notes, week of 6 and 8 october

Thursday, 8 October...
No classes in morning, to accommodate a Faculty Meeting...
that I will not be attending, and so have reserved the morning for one-on-one meetings with any seminarian who would like this.
See google calendar/meet notification regarding details, and the scheduled thirty-minute slots.
these meetings are optional, not obligatory.

The reading for Tuesday (that (almost?) no one read for this week, will be discussed next Tuesday, 13 October.
Please have thoughts about, or prompted by, that reading —
Francisco Laranjo, “Graphic Design Systems, and The Systems of Graphic Design” in
Modes of Criticism 5 / Design Systems

Photocopies of print edition on the table in the Design Seminar room.
same text at modesofcriticism.org/graphic-design-systems/

The essay begins with a discussion of the grid, and specifically of Josef Müller-Brockmann his Grid Systems (1981)

I have left a photocopy of the title, table of contents and some other pages from that volume.

Of greatest interest is “grid and design philosophy” (page 10), whose English-language version is given below :

• The use of the grid as an ordering system is the expression of a certain mental attitude inasmuch as it shows that the designer conceives his work in terms that are constructive and oriented to the future.
• This is the expression of a professional ethos: the designer’s work should have the clearly intelligible, objective, functional, and aesthetic quality of mathematical thinking.
• His work should thus be a contribution to general culture and itself form part of it.
• Constructivist design that is capable of analysis and reproduction can influence and enhance the taste of a society and the way it conceives forms and colors. Design that is objective, committed to the common weal, well composed, and refined constitutes the basis of democratic behavior.
• Constructivist design means the conversion of design laws into practical solutions. Work done systematically and in accordance with strict formal principles makes those demands for directness, intelligibility, and the integration of all factors that are also vital in sociopolitical life.
• Working with the grid system means submitting to laws of universal validity.
• The use of the grid system implies the will to systematize, to clarify
  the will to penetrate to the essentials, to concentrate
  the will to cultivate objectivity instead of subjectivity
  the will to rationalize the creative and technical production processes
  the will to integrate elements of color, form, and material
  the will to achieve architectural dominion over surface and space
  the will to adopt a positive, forward-looking attitude
  the recognition of the importance of education and the effect of work devised in a constructive and creative spirit.
• Every visual creative work is a manifestation of the character of the designer. It is a reflection of his knowledge, his ability, and his mentality.

Müller-Brockmann (book and photocopies) can be found on table in the Seminar Room.
Also on the table (and open to a nice identity exercise) is David Reinfurt and Robert Wiesenberger their monograph Muriel Cooper (2017), on that important designer whose work was inflected by, and played with, grids and similar systems.
something about Cooper (and the book) here
more about Cooper, in the MIT archives, in Madeleine Morley’s essay “Looking Back on Muriel Cooper’s Visions of the Future”.