Belly of the Beast

Belly

of theB

eastFinding individuality and authenticity in design

Belly

of theB

eastFinding individuality and authenticity in design

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Belly of the BeastIntroduction

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Belly of the Beast Introduction

Urgently the mark of the individual hand speaks to us in today’s world of mass production, when the creative learning journey must engage heart, hands and head. Creative people learn best through getting out from behind the screen and getting their hands dirty. Working with the hands engages the mind and heart. We are not a big learning factory that places you on an assembly line of scores and grades. We want to know what has happened to the old-fashioned notion of craftsmanship and the personal touch? The time has come to use your boldness in a personalised place of learning that values your individuality. You will discover your strengths and measure your individual progress with shared discussion and critique. We reject the corporate education system, we are not a shopping mall of mass education. You will find your own visual voice in a personalised and real learning environment that is not profit driven. In this publication, we talk about the people, ideals and artwork of the design world as seen by its newest design school: Old School New School.

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Belly of the BeastCredits

Creative Direction Veronica Grow

Editors Rosetta Lake Mills Veronica Grow

Designers Patrick Carroll Rosetta Lake Mills

Contributors Megan Deal Cat Macinnes Luke Robertson Magdalena Ksiezak Eve Dullaar Brooke Thorn

Publisher Old School Press

Typeset Aperçu

Paper Stock Text goes here

Printing Riso Printer Text goes here

Cover Veronica Grow

Special ThanksSuki Singh and our great design students

Contact Old School, 10 Grey Court, Coburg, VIC, 3058 9350 6441 [email protected] www.newschoolfordesignandtypography.com

Copyright © Old School for Design and Typography and the authors, 2012. This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the copyright act 1968, no part may be reproduced without written permission from Old School and the designated author. Requests and inquiries concerning reproduction and rights should be expressed to Veronica Grow, Rosetta Lake Mills or Patrick Carroll.

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Belly of the Beast Contents

Who, why, where, what and how? 10

The teacher 14

Occupied Mono 16

Your Role as a designer to do good. 18

Conditional Design 22

Beautiful noise 27

The journey of handmade type 29

Breaking out of the digital domain 30

On falling in love and personal projects 34

Perfecting the craft of publication design 36

The importance of appropriately using style and aesthetic within design 38

Design spaces 42

Your neighbour says 44

Dear design blog 46

Placemaking 48

The profession of design shows me nothing new 52

The essentials 54

Head

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Belly of the Beast Head

A friend of mine recently likened the process of idea generation to catching the feather of aimlessness. I thought about that line a lot during the production of this book because, at least in the beginning we were bound by the endless possibilities generated by such an open brief. Trying to pigeonhole our target too quickly would have forfeited our opportunity to bask in the brilliance of misdirection and aimlessness. For it is from this that the greatest and most naturally original ideas tend to spring. Somewhere in our befuddled brainstorming, we took the chance to glance around us. In the dappled light of leafy Coburg with hot cups of tea and surrounded by encouraging smiles, we had no impulsion to fret. For the first time in my design career I took a deep breath, sat back in my chair and knew it would come.

Having recently finished the bulk of my formal design education I realised that what sets Old School apart was precisely what it had just led me to do: set aside my creative worry, angst and insecurities and allow my mind to wander a little further than it’s used to.

Why simply showcase another bunch of finished student works when the focus of Old School education is idea and process not simply product? To get right to the heart of the matter—Old School is about people. We realised that the most honest and transparent way to represent this was to start up a dialogue with the individuals who have been touched by the school and attempt to showcase both the product of these exercises and their personal growth over the period of their involvement. Alongside our focus on the students of the school, we also thought it important to communicate with the School’s friends and local community to get their insights on how the school’s presence and it’s projects have inspired and nfluenced and them so far.

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Belly of the BeastHead

How long have you been interested in design?

Well I guess that depends on your definition of design. Subconsciously all my life, but more so since I started studying and even more so when I started teaching. And I think, over the years it’s developed. I first studied between 1996 and 1998 and I’d say it just never stops growing. I see design as more of a holistic practice and lifestyle, as something that we all do whether we like it or not. We’re all designers. We all design when we decide what to wear in the morning when we go on holiday, the friends we choose, the houses we live in we’re all designing our own lives and it’s a very interesting process, a very psychological process. And my interest has grown because I see it as a very people-led process and I am people centred. Deciding whether to study psychology or design was a tough choice, but now I understand that the two are almost the same in so many ways.

What do you think has influenced your design over the years?

Teaching has been very influential through the broader knowledge I’ve gained through sharing ideas. Teaching is a very research-led process that makes your practice as a designer develop as you continually understand how involved it really is. Over the years your knowledge about design elements such as typography, cultural context, and attention to detail improves. This takes alot of time and a lot of practice.

How do you think the design education at Old School differs from traditional design education around Australia?

Traditional design education is very assessment-lead. It’s all about marks and it’s all about categorising students into fail, pass, credit, distinction, high distinction which makes students focus on their marks or lack of them, instead of what they are actually achieving. I think students need to have personal feedback and they need to be a big part of that process. It needs to be a collaborative process in which the student is heavily involved and they need to be very cogniscent and aware of what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. It needs to be more of a discussion between the student and the peers and the teacher who is a facilitator that opens the student out to new ways of seeing the world and new ways of understanding. So this differences is massive. Old School differs

Veronica Grow— The creative spirit of Old School the New School for Graphic Design and Typography

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in that it is not a shop nor should I say Department Store? Mainstream educational institutions have become shops. They let anyone in, as long as they can pay; it’s a user-pay system that treats its most valuable asset (its teachers) appallingly. And it just shouldn’t be like that. Not everyone can be a designer, not everyone can be a brain surgeon and not everyone should be encouraged to learn design if they don’t have the capabilities. You shouldn’t be learning because you’ve got a lot of money, it should be because you’re prepared to work hard, you’re curious and you really want to be a part of your own education. You’ve got initiative, drive and passion. It’s a really rigourous intellectual process, and I think schools needs to take more responsibility for that and not just let everyone in just because they can pay. It’s very misleading and can be unfair on the part of the student. So many private institutions I’ve taught at also let anyone in and these people are very disruptive. On the other hand so many students go through major life issues during their education and need individual reassurance to get them through their issues so they can continue. Mainstream design institutions are too big, and many students fall through the cracks unnecessarily. They could be great designers, but they don’t get that little bit of nurturing and love to get them through. Then they live a life regretting what they could have been which is really sad. A learning environment needs to be risk-free, where students can feel free to go for it and not feel like they’re being judged. it needs to be a playful and fun environment and just a little bit crazy.

What are your aims for the future for your own design practice and also for Old School?

I think it’s very important that teachers are not just teaching. Especially in design, teachers need to be practising by making and doing stuff. I exhibited in the Human Rights Art and Film Festival lasy year, and I need to keep making. I’ve got a little project that I’ve been working on this year it’s called Music of Stones and it’s all about the Merri Creek. It’s called Music of Stones because the Wurrunji people once inhabited the Merri Creek, and “Merri Merri” is Wurrunji for “stoney stoney”. So I’m working on a little publication based around that. I’m also working on a publication which moves on from my masters. We’re calling it “Cantina” and it’s all about celebrating the Italian way of life of community and connectedness through food. It started off its life in my masters as a visual essay for Social Ethnnography. I made a photo essay of my friend Gabriella’s parents in their home and their practices of farming their own rabbits, making their own food and wine. I just want to keep working on projects like that. If a teacher is a maker, it inspires the students who have a lot more respect for those who work on their own projects. The theoretical viewpoint is equally valuable, and something I continually strive to keep up to date with. Portland State Universtiy, Design Academy Eindhoven, Ellen Lupton, Cooper Union, Rhode Island School of Design and School of Visual Arts New York I refer to as models. My vision is that Old School becomes an inspirational centre for research that incorporates Design Residency Projects that inform teaching and future workshops. I envisage that Old School’s contingent will be about twenty students per year. Interesting and inspiring teachers will share their ideas and experience to become part of the story. Every year Old School will support emerging designers as they realise creative projects such as The Belly of the Beast. This practice-lead model will inform the direction of the school which is a huge part of our philosophy. Keeping teaching content current, and maintaining our social media profile will mean that we are a model for those who also wish to revolutionise design education models.

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Belly of the BeastHead

Occupied Mono. By Luke Robertson.

Occupied Mono is a monospaced, all caps, sans-serif typeface designed as a response to a final year typographic brief at the Queensland College of Art in 2011. The project was a collaboration between Luke Robertson and Aaron Gillett.

The project began with research into the supporting visual language that was developing alongside the Occupy Wall Street movement. It was clear there was a great lack of cohesion and quality in the messages being communicated. A display typeface was developed as an offering towards a visual common ground for the occupiers.

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As a typeface designed with a message in mind, its practical applications underpin the idea behind its conception: use the rules and traditions of typography to question pre-existing notions. Monospaced type grew out of purely practical considerations: old technology such as typewriters would utilise these letters because that was a limitation of the technology. In a contemporary context, monospaced type is commonly found in digital coding environments to aid readability. Monospaced letterforms were never meant be seen in display settings, so creating a thin monospaced font is counter-intuitive; but that is exactly the point. Thin type becomes increasingly illegible the smaller it’s set, so this worked as an inbuilt failsafe—the font would have to be set big. This is the parallel that we drew to the motives of the occupiers: also their voices that were seldom heard were suddenly shouting and questioning an unjust social and economic hierarchy.

Selected type specimens were overprinted on copies of the News Corp. owned paper, The Australian. The newspaper effectively became ‘occupied’ with the existing design adopting a whole new meaning. The movement’s diversity is of course one of its central strengths and characteristics, so the typeface is not intended as a kind of brand homogenisation. Rather, the design is a visual equivalent of the unifying verbal devices used by the occupiers, such as their very nomenclature (i.e. Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Brisbane) and slogans like “we are the 99%”.

In any case we hoped the result would carry with it a certain graphic tension without succoming to tired and expected clichés prevalent in activist graphics. These clichés can often work counter to their intended message, polarising an audience before information is even comprehended.

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Belly of the Beast