The American Scene; Visual Communication

Tomorrow showers ending continued mild high around 70. Current temperature at Midway 55 Grant Park 56 and O 'Hare 54. Humanity is 66 percent wind from the south at 9 miles per hour. This is WM -AQ and WM -AQ FM and BC in Chicago at 7 o 'clock. The American scene, a series of pre -recorded programs providing a closer look at those things which form our contemporary society. Produced by the Illinois Institute of Technology and Cooperation with WM -AQ, the discussion today will consider job horizons and visual communications. Now here's our host, Don Anderson. Good morning and welcome to the American scene. Communication is a vast field and in today's world an extremely vital field. It is essentially the sharing or giving of information by any means by talk, gestures, writing, pictures and so

forth. And today we're going to consider just one aspect of this very broad field that of visual communications. There are many means of transmitting information visually, magazines, films, posters, books, television or just a fuel. And as in other fields of communication experts are needed who have the knowledge and ability to organize all elements of the message so that it can be transmitted and received accurately and effectively. In visual communication this expert is the professional designer. In terms of some of the other professions we have discussed in this series, design is relatively new, but its value in today's society is becoming increasingly obvious and the services of the designer are growing in demand. We are constantly bombarded by visual messages. Characteristic of our modern world is mass production of information as well as goods. A society grows more complex, man's need and power to communicate will require further development and refinement. And it is the professional designer who must see to it that visual communication does

not become chaotic and meaningless, but rather that visual information is presented efficiently and attractively. To do this requires more than a narrow vocational training. Although a facility in some phase of art is essential, the professional designer must also have a wide range of interests and knowledge, an understanding of human problems and human needs, of science and technology, of economics and history are all important to the professional designer. Good design is needed in today's mass culture. It is the function of the professional designer to provide it. And to help us better understand this field of design and the job horizon in visual communication, I am pleased to welcome this morning, Mr. Gordon Martin, a system professor at the Institute of Design of IIT and Mr. Chad Taylor, a system professor at the Institute of Design as well. And both gentlemen are professional designers. Thank you very much for coming this morning,

gentlemen. And perhaps we can start out by trying to define this animal. We're talking about this morning, the designer, the visual designer. Gordon, start out with that. Well, I think the best thing to do is to tell what the designer isn't. A designer is not a commercial artist. A commercial artist is a person who has learned certain skills such as an illustrator or a photo retouch or a lettering man. And he carries out assignments that are given to him to execute. And these particular areas, the designer brings all these things together and coordinates someone makes one whole visual presentation out of it. He comes up with the initial concept of what or how something should be said visually. I think that's right. I think he determines the not only the visual look of the thing, how it's going to elementally look, but also the idea of the

concept behind it where the commercial artist already has it's given to him. When Chad could a designer be a commercial artist plus something, I mean, must he have the skills of a commercial artist? At this point, I think, yes, I think that he at least has to somehow have absorbed an understanding of the technologies because a specialist, a human being who sits someplace and takes a photograph of a specific thing is really a very in himself in our time is a vast technological resource. He knows a great deal about machines and the means of producing a thing. Now, the designer works with a person like this and with a little more tries to have a more comprehensive view of what he's doing and tries to use the, in this case that

I'm saying, a photographer as an implementing tool to produce a specific kind of an effect. In the past, the in this country, anyhow, the visual person has gotten all involved in technology, just this happened in lots of fields where it was just enough to get to know about the technologies without almost worrying about the result of it. And we still have this in our own culture. We've got hordes of people who are producing things without really taking any consideration of what they're producing, what it does. And the designer is trying to be, just as our most professional people, trying to be more comprehensive in realizing the effect of what the pieces that he's producing. Well, in terms of communication and the designer is the one who gets all of the elements of the message that he's trying to get across and coordinates them, has the basic concept of what he's trying to do. And then whether he executes it

himself or not, he knows what he wants and he goes to the person who can do it for him. Right. Well, that's true, but he does have the control of the visual presentation of a piece. Right. And he determines that the way this problem is going to be solved and how it's going to ultimately appear. And then all these services, yes, he does bring them together. But the point I'm trying to get at is that he doesn't have to be an expert artist or an expert printer or an expert photographer. No, the people I know have all seemed to have a special skill. Most human beings have something that they're very capable of, but he has this little extra interest, which is the important part and knowledge, which is the important part of what makes him different from the other people in the same kind of an area. Yeah, you can have, you can be a paste pot and scissors designer where you don't really do anything except just put things together. Well, but

you need a lot of a lot of understanding and skill and knowledge of people, levels of people to be able to do this. Well, it has a cultural, we know it has a cultural effect, and it can either have a cultural effect, which is under some sort of human control or not. And it's going to happen this large picture that we have. Here's a good example of that. I was going to mention that in the introduction I said something about the designer is the one who has to see that the visual communication doesn't become chaotic and that certainly is a good example of what can happen when there isn't any coordination or any plan that the scene can overwhelm you with the number of elements involved. Well, let's talk. Well, there it is now. One can

see that all around us in the city, there are spots like this. They're not spots. They're getting to be the general landscape. Of course, there are certain areas in the city where they have past ordinances that keep signs off the streets, such as Michigan Avenue, North Michigan, places like that, and it's a very good thing they have, or they'd be plastered full the same way. Well, let's, we've established that design is needed in our society today. Where is a designer used in? What kind of business does he go into? Does he go into his own business? Is he hired by other people to design things, or where can you find a designer? Well, to me, the important thing is not where he is, but how much he realizes what kind of responsibility he has, because you can function in practically any level of our society and do it with some awareness of the implications of what you do. And so

that really isn't a definable thing. A designer could work for a television studio and have this sense. And depending on his ability to deal with people and to really understand the technology, he could be extremely effective. The television industry has a culture hero among designers who's dead now. William Gollum with CBF was a very famous man among design people, because he had a huge grasp of the technical tools. And he also had the ability to deal with people and show them the way that he personally believed in. Now, personal belief is a very wide thing. It can go all over the place and be wrong or right. But to get the kind of education that makes it possible to maybe be right

is what a designer should try to get. But in terms of a person thinking of design as a career, there are areas that he can find work that hire him most frequently. Gordon? Yeah, I think maybe it would be a good idea to sort of talk about some of them. You could start out, say, advertising agencies today are using designers. Usually, they're not people that are right in the agency. Sometimes they are. They'll use design offices. And then, of course, the design office, which kind of parallels an art studio, they work at this design level. And this would be a self -employed situation, generally. Well, it's one designer usually who has a name and he has a group that carry out the assignments that he's working on. Yes. Well, would this group be composed of other designers or would they be more craftsman or technicians skilled in a particular aspect of them? Both.

Yes. The thing that we talked about, the architect is something I think more people are conscious of who performs the same kind of a function that we're talking about and has done it for a long time. So I think in our culture, people are much more familiar with it. He's a person who can conceive a building in its site or a whole city in its site and then organize around him the kind of craftsman and the kind of other kinds of other architects whom he's compatible with to produce the whole. And the designer does the same perform the same function. And it's all around people, but it's much less obvious because they're used to not looking. Well, it's really this design business. You might say it's an anonymous thing. People are really not aware of it. It might be the thing might be more pleasant or more appealing or more order. I think if you are aware of a designer

is failed actually. Well, that's true. But I always think that one of the great defenses, though, of unprofessionalism among various kinds of people is that they can be anonymous. I mean, as soon as people begin noticing them, then the architects have had this problem. They're constantly arguing and fighting about who they are, what they do because if a building falls down everybody notices. And if a poster falls off a wall, people don't notice so much. In fact, as the scene shows, you almost can't tell when it's falling off the wall. You know, it looks right in the environment. But it is getting less and less anonymous because the world is filling up with kinds of things that craftsmen and designers and all sorts of middle people have produced. And suddenly they're beginning to encroach. We're talking about communications today. And that particular aspect of communication, which is transmitted visually only. Now,

what this involves, partly magazines? Well, yes, you could say in the publishing field, that's quite large. You have trade journals, magazines, newspapers, book publishers, and the book publishers can be broken down into several categories, I think, and textbook publishers and trade journal publishers. I mean, trade book publishers, those are novels and things like that. And the paperbacks, they also publish paperbacks. There's a good deal of designing as well as the covers of those things. They're actually selecting the type and the format for it. That's quite important. This is an interesting point. And what is the relationship then of the designer of the finished product to the man who puts down the message that is to be communicated? The designer has to work with whatever message the writer gives him to work with. It's complicated. To produce a good level, it always takes people

who are at a good level totally across the problem. And if a person has to communicate a message, it's not worth communicating, then this means that the level of people involved in it, it's falling. This is something that's I've never found any control over. Except in a few instances. And we have in our society instances where people who can control, can set direction, have allowed people to get together and produce work of very superior level totally. What if we got a designer working? You can, you can pardon me. Go ahead, I'm sorry. You actually can get along without a designer if you get this point. You could work out some idea, say, a manufacturer and make some sketches of it and call in somebody and say, well, now do it like this. Well, this will turn out to be undoubtedly quite a mediocre or poor

communication. Well, and even if it worked once, that's a very folly way to work twice or thrice or so on because the person who is able to involve himself comprehensively has value continuously or the person who can do a thing once and doesn't do it out of any particular conviction. Only does it because it's there to be done. It's a very limiting way to use. Well, what if we allow our total visual environment to be directed and planned by professional designers? Totally. Might not we get a rather sterile, seamless quality to work to work around it. I'm afraid this could happen. But I don't know. I know that you could, but I also know that you that that maybe not. It's just

incomprehensible to me that this will happen anyhow. Well, I don't know. But I do think that there are there are standard levels that could be established below which you don't go in a society because we will be eventually buried under bad production in human production of visual things. Taking this as an overall thing, I think that by day like this scene that we've looked at the streets, it's pretty hideous and it's pretty bad. But and also some street that we might say like West Street that had just a mass of signs on electric signs in a daytime. This is pretty horrible looking with at night. It's exciting. It's very exciting. It has a character that's all it's own and it's one of these things where you can't take the electric signs down during the day so it looks nice in the day. But they're doing their business at night. So they've created an environment there. I think it's quite exciting. The the only problem with that is that the

technology makes it easier and easier for anybody to add a sign to that. And you I can't see how you can help but reach a saturation point where it will no longer be pleasant. You you'll have the problem of well which some people have said now well people just don't notice it. They just don't see it. They're so but that's different than noticing. I mean I think people are affected. It's strongly by their the visual things around them. Yeah well it beats an environment isn't that the idea. Whether they want it or not. Let's talk about let's see if we can find an example that will illustrate what a designer really does. I suppose highway signs are something that designers get involved with. Now what what is a highway sign supposed to do and what what is the problem of designer faces when he has given this chore of designing the signs for a new super highway. What's involved here? Well first the

person has to know that there are different ways to do it. In other words you have to take an intellectual approach to what signs might be on a highway. He can say that well they should be part of a big surface or they should not get in the way of trees or they should functionally get you around the right corner at 70 miles an hour. Take different intellectual view points where to start. Now to me this is almost the whole key to what a designer is. He understands his visual environment. He's thought about a great deal. He's absorbed as much as he can historically about the world around him and seeing how people react to these things and then he makes a conceptual decision that sets in motion a whole chain of things. He might try different colors on the signs which is it's engineering. It's physiological engineering to find out which ones work the most efficiently or which are the most decorating. You see you have to set the perimeter of the problem before you can do one or the other. The Illinois highway

system is based on function which really isn't very fun. But the idea is obviously there the letter forms are simplified to their most basic elements. There are no decorative endings on the letters to in any way confuse the viewer. Maybe this isn't even the right alphabet. Maybe there should be rather than an alphabet a set of symbols to get you around the corner. In England they've done this a lot where they'll use a picture of a bicycle for a bicycle path. In Europe they do that too but there they have a language problem of people speaking many different languages saying the same things. We don't have that here so words work pretty well. Right that's right. But in other words what we're talking about is you know the the various things it can affect how you would approach the problem in the first place. Well then you get down the sort of to the carpenter work of the thing finally and determine the distance you're going to see the sign from first and then how close you might say it and if the sign is going to get dirty

you know you want to keep it from looking dirty so you'll this will have something to do with selecting a color automatically you know you would like some other color and they it's going to be foggy sometimes on the highway so it has to come through pretty well it has to be seen at night and there's a whole lot of elements that would come in there. I think the placing of it is also a thing that's well yeah and this is this is only really one aspect of the visual because on the same highways we've got posters and billboards which are can be approached with most of the same criteria should it how should it function is it again there in most instances most people who have put up billboards and such have decided that they should be emotionally involving. Oh highway is quite good day. Well sign companies

some of them do have designers work for them or they all should have designers work for them because they could help I think they could sell signs that were a lot better not more pleasing that it fit into an environment a lot better than ones that they do just by having maybe the salesman ring in some some sketch or something and they go ahead and do it. Well I've been involved in these kinds of problems where the the sign people use the visual artist rather than a designer and again this is your totality of human beings at a certain level if the manufacturer the sign chooses to use a person as a tool rather than as a a complimentary judgment then he'll produce something that does not it doesn't necessarily have his best judgment involved and the kind of people that most excite me are people who want their judgment considered because

then they'll try to have good judgment you know that's anyway I'll ever do it when it gets down for instance on a highway project and eventually the designer gets involved in the technology just as the architect does he must know where to get things done and and who can do it very well and again that means he has to have the background and know what's doing it well. I can a non -professional designer like myself recognize good design we touched on this a little earlier you indicated that really I shouldn't be able to that well you can like certain things and I think this is well this is what I meant about being intellectual yeah I think you have to have considered just just as you would and anything else you have to have considered it very for a long time and looked at many sides of it from different viewpoints to reach conclusions it'll be about you design is a pragmatic function I mean it is it is based on whether it succeeds or not whether it does what it's supposed to do at one kind of a level it

would be kind of difficult for a person who wants to hire a designer to know really whether he's getting a good designer yeah it's very hard yeah it's not somebody who would look for in the pages of the yellow book or anything like that you have to know them as people yeah and it's a subjective kind of decision that you make just whether you want that person or not what about the training for a designer this sounds almost mystical here we're developing a person with skills technical skills able to draw or able to take photographs at least basically and yet he has to have this broad range of knowledge about people about history about economics and philosophy how do we train somebody like that well they do take academics along with their subjects they I think about a third of their credits are academics at school and I think it's the way that our problems are given our problems are actually problem and solution that's right rather than an exercise of any kind of course the first year is exercise that's true in

exploring form and and tools and shape you might say but when you get beyond that we start into the second year and the student very soon is given a problem that he has to solve he has to find a visual solution for and he has to be sure that's the best solution that he can make at the moment however this might not be the best are the solution he'd make maybe in two or three weeks or a month later or ten years which is the important thing and but you don't learn to make comprehensive decisions unless you start doing it you know I mean you you don't become a bunch of little skills and then all of a sudden say all right now I'm ready to put it all together you you have to think that way a person has to just accept that that the best way to solve a problem is to understand the next level of it if a person wanted to be a designer the sensible thing would be to go to a school like the

institute of design or or other institutions like it in the country and then not expect to go on and business for himself and put a shingle out like like a doctor might but rather get his internship somewhere and allow himself the opportunity to practice in someone else's firm or is this not necessary can you go right out and do it it would be possible for him to do it I think it's it's not really advisable but you you do have the occasional student but he thinks who is just natural very good you know I think that probably that's true and he could do it it wouldn't make any difference where he went to school he'd still be yeah but that's very exceptional we need more people like that in the whole society is what it comes to end the problem is I think is that it's fairly easy for us to convince our students that this is what they should become but it's pretty hard for a person to have the humility to realize that he's not it yet and some people you know do as you say get to that point right away but some others

don't and then they function in the society at the level that they're capable of at that point well generally you'd you'd say that the person who wants to become a designer should have an interest and a facility to some degree in the field of art and then if if he doesn't want to be satisfied with a technician as a as a commercial artist of some sort or other that he should broaden his education as much as he can oh yeah it is the broader the better it is close to all of these concepts because all all you have to draw on is experience anyhow and thank you very much gentlemen this has been a very interesting discussion this morning Mr. Gordon Martin and Mr. Chad Taylor of the Institute of Design at IIT and this is Don Anderson saying good morning for the American scene this has been the American scene today's discussion

job horizons and visual communications had his guest Mr. Gordon Martin associate professor of the Institute of Design at IIT Mr. Chad Taylor assistant professor of the Institute of Design at IIT host on the series is Don Anderson director of public service broadcasting at Illinois Tech the American scene is pre -recorded it is produced by the Illinois Institute of Technology and Cooperation with WMAQ next week's topic will be job horizons and manufacturing industries and will be discussed by Dr. Frank D'Souza and Sarah Pei Copaccian as we continue our investigation of the American scene here is a fact April is teaching career months now we'll have a spot quiz what's the largest profession in this country the answer is teaching with more than two million members what's the most important profession teaching again no great mind could be developed without