Why intelligent designers are gods

[imomus]

Momus: Sharp-eyed observers of Saturday's pictures will have seen the dead giveaway: instead of a copy of the Torah, this apparent member of the Haredim was carrying a sacred illuminated book called The Secret Sense of Japanese Magazine Design. While the Torah concerns speculation on the design of the Earth, humans, animals and so on, the book I was carrying is somewhat more down-to-earth, factual and specific; it documents the workspaces and page layouts of influential Japanese magazine designers.

Strawman Cynic: That's a pretty effete religion to have. But I guess if God is an "intelligent designer", then all intelligent designers are gods of a sort.



Momus: Quite, Strawman Cynic. Creative activity makes small gods of those who do it well. I'm always happy to see creatives celebrated, especially the hidden ones. Outside of Japan, people who lay out magazines are rarely shown, and their workspaces are hard to visit unless you're in the industry yourself. I used to date someone who laid out magazines in London in the 80s, and got to visit magazines like Smash Hits, TV Hits and MacUser quite a bit as a result. But I must say the design environments shown in Pie Books' tributes to the Japanese art director -- Secret Sense of Japanese Magazine Design and CAP Magazine Designers' Collective -- are a lot nicer than the ones I remember in 1980s London. Thanks to the "creator's space" convention, design otakus can trainspot exactly what computer their favourite art director uses, and what kind of trees are framed in the view from the design office window. You even get to see the art directors in their working environment. It's pretty superlegitimate to want to see people immersed in their work. And documentation of people at work is the kind of thing that makes people into the whole relational aesthetics thing cream. What's more, the Japanese art directors don't just look more satisfied than their English counterparts, they look more refined and distinguished. Look at Yuji Kimura, for instance, who lays out Esquire. De la classe, quoi!



Strawman Cynic: Pie Books, eh? Pretty good name for a purveyor of stuff to put on your coffee table. You can eat these pies with a cup of coffee. But can consumption itself be consumed?

Momus: There's a bit of a paradox here. I'm rather contemptuous of consumption for its own sake, or design that's just there to stimulate more pointless consumption. But I change my attitude when two things happen -- when you get meta (in other words, pull back and look at the creative processes behind consumption, the sweat behind the sheen) and when you get retro. For instance, I love browsing through the old magazines at Dorama in Shimokitazawa more than the new magazines on the rack in your average kombini.

Strawman Cynic: That seems a bit perverse. Aren't magazines ephemeral celebrations of the now?

Momus: They are indeed. But there's nothing better than browsing through old magazines to capture what the past of a consumer society really felt like. Or to experience a delicious alienation from consumer society. You know that feeling you get when you see ridiculous "Space Age" styles, and suddenly the whole thing falls into place -- you see not just the fragile fiction underpinning 1968, but also the fragile fiction underpinning 2007. The same thing happens when you look at magazines from another country. Everything gets relativized, a certain vulnerability emerges. Imagine watching people sleep, and seeing their foolish dreams in bubbles above their heads.



Strawman Cynic: So you pity the poor consumer, do you? That sounds very lofty. Aren't you one too?

Momus: Of course I am. I'm also a producer. I produced a lot of cheap trash, plastic consumer products, during the Shibuya-kei period (Heisei 6 - 10). Those products were marked by exactly the kind of enchanted alienation I'm trying to describe here: they were meta and retro. They dabbled in old styles, and foreign styles. They turned old consuming into new producing (in other words, they sampled and recycled) and they turned projection (glamour) into production. And, you know, maybe that's why there was such a crossover between magazine culture and Shibuya-kei. Mitsuo Shindo, musical director of Hi-Posi, was also the art director at Contemporary Production. Konishi from Pizzicato 5 described himself in interviews as an "art director", and I think he really was that. P5 was a magazine project, a tribute to magazines and advertisements, especially 1960s ones. Shoichi Kajino, who was my A&R at Nippon Columbia, ended up designing fashion magazine Ryuko Tsushin!

Strawman Cynic: Gadfly!

Momus: Gadfly and godhead!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

You missed your vocation in life. I have the feeling you'd have been much happier and more successful in design rather than pop music.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Funny, that's exactly the sense I have about Cornelius! No wonder Shibuya-kei -- the moment pop and design almost became the same thing -- was the only chance either of us had of mainstream success!

Meanwhile, even if pop music isn't counted as design, I am participating in the design world. I write about design for ID and AIGA Voice, and may even be speaking at this year's AIGA Conference in Colorado. Call it relational design (http://imomus.livejournal.com/207620.html), ha!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's also worth saying that a life in design would have been fine, on condition that it had nothing to do with those dreaded beasts the client and the public. The things that interest me are design education, and the kind of projects designers do to impress other designers, or design students. (That's what "relational design" mostly turns out to be.)

Of course, it's quite possible that these days design education is all about treating the student as "the client", or all about getting design as quickly as possible to "the public", seen as synonymous with "the consumer" and "the bottom line". In which case, I'm well out of it.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

this makes me think of something zizek says about wagner and something i've as long as i remember felt about design. zizek says what if in wagner's [parsival] case it's not that cheauvinism, fascism etc are hidden behind increibly beautiful music but that the music itself already contains those elements. i say it's not that design is perversly used for the wrong reasons ( consumption etc client & public etc) but it itself creates those conditions.

Fruitfly and fountainhead!

[barnacle.livejournal.com]

Looking through the previous generation's ephemera can have a powerful effect. That's practically what the Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford is meant for, anyway: a kind of theme-park for the soul, based around provoking empathy with people dead or far away. You can call it anthropowossname or ethno-widgetty with your fancy book-learning, but that can never capture the thrill of not only seeing a small silver bottle that, it's claimed, contains a witch, but thinking: what would it be like to be in a culture where witches were routinely considered to be confineable in tiny bottles?

I do worry, though, that one would get a very specific view of earlier cultures by simply revelling in their ephemera. The premise of "all human life is here" or whatever seems to have swung too far away from the notion of, say, an established literary, graphical or sociological canon; there seems to be a danger of establishing the anti-canon in its place. I think you've got it sussed, but only because you've already soaked up the canon to a certain extent, so you can summon and invoke an anti-canon, but then discard it just as easily afterwards. Both must co-exist; the yin and the yang; the canon and the bal.

When you ignore the results relating to the surname, incidentally, there seems to be no mention in Google for the word "allbrow". May I humbly claim its first use here, or do I risk becoming yet another victim of McKie's Second Law (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1824571,00.html)?

Re: Fruitfly and fountainhead!

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

This comment makes me think of those who collect the ephemera from older days, like Barbies (still in the box) and antique fishing tackle.



Isn't this reel beautiful?

My family has a lot of collectibles but I turn my nose up at such things because, well, for one thing, keeping collectibles and hoping they will appreciate means leaving the items in their original packaging, and I don't believe in not using stuff.

Plus, when the shit hits the fan, I think land, gold, and possibly intellectual property will be the only things of value. Barbies-in-the-box, no matter how cute and adorable, just won't do anyone any good, I don't think.

But I do love looking at the older stuff, especially cars. The SF Bay Area has a lot of cool old cars tooling around the streets and I love seeing the old Camaros and Corvairs. I wish I could afford to keep such an old car, instead of the stupid 2001 ford hatchback which, though very serviceable, is a bit tough on the eyes.

Re: Fruitfly and fountainhead!

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

Imagine what that Plymouth would be worth if it was still in the box.

I have a theory that chrysler was in cahoots with the army to test the effects of LSD on designers in the 60's. How else can you explain the oval steering wheel.

Just imagine the power of a weaponised 62 Dodge Dart.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think it's a Plymouth, I think it's a Belvedere. Or err is a Belvedere a kind of Plymouth? Shows what I know about automobiles! I just like the way they look.

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

It's a Plymouth Belvedere. A notch below the Plymouth Fury.

Plymouth and Dodge are part of Chrysler

Re: Ayn Rand and the pointy fountainhead!

[oscar-wilde.livejournal.com]

i write in lower case, otherwise there's no .

ref.: Are you serious? I'm a name dropper because I said I met Orion Jeriko on the street in NYC? I didn't claim the meeting to be more then it was.
I always understood name droppers to be people who exaggerated their involvements w/ others for personal gain or self worth.
Please. bambi_b you are fucking moody and should check your email more often.
When you die I'll update Chris Gore's obituary (http://www.richardhell.com/cgi-bin/forum/showmessage.asp?messageID=1741) for you too.

http://www.filmthreat.org/obituary/jeriko (http://www.livejournal.com/interests.bml?int=six+degrees+of+deception)

Sincerely,
Dr. F_o_a Saunders

Re: Fruitfly and fountainhead!

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

"Allbrow" is certainly a more preferable delineation than "nobrow"--implies inclusion rather than negation.

[(Anonymous)]

Magazine design work in the West is uhhh ... mostly schlubby freelance work and probably belongs more to the super-lame media and publishing world, rather than design or the arts.

[petitfaune.livejournal.com]

wonderful post.

[runawaytoday.livejournal.com]

as much as i hate to admit it, i am so completely addicted to magazines like fantastic man! and purple fashion. i mean, who else has in depth interviews with malcolm mclaren with van lamsweerde spreads or jonathan meese illustrations next to gus van sant photos of the new dior homme collection? i just bemoan the non-existence of a truly wonderful art magazine zeitgeist.. but i suppose that has less to do with designers and layouts and more to do with editors, unless they can be considered the same thing.

strawman consumer

[(Anonymous)]

There is no such thing as consumption for consumption's sake. As if consumption has some pure state of being. Or as if the thing consumed can possibly have pure consumability!

On the other hand, consuming consumption is fully possible and is the diet/appetite that will get you ahead in business/marketing/capitalism. Like collecting discarded receipts and turning them in with something you didn't buy, to get the cash back. I have an ephemera collection like that, but I've never had the stomach to make consumed-consumption my bread and butter.

Re: strawman consumer

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< There is no such thing as consumption for consumption's sake >>

Soo disagree. When I was in high school my life revolved around the mall. Granted, I needed the clothes I bought, but if I'd had more money, I'd have consumed for consumption sake only, for sure. Also when I was a new home-owner, I definitely consumed for no good reason except to have stuff. I've been there, thank god I got a clue a decade or so ago.

There is no such thing as an inedible lunch

[barnacle.livejournal.com]

Given Momus has also been responsible for me browsing SvankTube this past thirty minutes or so, I see your anticonsumptinomianism and raise you a Comida (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzStzHPt91Y&mode=related&search=).

[intergalactim.livejournal.com]

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/ethicalliving/story/0,,2037847,00.html

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

"Strawman Cynic: That's a pretty effete religion to have."

I want to quote that at people. For the lolz.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The kind of people inclinced to slice your head off with a scimitar probably won't know what "effete" means, luckily.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

At least I´d die for the lolz.

Subject1

[(Anonymous)]

Hi

I want to all of you know, World is mine, and yoursite good

Bye

infinite melancholia dependence

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

Loius Daguerre would have loved any collector of his inventions.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I like your blog - first time I've left a comment (and quite under the influence of alcohol). Intelligent design is a nice idea and people striving to design magazines and web pages with some thought and effort is nice and art pieces that are looking at people working on their things with intelligence and enthusiasm are nice too.

I also think it can be quite easy to get lost in that world, to find yourself being something of a creative designer and striving for this perfect image which is after all just a website, say. I don't mean you, Momus, and I don't mean me but I find that style concerns can be a very easy avenue of escapism in a way.

The secret sense of Japanese design reminds me of this site I look at called ia and the idea of 'a website with a basic grid fully based on Fibonacci's golden cut'. I'd add a link but it's not the done thing when leaving comments and ia is their brand name so ia they can go by.

I know you're pretty anti-Myspace and I was too but, in spite of its power and Murdoch owned too I think, I'm beginning to actually get into it. I quite like the fact that it has the shittest front page of any website I've ever seen ever, lacking even that very rugged and in your face design of something like The Sun.

I wonder what the front page of Myspace is actually saying to me. I think it says something about chaos and randomness and unintelligent design, yet the kids love it. And the more I get into it the more it seems as if it's about (generally) young people turning their back on the consumerist obsession with image (er... maybe, in a way) and instead embracing connection with other people via the internet.

So, yeah, Myspace has begun to feel (for me) a much healthier way to spend my time than writing and reading blogs or journals. I really value what you say. I think you write really highly insightful comment and obviously accusations of pretension come your way. And, yeah, I've said my piece now and the birds have started singing. Myspace... it rocks. Any comment? Go on...

[(Anonymous)]

That last comment was by me and I forgot to add that my name is Benjamin.