Jorge Frascara

Manufactured Pleasures / Psychological Responses to Design

Introduction: psychological responses to design psychological explanations. Part 1 Nature or culture?: biological explanations preferences for landscape personal spaces. Part 2 Form and design: formal laws of beauty the good gestalt complexity and familiarity - Berlynes theory. Part 3 Meaning and design: meaning and emotion the unconscious meanings of objects the classification of meanings objects as symbols of the self. Part 4 Function and design: ergonomics and the effectiveness of design making sense of visual displays communicating with the computer. Part 5 Form, meaning, function: colour multi-model perception form, meaning and function conclusions.

Graphic Design: Fine Art or Social Science?

Toward a heoretical backbone for graphic design Graphic design has existed long enough for its role in society to be easily understood. However, unlike architecture, literature, or the fine arts, it has developed without much theoretical reflection. It has evolved into a sophisticated practice in a piecemeal fashion, with scattered efforts aimed at the development of subareas, such as posters or books, but without either the critical apparatus in literature or the discussion present in architecture. The aspect of graphic design that has attracted some discussion is visual style. But this discussion of style has several flaws: * It overemphasizes the importance of the visual structure within an esthetic context. * It omits problems of appropriateness. * It leaves out certain areas of graphic design, such as signage, forms, timetables, maps, and educational material (Figs. 1, 2, 3). * It omits the importance of ideas in the communication process, not distinguishing between visual creation and visual manipulation. * It avoids problems of performance related to visual perception. * It omits problems related to the impact that graphic communication has on the publics attitudes and ideas. These flaws have led to several distortions, the most important brought about by the praise of modern avant-garde typography. How long will the praise of El Lissitzky continue? True, he made a strong impact on a few typographic designers whose work in graphic design was closely related to the practice of art and looked very similar to their paintings or the paintings of avant-garde artists of th time. However, was Lissitzkys contribution really positive? His visual language was tremendously abstract (Fig. 4), as inappropriate to mass communication as Schwitterss graphics

Communications for Change: Strategies and Difficulties

A context: the symbolic meaning of use For many people; use equals possession, which equals power, power to do things, to enjoy things, and to achieve comfort. People get used to the things they use; take them for granted; and believe it is their right, not their privilege, to use them. A character in a story by Milan Kundera manages to convince a Paris policeman that she has the right to park her car illegally, since the City does not offer drivers enough parking facilities. As it is her right to go shopping; it is, therefore, the municipalitys fault; and not hers; that she has to park illegally to go shopping. People use things without consciousness of the processes of production. The well known separation of use from production has resulted in the belief in infinity of resources: the only limit is set by what we can afford to pay; sometimes, beyond that, we feel we should have enough money to buy even what we now cannot afford. Some contemporary artists paint using gallons of acrylic gel. They do not mix the colors; they just buy the gallons. Jan van Eyck never would have conceived of producing a three-centimeter-thick painting; getting the pigments and preparing the colors was a major task; and color was precious. If we had to dig for petroleum and refine it, we would think twice before using the car to go and buy bread two blocks from home, as most North Americans do. Accessibility to ready-made products works like magic. It seems as if things were produced out of the blue. As magic, this easy accessibility gives people the illusion of freedom and power. A revision of use that results in a reduction of use will be feared by people as a possible reduction of freedom and power; and will, therefore, be resisted. From industrys point of view, use generates consumption, which generates business. Industry is very interested in use; lots of use, and intensive use. More use means more demand for more quantity. More quantity means more business. A revision of use which results in a reduction of use will be feared as a possible reduction of business, and will, therefore, be opposed by industry and commerce. Industry and commerce (and, to some extent, people) control governments. Therefore, a revision of use that is opposed by people, industry, and commerce will create difficulty with governments; This text is the edited version of a presenta-

IMPROVING PERCEPTION OF LETTERS AND VISUAL STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE

Information about letters and the physical structure of language printed in Roman characters was given to children beginning to read. Experimental investigations coupled three alternative graphic modes of printing upper- and lower-case letters with an instructional intervention termed “Alpha-Beta” which provides practice in letter sorting, matching of letters, associative matching, and memory matching. In respect to graphics, Mode A letters were in standard alphabet form. Mode B provided standard letters with each backed by a unique half-tone (Visually Stippled Alphabet); Mode C provided standard letters with each backed by a unique visual texture (Visually Patterned Alphabet). Pre-posttest change in reading readiness was measured using the Metropolitan Readiness Test. In the first study 224 English-speaking 5- to 6-yr.-old children were tested. In the second there were 158 Spanish-speaking girls and boys 6 to 7 years old. It was predicted that Alpha-Beta intervention involving visually patterned alphabet would lead to the greatest increases in readiness scores. This is confirmed in both studies for children low in reading readiness preexperiment. Children high in reading readiness are less affected. The second experiment involved Spanish-speaking children and investigated intervention by Alpha-Beta against a no-intervention control. This confirms the value of Alpha-Beta per se. Possible explanations for the improvements are identified.

Introduction: Rethinking Design

Back in 1996, the Department of Art and Design at the University of Alberta was one of three successful recipients of funds from a (then) new government program designed to support new educational initiatives that promised increased enrollments and job prospects for the graduates. The success of the Department was based on its new Bachelor of Design degree with Pathways. We had moved recently to the new degree denomination, leaving the Bachelor of Fine Arts for the students who concentrated on fine arts subjects. We thought there was confusion in the province about the expertise in design that the BFA stood for, given that students majoring in Painting, Printmaking or Sculpture, came out with the same degree—and often sought similar jobs—as students concentrating in industrial or visual communication design. Once the new denomination was accepted (it took twelve years to convince the administration) we looked at the changes that had occurred in our understanding of the profession and decided that two fundamental educational moves were necessary: first, we needed to recognize the interdisciplinary nature of design and act on this recognition through becoming associated with other departments and faculties in the university. Second, we wanted to provide possibilities for a number of different students, with different talents, to study different aspects of design. As a consequence of this, pathways were created so that students in the Bachelor of Design program could take between thirty and forty-five percent of their credits in other departments. These “pathways” are offered by Computer Science, Engineering, Business & Marketing, Social Sciences (Anthropology, Psychology and Sociology), and Printmaking. This new administrative structure was the consequence of recognizing the importance of methodological, contextual and technical aspects that required more attention than what had been the case in traditional design education. The need to develop and articulate our conception of design education in this new ground, made us earmark part of the funds received for the creation of a series of lectures by recognized local and foreign design theorists, educators, and practitioners. In this way we promoted reflection and dialogue, and contributed to the development of our position as design educators. This volume of Design Issues is dedicated to reproduce a selection of the lectures delivered during the last three years. They represent part of the ongoing reflection in which we are embarked.