Dear Ken
You are of course correct to reprimand me for not giving references. You are
also correct that I may be assuming too much about the prior knowledge of
members of this list. So here goes:
The first example I gave was:
> For example, research conducted by Miles Tinker on legibility of print in the
1960s was highly reductionist. But many practicing designers and researchers
of the time took a much more holistic view of legibility and roundly
criticised Tinker's work for being reductionist.
I wrote about Tinker's work and others who adopted a reductionist approach
to design problems--isolating a single variable and studying it under
laboratory conditions--in a book:
Sless D 1981
Learning and Visual Communication
London: Croom Helm
The page references for the chapter dealing with typography are pp164-171.
References to other authors' work is cited in the normal way.
My second example
>Today, the mainstream of information designers would probably claim to be
working 'holistically'. As a member of that community I don't feel I am part
of an 'intellectual world dominated by reductionist science'.
I have already given this list a full contents listing of the Information
Design Journal (courtesy of the editors), but if you want something very
specific on where I see some of our contemporary work, read:
Sless D 1997
Building the bridges across the years and disciplines
Information Design Journal 8(4) 310
It contains the reference to Moholy Nagy which I mentioned. For those of you
who would like to go directly to it, It is:
Moholy-Nagy L 1938
The New Vision; Fundamentals of Design, Printing, Sculpture, Architecture.
(Trans) Dephne M Hoffman
New York: Norton
My third example:
> One could mention others like Christopher Alexander, Papanek etc.
I hesitate to provide a contemporary gloss on these thinkers since there are
many architects and industrial designers on this list far better able than I
am to comment on their work. Perhaps someone would oblige, explaining why
these thinkers could not be construed as designers who
> have only known an intellectual world
> dominated by reductionist science.
To quote John Broadbent's contribution that got me going on this particular
thread.
The specific texts I had in mind were:
Chermayeff S & Alexander C 1963
Community and Privacy: Towards a New Architecture of Humanism
NY: Doubleday & Co. Inc.
and, of course
Papanek V 1971
Design for the real world
--------------
As to the rest of your remarks:
> I'm also going to refer to your earlier note - and to this one - by
> calling for concrete and specific threads from those who want to see
> less abstract dialogue here. After your earlier plea, we saw a flurry
> of posts on different concrete issues that deserve discussion. Most
> of us would welcome threads on these topics.
Yes, and I hope it will continue. I was particularly taken with the TRIZ
method. Time does not permit me to elaborate, but there are areas of
research in my own field that could benefit from this method. More on that
in a later post, time permitting.
> In this post and others, you have offered comments and complaints as
> abstract as John's note. To "reel in irritation" is not the answer.
Ken, I shall reel in irritation as often as nature allows me, whether it is
an answer to anything or not.
> You engage in a continued stream of clinical and applied research in
> the UK and in Australia.
Ken, your categories not mine.
> Rather than be "dismayed by the endless
> strings of generalizations," why not post YOUR idea of interesting
> and concrete material?
Ken, I do all the time. The main vehicle through which I do this is our web
site. at:
www.communication.org.au
As time and funds permit, we continue to publish many case histories and
reflexions on practice. Our major problem, if anyone is interested and can
help, is that we don't have a separate publishing budget, If anyone knows of
some pockets of money we can pilfer to help us publish stuff more quickly,
we would be delighted to here from you.
> I will close with two thoughts. The first is that John Broadbent is a
> biologist. He works with material and ideas as concrete as life
> itself. By contrast, those who deal with symbols and signs or the
> flow of bits and bytes are abstract. I do not say this to criticize
> communication design. I say this to suggest that the notion of
> abstraction or the concrete depend very much on who you are and what
> you look for.
Ken, in the context, I take this thought as a form of sophistry.
> My second thought is that I work with subjects that are sometimes
> abstract, and purposely so. I work with issues in philosophy, theory,
> and methodology. These involve the meta-narrative of research. My
> experience is that many designers benefit from this kind of work.
Frankly, I'm always surprised when anyone finds my reflections on what I do
interesting. I would, of course, be deeply upset if the designs we create
were not in some small way helpful.
But I don't make the distinctions you do, and perhaps there lies the main
source of difference between us. I try to reduce the number of categories I
use--I stick as closely as I can to the categories of ordinary language--you
seem to want to elaborate these categories as far as you can. It's a
difference between a love of simplicity and a love of complexity. I tend to
resist any new category, unless it's unavoidable. You welcome the
opportunities new categories offer.
This is perhaps the 'common ground' over which we will continue to debate.
David
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