bau3: fear und psychologie

‘Noth­ing ever goes to plan – so you might as well en­joy what ac­tu­al­ly does hap­pen.’
–one of my per­son­al philoso­phies (pro­fes­sion­al too)

For the third class we start with an ear­ly morn­ing cri­tique. Two stu­dents are ab­sent, in­clud­ing the cri­tique the hell out­ta me guy. Per my syl­labus legale­sus stu­dents are re­spon­si­ble for every­thing that hap­pens in what­ev­er class they miss – stan­dard in all my cours­es; forces them to have to ac­tu­al­ly talk to each oth­er, take ac­cu­rate notes. I nev­er catch them up on my own. Adult, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty thing. Group work prep, team build­ing, net­work­ing is in there too.

Home­work was to re­search and get in­spired by the philosophy/art/design of Jo­hannes It­ten (1888–1967) and cre­ate five LINE-based box­es that show IM­BAL­ANCE and EN­ER­GY.

I had stu­dents look at every­one else’s work – putting lit­tle pen­ciled plusses (+) and mi­nus­es (–) on what they felt worked and didn’t (gets them look­ing at each other’s projects in de­tail, not just fo­cus­ing on their own project).

colour
I set­tled on geo­met­ric stud­ies (above, craft­ed by my for­mer Wal­dorf stu­dent) be­cause of the com­plex­i­ty of el­e­ments – and how it comes close to meet­ing the re­quire­ments of the as­sign­ment. It shows IM­BAL­ANCE, but the EN­ER­GY wasn’t hap­pen­ing yet.

Prob­lem: cir­cles + blue = calm­ing. Op­po­site of EN­ER­GY. I men­tion we’ll be cov­er­ing Bauhaus the­o­ries on just this sub­ject next week – cause ques­tions about TRI­AN­GLE SQUARE CIR­CLE are start­ing to pop up (since some of the stu­dents have start­ed read­ing up on the Bauhaus).

When asked about colour picks (the whole class), I start­ed to hear,
‘These are my colours, I’m work­ing with them be­cause they’re safe.’ and ‘This is re­al­ly what I nor­mal­ly do’ and ‘Yeah, my style is re­al­ly com­ing through …’

As we talked, I had to ask about what they were re­al­ly say­ing here. My colours, safe, what I nor­mal­ly do, MY style …

I bought up the word that usu­al­ly piss­es off stu­dents (that seems to fit):

‘Ex­cus­es. Those sound like ex­cus­es.’

They did agree. It led me to the VENN di­a­gram I nor­mal­ly show to stu­dents the first few class­es. My take on the TWO THINGS that will get in the way of any­thing I teach:

(and right af­ter I came up with it, I found this ver­sion) (then, this is a whole oth­er thing)

Our con­clu­sion (class-in­volved dis­cus­sion) is ‘Let’s jump into colour!’ and see what hap­pens. Sup­ple­ment­ed by my fa­vorite colour book (which I rec­om­mend­ed cause it was THE book that changed my out­look on colour – I punc­tu­ate how colour works by turn­ing the lights off and point­ing out that I just changed ALL the colours in the class­room): ‘Read more: Vic­to­ria Fin­lay ’spains what caus­es this and oth­er stuff.’

Colour: A Nat­ur­al His­to­ry of the Palette by Vic­to­ria Fin­lay
H & S, ©2002, ISBN: 978–0812971422

And my re­view of the book is buried in the Colour sec­tion on the FLOMM bib­li­og­ra­phy page. (Fin­lay also has a new book on colour, The Bril­liant His­to­ry of Col­or in Art – with im­ages from The Get­ty – new re­search, ex­pand­ed edi­tion.)

‘If you’re go­ing into de­sign, bet­ter buy a book­shelf now. You’ll be fill­ing it.’

same­ness­eseses
And the stu­dent who had the in­cred­i­ble scrib­ble con­cept last class did some­thing ex­pect­ed: She recre­at­ed her piece from last week – same tech­nique. For­mu­la­ic.

This worked well last week, I’m go­ing to do it again – I man­aged to ex­tract.

So en­er­gy ap­peared again – with some strong geo­met­ric think­ing – though im­bal­ance was lack­ing.

‘Every­thing in my life is jum­bled and con­fus­ing’ and ‘I’m gen­er­al­ly up­set’ with ‘His­to­ry: My worst class EVER!’ led to our next dis­cus­sion …

‘Teach­ing de­sign is 20% as­sign­ments and 80% ther­a­py’
–a quote from me and educator/FLommist colleague/my adopt­ed sis­ter Hol­ly Agun­des

ther­a­pie
The un­li­censed ther­a­pist part of my job kicked in. We talked about FEAR. We talked about AB­SOLUTES. We talked about con­cepts for­mer stu­dent turned web de­sign firm de­sign di­rec­tor Jon Slinger­land pre­sent­ed in a talk yes­ter­day (more on this in a lat­er post).

This stu­dent men­tioned the first day that the world is to­tal­ly about grey ar­eas. But to­day, she says, ‘Black and White is my thing.’

Which led to ‘You can’t have a thing yet! I’m go­ing to in­voke ageism: You can’t have a thing – or a style – un­til at LEAST …

… age 85.’

And an­oth­er stu­dent com­ment­ed that she should go back to grey area think­ing: There’ll be more in­ter­est­ing re­sults.

Age­wise: I state there’s as much dra­mat­ic change in one’s life be­tween age 20–30 as your teens. Only dif­fer­ence is some peo­ple get bet­ter at deal­ing with it.

(The old­er stu­dents to­tal­ly agreed too.)

The big ques­tion be­comes: How do you deal with the FEAR?

I men­tioned a few philoso­phies that may work – such as don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agree­ments – and an app called Po­modoro that Hol­ly men­tioned that’s help­ing an­oth­er stu­dent with se­vere OCD. There’s also a med­i­ta­tion app called Head­space, cre­at­ed by Andy Pud­di­combe – and it feels a bit like Jamie Oliv­er teach­ing you to calm down. I men­tion how or­ga­niz­ing posts on the FLOMM blogs (this one, this one) as well as the me­chan­ics of font de­sign helps keep me from be­ing over­whelmed by OCD. We also talk about ther­a­py can be a good thing, but only if one finds the right ther­a­pist. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, not every­one thinks alike so find­ing the right tools are part of the puz­zle.

‘What’s it like con­stant­ly liv­ing on the edge?’
was a ques­tion an­oth­er col­league asked me once. I don’t think I’m right on the edge, but damn near it. I liken it to ‘rid­ing a roller coast­er – but (in my view) tak­ing breaks amongst the chaos and un­cer­tain­ly are very nec­es­sary. My take is be­ing on roller coast­er for weeks on end can dri­ve you crazy.’ Va­ca­tions are good, es­pe­cial­ly ones that take you to oth­er places, meet­ing oth­er peo­ple, hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions. I spend any time I can on road trips with my wife; we’ve cov­ered most of Cal­i­for­nia and huge swaths of the U.S. Trav­el­ing slow – off the In­ter­state – re­al­ly al­lows one to see things.

On HON­ESTY: I re­mem­bered a (bor­rowed) quote from Farah Faw­cett (from her sec­ond Play­boy spread):

From Farrah’s Naked Art Spe­cial, ©1997 Play­boy En­ter­pris­es

Orig­i­nal quote source was Ros­alind Rus­sell – from this we went far­ther into what makes art good.

Hon­est art is usu­al­ly a con­fes­sion­al, an artist bar­ing their soul, their feel­ings, to an­oth­er. And the work will res­onate IF the work is hon­est. Or if it’s a lie, ‘make it a good lie.’
–Para­phrased from Max Roth­man (John Cu­sack), from MAX (this week’s home­work, see be­low)

We jumped back to dis­cussing the Ken Robin­son video – and how kinder­gart­ners would tack­le things faster than 5th graders. And the dif­fer­ence be­tween PLAY and WORK.

‘Find a job you en­joy do­ing, and you will nev­er have to work a day in your life.’
—Mark Twain (1835–1910), orig­i­nal source: Con­fu­cius

Back to the work it­self, the oth­er stu­dents start­ed re­al­iz­ing that what they had in front of them was all bal­anced, safe.

I gave them a nice rule of thumb for ASYM­ME­TRY: ‘Make all your white space un­even. Hard to do, but once you get used to it, it tends to help.’

kurze zusam­men­fas­sung
So this class was one hel­lu­va long dis­cus­sion! Also men­tioned: Phi­los­o­phy of Charles Bukows­ki (stu­dent rec­om­mend­ed I read more than I have) and the work of Chip Kidd – cause one stu­dent has self-pub­lished her own books. I men­tion Chip Kidd: Book One is a great re­source for the think­ing be­hind ex­cel­lent book cov­er de­sign.

‘Buy that book­case!’

And home­work:

POL­I­TICS +POW­ER AS­SIGN­MENT
Watch the film MAX (2002)
(not MAD MAX, just plain ol’ MAX)
(It’s on course re­serve in the school li­brary or can be found at Ama­zon In­stant Video)

You’ll need to watch the film in or­der to do your home­work:
RE-DO TWO of your best pieces for next week; tak­ing far­ther; in­cor­po­rate the ideas of POL­I­TICS and POW­ER.
New square size: 8x8; ADD some form of TY­POG­RA­PHY (word or words).

Plus, READ De­sign Ba­sics Chap­ter 3, pages 56–65
(some­how one stu­dent went to the school li­brary and ap­plied the De­sign Ba­sics read­ing as­sign­ment from last class to a book on the Bauhaus – and was con­fused by the page num­bers I gave out. ‘Please read the TEXT­BOOK you’ve al­ready PAID FOR,’ was pret­ty much my re­sponse. What else could I say?)

Then THE FEAR kicked in. Ap­par­ent­ly POL­I­TICS and POW­ER (adapt­ed from the MAX film) ap­pears to be more dif­fi­cult than TEN­SION, IM­BAL­ANCE and EN­ER­GY (so I give lit­tle pep talk though) a few stu­dents walk­ing out the door looked very shell shocked …

—steve mehal­lo

Im­age up top: Spon­ta­neous asym­met­ric Kit Kats

Last year, FLOMM founder Steve Mehal­lo re­built a de­sign fun­da­men­tals course into a five week study of the­o­ries and work done at The Bauhaus (1919–33). This BAU blog se­ries will doc­u­ment the lat­est teach­ing of the course – with les­son plan – Sum­mer 2015 to a group of 8 col­lege stu­dents. What’ll hap­pen, who’ll shine, who’ll drop. Names (and some sit­u­a­tions) have been changed to pro­tect the in­no­cent as well as the guilty.

 
co
nti
nue
read
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