Months after my summer travels to Switzerland, my head still buzzes with ideas. During the week-long workshop, I remember my professor saying that design is about making images — and that images are born out of intentional play. He would go on to say that play, like a game of soccer, has rules. The rules provide boundaries and often force unexpected solutions. I’ve always loved the tension between play and rules, but I began to wonder: Do I still know how to play? I decided to find out.
We were asked to develop a project concept, which was to formulate and explore a research question based on the relationship between words and images. Over the years I’ve spent a lot of creative energy solving visual problems, so I couldn’t help but wonder, What if I didn’t try to solve a problem at all? What if I just played and allowed the ambiguity to take me someplace new? It just seemed too simple.
“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
Pablo Picasso
The prof approved my proposition by the end of the day, but I had this sick feeling that as he walked away, so did my idea. It seemed so coherent when I was describing it to him, but then it seemed hollow.
Can meaning be constructed out of an arbitrary design methodology? Working from a gut-level belief, I proposed that the strategic use of ambiguity in graphic design could enhance, rather than inhibit, reader experience.
I began by taking photographs at a nearby train station. I wandered around, drawn to the German train signs, and found myself trying to see the space in new ways. Having never really loitered in a train station before, I was intrigued that few busy travelers paid any attention to the signage. The resulting images depicted an isolation of public signage — representing mundane and functional design — that is vital to community life but ironically invisible.
Putting those images aside, I moved on to typography, engaging in a kind of deconstructive frolic. I chose five letterforms, somewhat randomly but with an eye toward their unique formal properties. I was curious to discover how far I could deconstruct each letterform before they began to lose their identity. But after pulling type apart for a few hours, I decided that I was going to make not one but a series of images.
I chose one photograph (a view down the tracks) to serve as a constant holding the project together, and also to ground the images in the context of an urban train station. I then chose another five images depicting a unique signage and environment relationship — one to serve as the foundation for each of my visual experiments. Hundreds of images were born out of the juxtaposition of these six photographs and five letterforms — arbitrarily created and combined, yet surprising in their continuity.
From an aesthetic point of view, both modernism and postmodernism are perhaps equally unbalanced. If modernism is too driven and orderly, postmodernism is too complacent and chaotic. I may be a recovering modernist and a failed postmodernist, but I’ve discovered a couple of things:
One, ambiguity is helpful in graphic design as a methodology and as a means of communication. As a methodology, intentional playfulness can yield surprising and innovative results. And in communication, ambiguity has a tremendous advantage over more direct and overt solutions. Ambiguity allows designers to present content without predetermining how an audience will respond, so that they are free to make interpretations of their own. More importantly, ambiguity also provides an audience with the opportunity to discover and delight in solving visual problems. This sense of discovery in graphic design, as in all of learning, invites participation and deeper understanding — enhancing both the communication and the experience.
Two, even though I tried to pull away all the constraints on my visual playtime, I could not help but make up rules along the way. The rigors of methodology, though poorly applied, found their way into my process. As much as I wanted to play, I also wanted to create something meaningful. And during our workshop critiques, my curious classmates were driven to find substance in my compositions. I was struck by our common desire to find meaning, and to create it as well.
By the time I boarded the plane back home, I had discovered a little something about what it means to be human: We cannot help but try to make sense of the world.
Every 6-year-old with a box of crayons knows that.
Greg Breeding knows your type. And wants to kern it.
