I haven’t had time to even read most of this thread so apologies in advance for the inevitable repetitions of previous statements or general lack of comprehension. This has little to nothing to do with Simon, BTW.
> On Feb 5, 2016, at 8:47 AM, João Ferreira <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I've spent enough time with the Adobe package to know that
> neither Illustrator nor Indesign have ever made a decision for me. I agree
> we probably mean different things with 'automating'. Illustrator makes my
> life a lot easier and my work much faster. But it doesn't design things for
> me.
Yes and no. Software is generally full of affordances on steroids. The effects of those affordances are, of course, largely under our control; recognizing affordances doesn’t mean we have to become techno-determinists.
So, yes. I don’t open Excel to draw or set type and I can override the decisions that InDesign makes. But it *does* make a lot of decisions that I would call design decisions. It assumes I want margins and that I’ll design on a basic grid that is rectangular and parallel to the edges of a rectangular piece of paper. Those are easy enough to change (except for the rectangular paper) and I’d likely make the same decisions even without prodding from the boys in Mountainview. Other decisions are presented more as choices—what typeface, what size, what leading, etc. and one can argue that affordances of other tools are as great (setting type at an angle or on a curve with lead type in letterpress requires really wanting to do that) but almost all users are going to leave some default settings without even thinking about them. (I tell my students that even if they want leading set at 1.2 times the type size, they should set that themselves and I quote Erik Spiekermann's exhortation to be suspicious of anything called "default." Nobody goes through every setting like a pilot’s checklist, however.)
I started working on a Mac when I thought it was finally a useful design tool. (I got one of the first Mac II computers in 1987.) It was a couple of years after that when they became ubiquitous in the design world and I remember being told that Mac type "just isn’t there yet." I would point out that the type my friends were getting from typesetters was good partly because typesetters did a lot of detail work on spacing and the like. We had been paying someone else to make us look good and in control. FOr the most part, we didn’t even notice what they did. They were making a lot of (design) decisions for us. We were suddenly in charge of those (design) decisions. Now InDesign makes a lot of those decisions so we can go back to not noticing.
> On Feb 5, 2016, at 10:43 AM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> A fun bit of evidence of the effects of design software on design decisions is to create an historical map combining the new design possibilities offered in graphic design software and the fashions in graphic design in the 2-3 years following. I remember when ellipses became available and suddenly there were many companies with elliptical logos and elliptical graphics in their literature. One of the worst was transparent text with a background image... More recently is the brush tool that paints a stream of graphics (draw it with butterflies...).
Another yes and no. We made plenty of ellipses using a plastic template and a Rapidograph pen before anyone had a computer do it. April Greiman is rightly thought of as a computer use pioneer but she was using ellipses by the metric ton before that got automated and her famous photo collages she did with Jamie Odgers (like the CalArts promos) were actually photo collages, i.e., cut up and glued together. It was a couple of years later before April had the budget to rent time on a Harry or a Quantel Paintbox to do things people now think were done on a Mac and a couple more before Photoshop caught up with that sort of work. Speaking of CalArts, when I was there in 1990, I was the only person who had been designing regularly on a computer, despite the legend that it was a hotbed of computer weenies. (Jeff Keedy and others did use Fontographer to make typefaces but their use of the Mac was pretty basic and stat cameras were central to much of what went on there.)
Most popular computer effects have historically started out as something made laboriously and only then ported to computers. That said, when something is admired and then becomes easy to do, it will get done a lot.
> On Feb 5, 2016, at 11:39 AM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> The role of designers is often such that designers are buried in routine detail design decision making and tasks. Design schools spend a large proportion of time teaching students to use software.
We don’t spend a large proportion of our time teaching software use.
> This indicates there is opportunity to automate much of the detail of that design decision making through a design software interface at a higher level of abstraction. Gunnar indicated this higher level of interaction when he commented the information he wanted was in the realm of increase the 'cool' by a third and double the informality (or something similar!).
I’m not sure from this what I said.
> In most cases, better design software with increased levels of design automation reduces transaction costs (in a Coasian sense) for smaller design businesses whilst the diseconomies of scale hamper larger design businesses. In addition, the use of computer systems also reduces to some extent the economic bias of location. Together these offer the possibility for increased egalitarianism, e.g. through less privileged designers and design businesses to play an a slightly more level playing field.
Computers and the internet have added to the trend of spreading serious graphic design geographically.
I hadn’t thought of it in terms of Ronald Coase’s "The Nature of the Firm" but yes, the transaction cost (including courier service and time waiting for type or stats) contributed to the integration of graphic design technically. Control had a lot to do with it, too. The transaction cost of getting a client also made bringing services in house via the computer better for a small firm or sole practitioner. If you spend more time on a project but don’t have to share the money with typesetters and stat houses, you can make as much off fewer clients/projects so have reduced prospecting, writing proposals, and billing.
I’ll have to think about comparative advantage of design firm size. A few design firms had typesetting and/or stat cameras in house but for the most part, they bought services from the same people that smaller designer firms did. The advantage of larger firms was always sales and reputation as well as project management leaving designers free to crank out work. The disadvantage of size was increased overhead. I’m not sure how computer use changed that.
The model of using a personal computer makes the cost of adding a designer greater than when all you needed was a chair, a drawing table, and a pile of pens so that may reduce the tendency for a design firm to expand. That also makes the cost of, let’s say, a 20 person team more like ten times the cost of a two person team. If central computers and workstations had become the model, that would have favored larger firms. As I said, I’m not sure how computer use changed the comparative advantages. I’ll have to think about that.
Gunnar
Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
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Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA
http://www.gunnarswanson.com
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+1 252 258-7006
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