Log In

Home
    - Create Journal
    - Update
    - Download

LiveJournal
    - News
    - Paid Accounts
    - Contributors

Customize
    - Customize Journal
    - Create Style
    - Edit Style

Find Users
    - Random!
    - By Region
    - By Interest
    - Search

Edit ...
    - Personal Info &
      Settings
    - Your Friends
    - Old Entries
    - Your Pictures
    - Your Password

Developer Area

Need Help?
    - Lost Password?
    - Freq. Asked
      Questions
    - Support Area



telophase ([info]telophase) wrote in [info]otf_wank,
@ 2005-02-28 12:32:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Come for the design, stay for the wank
Graphic designer Michael Bierut posts an article in a design blog musing about a young designer who has produced a piece in the style of Barbara Kruger without knowing who Barbara Kruger is.

Someone claiming to be a young graphic design student named 'Jessica Simpleton,' who is either one of the most clueless people I've run across today or is a brilliant troll, shows up to complain about the impossibility of remembering every graphic designer ever, accuse all designers over 45 of being hopelessly stale and stodgy, and talk smack about the design of the website which I tend to agree with, but that's beside the point.

Restrained, for the most part, wank ensues, along with interesting discussion on the appropriation and ownership of design.
Jessica SimpletonOMG. What is WronG with you people! If you want to go down in history as noteworthy "artizans", then you should have stuck to fine art. Exccuussse me for having eclectic taste by the way. I spent the better part of this afternoon searching through my "textbook" and yes, it's the only one I have so far since I am, after all, a beginning student, for the artists that impress me the most and purely on a gut level, instinctive level. And yes, I admit the persona is somewhat fucked up but it's also me in many ways. I just like to tell it like it is.

(Post a new comment)

Please be upstanding for the mayor of simpleton
[info]llama_treats
2005-02-28 08:38 pm UTC (link)
I have this feeling that Jessica was planning to get through design school by copying ancient (you know, stuff from the 80's) designs and then pretending they were hers, 'cos nobody can remember that far back! Geez!

[BTW, Jessica, Fred Astaire's ghost could still kick your ass.]

(Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: Please be upstanding for the mayor of simpleton
[info]telophase
2005-02-28 08:53 pm UTC (link)
Jessica reminds me of a girl in the Anglo-Welsh Literature (Welsh lit written in English) I took when I spent a semester in Wales. The prof was going over the requirements for the final, and said that he would be putting verses from the poetry we'd been reading on the test, and we had to ID the author, the title, and the century it was written in. This girl, a junior English major from Iowa, gaped in astonishment at the HORRIBLE requirements and said "You mean we have to learn every single line of every single poem?"

Well. In my freshman-year intro class, covering 1800 years of Brit lit, we were required to ID the author, title, and exact year of the poem from TWO LINES. Bitch, please.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: Please be upstanding for the mayor of simpleton
[info]dreamtoday
2005-03-01 12:50 am UTC (link)
man, i would so totally FAIL that class. i can't remember the words of my favorite poems, let alone others. when i want to recite stuff off the top of my head i find i make shit up and then realize later, no the poem did not actually say that.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: Please be upstanding for the mayor of simpleton
[info]telophase
2005-03-01 02:44 am UTC (link)
It's easier than it sounds. You don't have to remember the words, just the general subject of the poem. If asked, I couldn't recite more than the first line of Marvell's To His Coy Mistress, but the lines "But at my back I always hear / Time's winged chariot hurrying near;" would probably bring it to mind. The professor always goes for the most well-known lines instead of two random ones, anyway. :)

(Reply to this)(Parent)

Re: Please be upstanding for the mayor of simpleton
[info]pokecheck
2005-03-01 04:23 am UTC (link)
Oi. Dude, sometimes it's obvious from the content of the verses.

If it has the word "motherfucker" in it, I'm sure it ain't Poe.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Tarantino's Fall of the House of Usher
[info]kadath
2005-03-01 03:45 pm UTC (link)
Roderick turned toward me in his armchair, his pallid face, exhaustion writ upon it, standing out clearly against the dark damask. "If I might trouble you to pass me my violin, it is the one with 'Badass Motherfucker' engraved upon it."

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: Tarantino's Fall of the House of Usher
[info]llama_treats
2005-03-01 03:47 pm UTC (link)
Dude, I'd so pay to see that.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: Tarantino's Fall of the House of Usher
[info]kadath
2005-03-01 04:19 pm UTC (link)
I looked up the script, and it's just "Bad Motherfucker." Sad. I have no violent American film cred. Sad. :*(

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]dunc
2005-02-28 08:54 pm UTC (link)
Oh, please. I graduated 5 years ago and while the name Barbara Kruger was only vaguely familiar, I knew her work the moment I saw it. And I didn't exactly go to Cal Tech, so I doubt it's a matter of the girl's education. Designers are supposed to be visual people...

Besides, Futura is dated as all hell. I've never understood the 'modern' love for it. Unless you're Wes Anderson, just... don't.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]telophase
2005-02-28 09:00 pm UTC (link)
I didn't learn about her in school (left Art and ran screaming to Anthropology a semester into the art program I was doing because the art depertment people were INSANE AS ALL GET-OUT), but I'd seen her work before, and once I learned her name in my previous job (wrangling slides for an art history and architecture collection), it was a matter of "Oh, she's that person," not "Who is this?"

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]dunc
2005-02-28 09:07 pm UTC (link)
I never learned about her in art history - they pretty much ignored anything with type on it after the advent of photography - but they did sneak in a Design History class for those of us concentrating in it.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]mistressrenet
2005-03-01 05:15 pm UTC (link)
I was self-taught almost completely and pretty well consider myself a hack. However, I still know the style immediately. And if your prof asks you a 'were you going for a X feel?' the correct answer is 'well, kind of,' and then you RUN to your design books when you don't know the answer later.

I like Futura in some instances. But there's almost no font I don't like in some instances, except Comic Sans and one other whose name escapes me and also, I'm a hack.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]wankismyfandom
2005-02-28 09:07 pm UTC (link)
While Jessica Simpleton inspires eyerolling, art chantry drives up my blood pressure. I smell ridiculous heights of pretension.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]telophase
2005-02-28 10:28 pm UTC (link)
A quick Google shows that he has at least earned his ridiculous heights of pretension by being a professional designer for a number of years, unlike Simpleton, who's just behaving like an ass. Although his (deliberate?) misreading of Bierut's essay isn't really making him appear to his best advantage, to put it mildly.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]wankismyfandom
2005-03-01 12:08 am UTC (link)
Oh, no, I'm not saying chantry's a fake or anything. You can have the best résumé in the world and still be a pretentious asshat. I don't know if the misreading was originally deliberate, but at this point it's certainly willful. "I KNOW WHAT YOU SAID AND YOU CAN'T TELL ME YOU SAID ANYTHING DIFFERENT, EVEN IF I TOTALLY FAIL TO UNDERSTAND YOUR POINT. ALSO, I AM IN SEVERE NEED OF A CRANIORECTAL SEPARATION."

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]telophase
2005-03-01 12:10 am UTC (link)
Nah, wasn't accusing you, it just came across that way. He's a pretentious asshat with the proper qualifications to be one. :)

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]lurker32
2005-03-01 02:38 am UTC (link)
talk smack about the design of the website which I tend to agree with

Seconded. Owie.

(Reply to this)


[info]adora_spintriae
2005-03-01 02:48 am UTC (link)
So is this guy going to question whether Kruger knew the names of all those advertisers she stole the work of and slapped words over the top of was "inspired" by?

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]telophase
2005-03-01 03:01 am UTC (link)
He was primarily wondering about the processes at work that allow a student who wasn't aware of someone's style to reproduce it closely.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]adora_spintriae
2005-03-01 03:03 am UTC (link)
I thought "simplistic style that an 11 year old could pull off" would obviously be the culprit.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]telophase
2005-03-01 03:08 am UTC (link)
Using the same font? I could probably grant you the white-on-red text on top of B&W, but going by the enormous number of bold sans-serif fonts out there it's a bit too much of a coincidence that she picked Futura Bold Italic.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]adora_spintriae
2005-03-01 03:25 am UTC (link)
You obviously have more faith in the intelligence and talent of design students than I do.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]aloysius
2005-03-01 07:42 am UTC (link)
I think she (the student) was inspired by LJ icons of a similar style.

(I know that's where I recognize the style from.)

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]mistressrenet
2005-03-01 05:17 pm UTC (link)
I think he was just wondering about the process, and whether anyone-- no matter how well-known in the design world-- really can 'own' a style. Which I think is legitimate.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

  
   
Privacy Policy - COPPA
Legal Disclaimer - Site Map