graphic created by David McCandless, visualising the factors of airlines crashes. (original size 33x123cm //http://www.flickr.com/photos/25541021@N00/3682749730/)
Diagrammatic map created by Simon Rogers, visualising swine flu cases across the UK. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/datablog/2009/sep/18/uk-swine-flu-cases-data)
London, Saturday 17th of October. At the research office of the London College of Communication took place the second and last diagram(a)s-backstage workshop. Once again, I would like to thank all the participants for attending the workshop (and even more on a Saturday with so many public transport closures!). As in the first workshop, participants came from different backgrounds, such as information design, social design, graphic design and geography.
In this opportunity the workshop was structured in three main 45-minute stages: analysing, organising and diagramming.
11:02 The first stage started around 11am and the main task was to analyse a content given. Some participants had scientific/technical contents and some had socio/historical ones. With analyse we meant to digest the information, looking for its constituent and structural parts, and its essential features, elements and concepts. The goal of this stage was to define the problem and understand the situation.
11:55 After a short break, participants started with the second stage: organization. The aim of this stage was to transform data into information by translating the content into understandable information for designers, and then coding this information into a visual language to be communicated. This translation was done by a second stage of (re)analysis and information organization. This simple process, that sometimes we tend to spend only few minutes, helps to discover new or different points of view that never have being seen before.
13:07 Last stage: diagramming. This stage was entirely focussed on information visualization and diagrams production. Participants used both digital and manual tools to create their diagrams.
14:26 At the end of this stage each participant briefly explained their decision-making process and experience during the workshop.
Next stage will be focussed on the analysis of the diagrams, processes, comments and suggestions collected from both workshops.
Special thanks to Joanna for her support and help before, during and after the workshop, and to Eve from LCC research office.
At the beginning of September, I wrote about the forthcoming 1st International Visual Methods Conference in Leeds, today I write some conclusions about it.
The Conference was a huge event with more than 200 participants and 150 papers coming from Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia. All papers were grouped into five big categories. The first one dealt with researchers producing their own data for collecting visual material (participatory and researcher created data), while the second group of papers were concerned about how to use visual methods for analysing and interpreting visual data and to improve the communication of emotions and experiences (visual analysis and arts-base and creative methods). A different category, the third one, was composed by papers explaining how to visually present and represent data (visual representation). Finally, the forth and fifth groups of papers coped with ethical issues of visual material (visual ethics) and projects using multiple visual methods (methodology), respectively.
In my previous post I discussed some points, such as my concerned about the current situation of graphic design and visual methods. Moreover, with the idea of the existence of two kinds of visual methods (ones used by graphic designers and others used by social scientists) in mind, I suggested this event as an ideal opportunity to learn more about this and the gap between graphic designers and social scientists.
However, after the conference I have changed my mind about some of these initial thoughts.
Some of the conclusions about Leeds conference that made me went back through my thoughts are that:
1) There are not two different groups of visual methods, the difference is how the methods are applied and used. Graphic designers use visual methods in a systematic way for analysing and interpreting visual material, while anthropologists and social scientists use them for collecting visual data. The paper of Andrew Clark (University of Salford) was a clear example of both applications of visual methods: collection, analysis and mapping data.
2) There are different purposes for using visual methods. Visual methods can be used to improve visual communication, to create more effective learning-teaching techniques (project of Dr. Eddie Norman, Xenia Danos and Cheng Siew Beh from Loughborough University), to develop systematic ways of classification (project of social designer Joanna Choukeir from University of the Arts London).
3) There are new boundaries, like the Internet, where visual methods are rapid gaining a place. Both Sara Pink and Gillian Rose from social sciences presented projects about how to use visual methods for online platforms.
4) For my surprised, the use of diagrams in the environment of visual methods is more common than I have imagined. Papers related with diagrams were about both diagrams as educational tools (visual teaching), and diagrams as a tool for representing conceptual ideas (mind maps), and from a different approach, the search of visual methods for analysing diagrams (project of Gillian McCrum, Aberdeen University).
The paper I presented was focussed on the visual methods I have used to analyse and interpret diagrams, in order to understand their structure and develop a design method for creating more effective diagrams.
Even though, social scientists and graphic designers are still working in parallel tracks, there is an increasing interest between both for learning about the others point of view.
The next International Visual Methods Conference will take place in two years time. Hopefully, too much work will be done for that new conference.
Barcelona, Saturday 3rd of October. In a sunny design studio of Gracia took place the first of the diagram(a)s-backstage workshop series. In the first place I would like to thank all the participants for their hard work and great feedback during the workshop. Although, the participants came from different backgrounds such as graphic design, web design, industrial design and architecture, all of them share an interest in information design, visual representations, mapping information and maps.
10:30 The workshop programme included two parts: practical activities and some theory, followed by analyses and discussions of the work done.
11:04 After a short introduction, participants were engaged in a diagrammatic activity, where initially they had to analyse, interpret, and organise different contents (from social/historical themes to technical/scientific ones). Secondly, they mapped the information and elaborated their own diagrams. They used a wide range of media, from digital tools to manual ones, like pens, pencils and scissors, papers, magazines and newspapers.
13.42 Break! After more than 2-non-stop working hours, a short break to recover energy and network was more than welcome.
14:02 The second part began with theory about some key concepts like the relevance of information organization in diagrams creation, the description of the 5-stage process of diagrams design, and the meaning of the terms decode and encode. The final theme was to emphasize the need of multidisciplinary team groups for a proper understanding of the contents.
14:56 Feedback and comments. Each participant presented their results and explained their decision-making process.
15:22 Unfortunately, there was too much to say and show during the 5-hour workshop, and it was quite difficult to approach deeply into everything. However, I trust the main purpose of the event has been transmitted: information organization is essential to achieve effective diagrams.
Next stop, London, 17th of October. There is too much to do during the next two weeks to set up the next workshop but with renew energy after the encouraging and stimulating first experience!
Special thanks to Jessica and Paola for their support and help before, during and after the workshop, and to Tiago (+ other designers of the studio).
dónde & cuándo? when & where?
Octubre sábado o3 – De 10.30hs a 15hs: Barcelona, España.
Carrer Santa Eulàlia, 21 – Piso1º – 08012 barcelona (Spain)
October Saturday 17th – London: To be confirmed
La participación en este evento es gratuita, pero por favor, se ruega confirmación a / This is a free event, but please RSVP on sheilapontis@gmail.com
Habrá un máximo de 20 participantes por workshop
Maximum 20 participants per workshop
Te espaeramos!
Looking forward to seeing you!
