News Bulletin: The Sustainable Design Auditing Project

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Re-nourish (a great online resource for graphic designers looking to increase their sustainability practices) and partner organizations have officially launched the Sustainable Design Auditing Program. The SDAP is a "multi-stakeholder working group tasked with developing open-source metrics for measuring the environmental, social and economic impacts of the graphic design supply chain." While the exact metrics have yet to be determined they will focus on environmental, social and economic impacts. The SDAP will be governed by a steering committee but anyone can join the General Assembly to participate in the development process by signing up here.

Maira Kalman at the Skirball

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The exhibition "Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World)" opened at LA's Skirball Center this week. Having admired the show from afar, I was excited to go to a public "conversation" Tuesday night between Kalman and the curator Ingrid Schaffner (from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia where the show  originated). Kalman was funny and articulate as she discussed her her recent appearance on the Colbert Report, her process and work, including her latest book And the Pursuit of Happiness, which is based on an illustrated blog she did for the New York Times in 2009. After being asked whether she read the blog's comment section, she said she's "not at all interested in audience response" because it "sends you into a place that doesn't do anything for you." Her work does do things for her fans, though, which is why, according to an editor at the Times, the paper's servers shut down whenever she posted due to the sudden uptick in visitors. 

Kalman's upcoming projects include children's books on Lincoln and Jefferson, an illustrated version of Michael Pollen's Food Rules (THAT I look forward to seeing!) and an illustrated biography of Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas. At the event someone eloquently described Kalman's illustrations as capturing "the elusive vulnerability of things" but local readers can judge for themselves; the exhibit runs through February 13th and then travels to The Jewish Museum in New York. For everyone else, the catalog for the exhibit is beautifully designed and well worth the purchase. 

Oil & Water

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Screen printers out there will appreciate Anthony Burill's poster "Oil and Water Do Not Mix," which is printed from oil gathered from a beach in Louisiana after the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Prints are for sale and proceeds support the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. 

(photos courtesy of Oil & Water Do Not Mix)

 

Is (web) Design Dead?

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In an essay on wired.com Dylan Tweney posits that we have reached the age of the "Undesigned Web." Since content and design are coded separately, content can essentially free float, allowing users to access it from various media striped of its original layout and appearance. Maximal accessibility equals minimal design, and Tweney notes the emergence of "clean, uncluttered, wide-format layouts" that translate well across devices and readers. For example the above screen shots: the first is of the essay as reinterpreted for improved readibility through Safari's built-in reader, the second shows the text in its original presentation on wired.com. (The Safari reader increased the font size and switched to a serif.) 


So if the emphasis isn't on form but function, does that really mean the web designer is irrelevant? Probably not. That uncluttered initial iteration of the work still needs to be aesthetically appealing and, as Tweney writes, "21st century content also demands good information design," in order that the ultimate analyzers of the work—computers—understand and correctly transpose the information. Which basically means that even if all the necessary tech know-how eludes them, designers must at least strive to be jack-of-all-trade thinkers in order to take full advantage of our rapid fire information age.