imomus | Design Rockism

The ultimate design practice is that which is exemplified by nature. Everything in nature combines function and aesthetic in one inseparability. Nothing is there for aesthetic reasons alone. (By aesthetic I mean the ability to attract the eye for no purpose other than the pleasure of looking.) Many vendors of poor products with limited or no functionality use the power of aesthetic seduction. In nature, things that lose their function are removed.

Many vendors of poor products with limited or no functionality use the power of aesthetic seduction. In nature, things that lose their function are removed.

Many vendors of poor products with limited or no aesthetic appeal use the power of mere functionality. In culture, things that lose their desireability are removed. In nature too, come to think of it. Isn't that one of the criteria of Darwin's 'fitness'?

Sorry, can't agree with that. Why, if a thing was helping us in our lives, would be object to its appearance? Opposite: if a thing has any (true/healthy/life-promoting) functionality it is necessarily beautiful. Desirability as dictated by the eyes is an illusion which usually leads to destruction. Prostitutes are appealing visually, but syphilis is anything but. As for Darwin, his theory is just that, though judging by his appearance, it is easy to understand why he chose his particular function. Why it has been adopted as a universal truth, I can only guess. As a source of Dutch courage for atheists?

I take it you're a Christian rockist designer, then? You're not Chris Alexander, by any chance?

None of the above except maybe rockist - I don't know what that is. What I do try to do is look at nature to understand how things work in this world. To me, it seems that nothing exists without a purpose. The form is secondary - a medium through which the purpose can be manifested in the physical world. This is evident in disease. When a person has arthritis and it is suppressed (treated) by drugs, the symptom usually moves to the heart. In either case the purpose is the same - restriction of the person - but the form is different, arthritis or heart problems. THe same can be observed with excema which, when suppressed, invariably manifests as asthma.

Well, you sound very holistic and New Age. The problem with metaphysics, though, is that it requires us to honour a reality which is at once very important and totally absent. One of the reasons I love Japan so much is that it shows what can be achieved when you love and accept the here and now, and forget the metaphysics of a putatively absent reality. To love the actual and the tangible, and to be present in the moment, is the greatest happiness. Someone who has learned to do that will never dismiss form, or say that it can be separated from content.

Sorry, I don't know what those terms mean either (never studied holistic/new age books).

Did I say that form should be dismissed or separated from content? That was not my intention. What I meant was that form appears to be secondary or, perhaps more accurately, subsequent to content (function/purpose/primary cause), i.e., it happens as a *result* of the purpose. Something is concieved as an immmaterial 'thing' (idea) and then becomes physical - some things more immediately than others. I don't believe that anything is made without a primary purpose. If the designer is an honest or honourable person, the purpose/function will be to benefit other people; if not, the purpose/function will be to achieve some benefit for him/herself alone, e.g., appear shocking, innovative, arty, unique, etc. The natural world - I mean the world where decisions and designs are made by something other than human beings - shows that it is possible to fulfil a function without *ever* losing originality. No human face, for example, is the same as the next.

When you talk about metaphysics, again I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean things that cannot be perceived with one or more of the five senses? If so, then I would ask you to consider those things that cannot be perceived materially but which can be perceived through the power of reason. The existence of light, for example, can be deduced through its effect on physical objects (illumination) but cannot itself be stored or quantified. Magnetism is similar. Today's scientists cannot explain what magnetism is because they try to block out anything that is not material. Luckily for them they cannot do it completely: take the origin of the heartbeat - scientists have traced it to an area on the physical organ but they cannot say where it came from before that, i.e., what caused it. Don't the Japanese (Shinto) accept that there is an immaterial world (that is part and parcel of our general existence)?

PS the electricity in your computer is another example of an immaterial entity whose existence is apparent through its effects. A true materialist will never pay his/her bills (or switch the light on) ;-)

PPS S B G McKinney gives, in my view, a useful model for understanding the sequential interrelationship of immaterial and material entities [my comments]:

"The final cause is the purpose for which a thing is designed [in the case of a boat: travel dry upon water]. The formal cause is the ideal or form existing in the mind before embodiment [vision of a floating object]. The material cause is the substance which embodies the form [e.g., wood]. The efficient cause is the agency employed to perform the work of construction [boatbuilder, tools]." (From Origin and Nature of Man, 1907)

"Do you mean things that cannot be perceived with one or more of the five senses?"

should read

"Do you mean things that cannot be perceived unless through one or more of the five senses?"

When you talk about metaphysics, again I'm not sure what you mean.

The simplest definition of metaphysics for me is 'the belief that there is an absent reality more important than present realities'.

Something is concieved as an immmaterial 'thing' (idea) and then becomes physical

You're a Platonist, and I'm not. It's really as simple as that.

"You're a Platonist, and I'm not. It's really as simple as that."

This is really a brilliant rebuttal to most any religionist assertions about "reality." The person above seems to be obsessed with the "purpose" of various objects and/or features found in nature -- ignoring that the random processes which manifest to us as apparent "order" are simply reflections of our own desire to seek patterns in the chaos.

It's like when people look at a power outlet and see a human face.

"...ignoring that the random processes which manifest to us as apparent "order" are simply reflections of our own desire to seek patterns in the chaos"

How did you work out that these processes which appear ordered are random?

How did you work out that they're not?

If you read carefully, what I'm saying here is that the order we perceive is reliant on our perceptive ability. This is actually a "randomness agnostic," relativistic view, in spite of my clumsy phrasing. Events may well not be random, but lacking a workable epistimology to the contrary, that is the shorthand we use to describe their progression. It would seem that concepts such as "meaning" require a base set of assumptions to work from. Without that, chaos can only be chaos.

To posit some objective "order" begs that you can provide empirical support for your assumptions. So where do we start? What are the First Principles?

The first principle which shows that the world is ordered is the fact that when you were born you didn't have to dig for you lunch or make it out of some super-duper chemical but you could get it from your mother's breast. A newborn child, left to its own devices, will actually *crawl* up his mother's tummy and find the nipple himself. If that is not a demonstration of the ordered nature of the world then I don't know what is.

"If that is not a demonstration of the ordered nature of the world then I don't know what is."

Oh, I would concur.

"'the belief that there is an absent reality more important than present realities'."

By this definition, metaphysicism does not stand to reason since a) the 'absent reality' is clearly present - in some cases more obviously than others (e.g., magnetism, electricity, gravity, the vital force in organisms) and b) the immaterial and material appear to be integral parts of a whole, although the immaterial is definitely prior. If you look at a human being, the immaterial 'part' consists of the will and the intellect, which represent the purpose and work out how best to achieve it. The material 'part' is the means of implementing the decisions made by this level. Hence disease and its tendency to appear on the most external physical part first (place of least sacrifice - protects the overall man) and then rises higher if suppression takes place (eczema --> asthma). If man has no overriding purpose, what is the use of disease? If you look at VD, it should be clear that disease has a vital purpose - albeit contrary to our habitual desires.

(BTW: If you want to think about the 'importance' of content over form/immaterial over material, why does a person spend £20,000 on dental work then have the results burnt or thrown in a hole when he dies? Seems illogical. The part which departs when a person dies appears to render the physical corpse useless, although it was essential during the life as a means of performing the man's purpose. This departed interior - which cannot be quantified by weighing the body before and after death - is something which materialist science cannot comprehend, let alone 'reproduce'.)

Platonist? Again, I cannot say. I'm sure he must have had some grasp of the truth, since longevity is its surest test.

If one really believes that the physical world gives rise to the immaterial (as doctors would have us believe when they say that mental illness is a result of 'chemical imbalance in the brain' or that the pain felt by a child when he injures himself is due to a 'naughty' chair or similar), then life should be easy to create. Just get some earth and water and start mixing. That is certainly what happens when it rains on a desert. Scientists are quiet on this point.

In nature 'beauty' is often all about reproduction (as in the case of flowers and bee pollination, and Momus songs). In design aesthetics, attractiveness is part and parcel of soliciting attention and creating desire (if the design is selling something). Darwinism of course works in capitalism too. Post-modernism is perhaps form without function. But as Nick asserts there is always function even if it is not obvious, such as in the case of the Brockmann functional grid being used as a "look" ie an aesthetic value in the work of Groovision.

Richard G

I heart Brockmann, and Groovisions, and of course, Chappie. Will read the article as ASAP as possible.

This is really interesting stuff, especially re: my work in political cartooning. Nearly all of my colleagues, when they break their work down into four or six panels, do it as a strict grid, with exactly equal-sized squares (especially among the older white men who are most of America's political cartoonist, but even among my age peers Ted Rall (http://www.rall.com) and Tom Tomorrow (http://www.thismodernworld.com)). I started breaking out of this about 18 months ago, creating what I think is a much more graphically-pleasing sort of cartooning (while I don't have a degree in design, I've always been an ardent fan of graphic design annuals and monographs). But most cartoonists are "rockist" in the sense that they have no idea of what to make of my non-grid work, and that in some way it's inferior or not really cartooning. It's been interesting to see the reaction. All I'm trying to do is to drag cartooning into the 21st century--is that so wrong?

And of course, THE big Rockist tenant of American political cartooning is, it's not REALLY a political cartoon unless you draw it like the late Jeff MacNelly--with lots and lots of cross-hatching, and a chuckle-inducing joke rather than a pointed and barbed political opinion. Again, I've spent my career fighting these perceptions and trying to do a uniquely individual version of political cartooning. In fact, a small group of us call ourselves "Post-Hatch," i.e. we reject the MacNelly-isms and are going for a simpler look and more opinionated messages.

sometimes momus will come to me in dreams and criticize me terribly. he'll say that i am foolish and i make the obvious and undesirable decisions. i try to show him art and things that i love but he'll say that it is drab or unoriginal.
momus is true to his nature as a mocking deity there in those few dreams, but in life too. like when i loved christopher alexander and read a pattern language, notes on the synthesis of form, and the timeless way of building then on his full and expert livejournal he writes he dosn't like alexander. i wonder if there are other masochistic momus fans like me out here.
that you write for aiga just makes it better/worse for me.

Ha ha, well, we're not going to agree on everything, are we, darling? As for Alexander, at least you've got Eno on your side there. And he's bigger than me.

i wonder if there are other masochistic momus fans like me out here.

*raises hand*

He's never criticised me in my dreams, though.

...

That's a good thing...right?

-- Michael

Our illustrations always start with pencil and paper for the simple and practical reason that a pencil is a faster, more flexible tool than a computer when it comes to working up ideas; there are nuances of line and form that a computer cannot do as well. With a computer, you are hemmed in by the limited vocabulary of the computer, which usually gives a stale, too-easily replicated result unless you happen to be someone who can really make the crisp computer aesthetic sing, like Chip Wass, Autumn Whitehurst, Ray Ceasar or Kirsten Ulve. I haven't asked them, but I wouldn't be surprised if they sketch up before hitting the computer too. A unique manner in rendering is our stock-in-trade as illustrators, and working things up in your own hand is the best way to exploit this, since it cannot be replicated by anyone else. I've been working alongside my wife for over ten years, and I still cannot even remotely replicate her 'hand'.

With design, it often goes both ways: I throw around elements in the computer to see what transpires, then generate elements after devising a theme or layout. I'll often scan in those sketches to carefully compose them, then use the layouts as templates for our paintings.

It comes down to whatever tool best fits the job at hand.

W

That said, I certainly hope that any hospital I may have to be driven to in the future has 'rockist' signage.

My comment about designing with pencils was a comment on Art Chantry, a veteran punk rock / retro kitsch designer in Seattle who attacked my last AIGA Voice article 'Graphic Masochism' (http://journal.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=%5Fgetfullarticle&aid=693903). The article is about ambivalence on the part of designers towards power, and the part various types of irony play in this ambivalence. Chantry made hostile comments, saying I was 'vague' and 'provincial'. I then said that his work didn't foreground an attack on power. Researching his work, I found that articles about him cited admiringly the fact that he didn't use computers in his design, and tied this in with punk ideas of authenticity. I should say 'US punk' rather than 'UK punk', because UK punk was closely tied to glam rock (Johnny Rotten is basically Ziggy Stardust with shorter hair) whereas US punk was much more rockist, and links with conservative, Romantic authenticist ideologies like Straight Edge. Chantry ended up saying that British people were incapable of understanding his work: 'just becaue they speak american doesn't mean they are the same as us'.

If Chantry ever falls ill in Britain, I hope he'll bear in mind that the signs in the hospital are ironic and ambivalent and never quite mean what they seem to be saying. I know you'll understand that, though, Whimsy, since you're the most British of Americans!

Momus, I enjoy your journal and I find your writing original, rigorous, and prolific. However, because you are fundamentally an artist, your writing on design usually strikes me as irrelevant and over-intellectual. Design is a tool of business. The goal of business is to 1. increase revenue and 2. decrease expenses.

Take the iPod as an example. Sure it's a beautiful and desirable object and those qualities have helped it become a successful product. But if it could not store and play thousands of songs in a portable, affordable format, nobody would buy one. Functionality in design is not just a "protestant moral value" -- it defines _business value_.

Please note I do not automatically assert that in the end business value is more important than cultural value. I believe that is a value judgment up to each individual.

Yes, I'd read that article. I remember earnest indie rockers with tastefully weathered clothing espousing a similar creed at one time. But it makes one wonder: is newness just as much a canard as authenticity?

I was lucky to come of age as a designer just before everything went digital, so I too retain 'traditional' paste-up/mechanical skills, and I still use them when the need arises. I don't view it as a principled stance so much as a means to keep my visual palette fresh. If I need an interesting background or element, I search for interesting objects and bring them into the computer, or take something from the computer, drag it around the yard or put it in the shower, then stuff it back in the Mac. The gent who made your recent Otto Spooky packaging, like most good designers, works this way as well.

Unfortunately, many rank-and-file designers limit themselves by merely using a PhotoShop filter of some kind. That's my only objection to a lot of exclusively digital work: one can spot a canned effect or filter a mile away. It's banal, and a little depressing. Same old sandbox.

In contrast, Mr. Oliver's early work was entirely paste-up, and this work still maintains a powerful presence, in part because one can see that the components of his final designs were a part of our world. I found that very exciting as a young designer. The illustrator Christoph Neimann works like this, but in an observational, conceptual way rather than a physical way. His work is overtly digital: squeaky clean and immaculate, but the concepts are humanistic, elegant and well-thought out, almost organic. He's a sweet fellow, too. I can see you employing him for a sleeve design.

(I was an abject failure as a punk; it felt too 'obvious'. I got a bigger thrill out of a flash of quality jacket lining than I ever did liberty spikes.)

I enjoy both the Count Five and Anne Laplantine. Does that make me a 'mockist'?

W

Momus would seem to be suggesting that 'mockism' is something no one living after Duchamp can avoid participating in.

I'm merely speaking from personal experience--I've been at it for 15 years now. I'm fortunate to be one of the privileged few who can afford to address in their work the issues brought forth by Nick in his article, since most people in the graphic design and illustration business toil daily on less-than-heady projects like casino bus ads, instruction manuals for fax machines or direct mail brochures for credit card companies.

But since you bring it up, one wonders how universally and wholly such Duchampian ideas are received. I've seen places that seem to be sidestepping modernism altogether; the technology is embraced, but the culture remains largely premodern (I wouldn't advise a miniskirt in Swaziland). Middle Eastern intellectuals are using the term 'Transmodernism' to describe this. Which begs the following questions: are such concepts universal if not everyone buys into them? What if someone started a meme, and nobody came?

W

I think the subtle schism here may be a simple difference of opinion over whether or not such "primitive," "pre-modern" cultures have really persisted unaffected by the prevelance of post-modern ideas we must navigate here in the West. This apparently untainted outlook may mask a deeper, conscious rejection of the ideas in question, though perhaps the vast majority of the actual people would be unaware that the conflict was playing out (just as the vast majority of Westerners are probably unaware of the issues we're discussing here; yet still participiate in propagating the post-modern philosophies they are unaware of embodying).

This is not to say I fully agree with Momus. I think there are gradations that reward consideration. While post-modernism may indeed be a poisonous toolset, the awareness of which no philosophy can long survive unaltered, that does not necessitate that merely existing in a world where others have explored an idea means one must find themselves irretreivably beholden to it. It seems that the human mind's primary facility is editing out that which it doesn't wish to consider consciously. As was demonstrated by the invention, loss, and independent rediscovery of the mechanical clock in China, this can even happen completely by accident. Or is it posited that the collective unconscious, once knowledge is gained, preserves it for eternity? The fact that certain humans leveraged an understanding of the principles of physics into the manufacture of aeroplanes did not prevent the "cargo cults" from completely missing the point of the airstrips and aircraft they built non-functional replicas of. Sometimes, simply making contact with a meme is not enough to develop a full-blown infection.

Ultimately I think the rejection of ideologically pure, "non post-modern" thought is akin to those who objected to deconstructionism on the grounds that it was merely wonton destruction for its own sake. The cultural "clean slate" has been sought and exported both downwards and upwards through the class hierarchy at different points in history, this much is documented. Whether or not the complete eradication of the offending memes was successful or not would not seem to be a pre-requisite for statistical, functional success in purifying "common knowledge."

All that said, it seems to me that the distinction itself (between pre-modern and post-modern perspectives) is entirely reliant upon the current rhetorical devices utilized to describe them. We may be simply tying ourselves up with our own conceits. When one truly takes the long view, all communication consists of recontextualizing pre-existing symbols. Cognitively, the process is the same whether we use the Greek alphabet or clippings from Time magazine. The fact that the English language is comprised of symbols from antiquity, while Marcel Duchamp's Next Work consisted of Genesis P. Orridge and an orchestra of participants plucking out musical notes on bicycle spokes with playing cards does not represent a fundamental difference in what each grammar "means" in terms of the awareness and mindset of the person utilizing them. Each are abstract rulesets, whose existence are independent of meaning in and of themselves. With this in mind, we can trace "post-modernism" back to the Phoenecians. (This is not to disregard the importance of reviving an awareness of just what using language entails from time to time, which I think is the process Momus has developed a visceral attachment to.)

It would seem that novelty of these new grammars has much to do with how closely they are studied, and how highly they are regarded. As time goes by, and useage becomes more widespread, they tend to melt into the background.

But it's still the same thing.

Well put, Stanley--especially the last two paragraphs.

I'm a 'meltist' as well, you see.

W

Design Rockism

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Typo

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MMF (Masochistic Momus Fans)

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Design is not art! Now give me your definition of art. And your definition of design.

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