Judge This by Chip Kidd.
Title: Judge This.
Author: Chip Kidd.
Genre: Non-fiction, design, books on books.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2015.
Summary: Judging every-day items and ordinary experiences, book-cover-designer Kidd breaks down the good and the bad, the confusing and the clear, the absurd and the splendid. Design rests on a spectrum that ranges from clarity to mystery. Some design requires charity; other design needs a lot more mystery; most need a bit of both. From the design of the ATM machine to the books you read to the medicine you take to the coffee cup on your desk, design gives us the impressions by which we experience and judge the world. In this book, the author reveals the hidden secrets behind design choices, and, along the way, shows how so much of our world can be a dazzling magic show, a seductive work of art, and a sublime experience-if we have the tools to judge it.
My rating: 6/10
My review:
♥ We all heard it as children: "Don't judge by appearances." But we do, because we live in a visual culture, and our minds instantly react to what we see.
What really matters is not that we judge, but how we do so. Is it with intelligence? Empathy? Compassion?
♥ I've found that the two most effective and fascinating aspects of first impressions-both the ones I create and those I encounter-are at opposite ends of the spectrum: Clarity and Mystery. After more than thirty years as a practicing designer, I continue to be amazed by how these two components work, and what happens when they get mixed up or misused.
♥ When should you be clear?
That depends on the message you want to get across, and its nature. You should be clear when you need people to understand you immediately.
..If we apply this idea to design in our everyday lives, the examples start to become, well, clear:
Highway signage. Instruction manuals. Alarm clocks. Emergency escape routes. Wedding vows.
When decoration-a pretty facade, ornamentation, elaboration-really doesn't matter at all, clarity is most needed.
♥ When should you be mysterious?
Ah, the allure of Mystery. And the fun of it. Or, if we're not careful, the disappointment of it.
..Mystery is: a puzzle that demands to be solved, a secret code you want to crack, an illusion that may not be an illusion at all, a dream you're trying to remember before it fades away.
Mystery, it must be said, can also be terrifying: phantom pain, sudden change, irrational behavior, the loss of power. The threat of the unknown.
♥ I am often asked "What inspires you?" and "When you have a creative block, how do you unblock it?" The unhelpful answer to the first question is that I can be inspired by just about everything, both good and bad. But when you have a problem to solve-whether it's fixing as leak, keeping deer out of your yard, or trying to mend a broken relationship-your inspiration, your first clue about what to do, lies within an analysis if the problem itself. What's where the solution originates.
♥ As for storing all this stuff on your phone, news flash: your phone can die. Paper does not die, because it's already dead and resurrected.
♥ And then there is this kind of packaging, for prescription medication, which baffles me. Why is it that over-the-counter medicinal packaging tells you exactly what it's for, while prescribed products do not? For example, Lamisol proudly declares that it "Kills Athlete's Foot," while my prescribed luliconazole cream, used to treat the same thing, says nothing of the kind. I asked a friend of mine in the pharmaceutical business about this, and while he didn't have a definitive answer, he did come up with a two-part theory. First, the drug industry assumes that if you are prescribed a treatment by a doctor, he or she will tell you what it's for, so the label doesn't have to. Second, the real story is that it's (surprise, surprise)... a legal issue, and has to do with diagnoses far more dire than foot fungus. Not long ago, drug giant Eli Lilly was sued because a doctor prescribed one of its products for depression when it was really meant to treat schizophrenia. Such is the potential danger of mystery and interpretation.
♥ The original logo was created in 1920s by French tennis star René Lacoste, nicknamed "The Crocodile" for his tenacity on the court.
♥ It always seems strange to me that movie poster credits (or the billing block, as it's known in the business) appear in those extremely condensed, skinny typefaces that are so hard to read. The reason for this has to do with film industry guidelines and a typographic technicality determined by the logo of the film on the poster. Type (or font) height is measured in units called points (this text you're reading right now is 11 points, for example). Type width is not actually numerically measured at all, but is classified by "weight"-light, bold, extra bold, heavy, etc.
So, by most Hollywood labor union standards, the point size of the billing block has to be at least 25 to 35 percent of the point size of the title of the movie. Using an ultracondensed typeface allows the height of the characters to meet contractual obligations while still providing enough horizontal space to include all the required text.
And render it nearly indecipherable.
..And by the way-as someone who sets type all the time for a living, I can tell you that using a smaller point size with a heavier width for billing blocks would be much easier to read and fit the space just fine. Like this.
♥ Just when you're ready to give up on the human race in general, along comes the Ice Bucket Challenge, and you believe again.
And then all your friends and Superman and Lois Lane do it, too, and you donate money.
I realize that by the time this sees print the Ice Bucket Challenge may be yesterday's news, but it's worth noting here anyway, because this is how to spread a message using a great idea-remember: polio was once yesterday's news, too. The origins of the practice of dumping cold water on one's head to raise money for charity are unclear and have been attributed to multiple sources (mostly televised football games), but this initiative, started in 2014, has raised well over $300 million to date to fund research in the fight against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (aka ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease), for which there is as yet no effective treatment or cure.
The idea is simple, direct, and tailor-made for the age of viral video, and emphasizes perpetuation. Perhaps most important, it connected with the public at large, who otherwise might not have been aware of the cause and were all too willing to dump freezing-cold water over their heads so they could empathize with people less fortunate than themselves.
The message took hold. We don't need to see cats riding vacuum cleaners anymore; we need to do something about a dire problem, and have some fun on the process-and pay our good fortune forward.
First impression: This is how to design a fund-raiser.
♥ Even if I wasn't a Japanophile, I would still use chopsticks all the time, for all kinds of cuisine. Especially salads, which can be unwieldy on a fork. The cultural difference between selecting your food and stabbing it is symbolic of the quiet simplicity of the West versus the blunt directness of the West.
♥ My first relationship was with a lovely Swiss fellow who was a banker, and he remarked that he didn't understand why the US tax system had to be so complicated.
"In Switzerland, they send us a tax bill that says how much we owe, and then we pay it. End of story."
That sounds so damned civilized.
♥ The basic is heroic.
♥
Um...
The mystery here is not what are they saying, but why are they saying it?
These Diet Coke ads were, in contrast to the packaging, clear in the worst possible way. I would guess that whoever is responsible for this thought they were being naughty and cool, but as someone who has done design work for Coca-Cola in the past, I am baffled and amazed that this ever saw the light of day. Nothing like this can happen without a LOT of important people signing off on it.
And, to clarify, that is not a period after "YOU'RE ON"; it's a trademark symbol. Nice.
♥ Great industrial design is not disposable.
♥ The clarity of the design of the dollar bill has been consistently effective for more than one hundred and fifty years, no matter how it has varied: the image of George Washington is just perfect as the representation of the birth of United States and its currency: he can be trusted, relied on, and believed in (he can't tell a lie!).
The two green tones (soothing, reassuring, earthy), the precise engraving and stamping, the texture of the resilient cotton and linen paper in the hand that can withstand countless transactions-this is great graphic design that hundreds of millions of people interact with every day.
First impression: In this we trust.
♥ Eye charts-developed in the mid-nineteenth century by Dr. Fanciscus Donders and his colleague Herman Snellen in the Netherlands..
♥ But what Google Earth does best, and quite beautifully, is lend perspective. Look at how small we are, how close we are to our neighbors, how intricately our surroundings are structured. This, of course, is more pronounced in highly populated areas. What are the implications?
First impression: I better understand my environment when I can look at it from a new angle.
♥ As a working print designer, I had to learn very early on about the offset lithography process (also called four-color printing) and how it works. Basically, all full-color images are composed of combinations of four components: cyan (blue), magenta (a pinkish red), yellow, and black (referred to by the printers as K so as not be confused with blue). White is taken care of by the color of the paper itself. If you have a personal printer at home, then you know that there are four ink cartridges containing these colors inside, and the black one usually runs out first, because it's used in just about everything.
These colors are broken down into dot patterns called half-tone screens, and when combined in the right ways, they can make just about any other color you can imagine (except fluorescent or metallics; they require their own special inks).
First impression: A brilliant system-from four simple building blocks, you can create millions of options.
♥ The word "logo" is derived from the ancient Greek for "word," and refers to a graphic symbol that is used to identify and promote an organization (usually a commercial concern) or individual. The term "logotype" differs slightly from "logo" because it depicts the actual name of what it represents.
♥ A sculptor friend of mine once put it succinctly: How do you make a block of marble look like it's actually breathing? The question is as simple and as complex as that, and the answer likes in techniques that I can't begin to understand but at which I endlessly marvel. That the artists usually choose to depict idealized physical specimens (gods, goddesses, nymphs, satyrs, etc.) only makes the end product all the more enticing. They were the supermodels of their day. Did anyone really want to see a statue depicting imperfection? Back then, what would be the point?
But then there are the fragments of the figures that didn't survive the ages, which leave us to imagine the rest of them. These elicit a different kind of fascination because of what's missing and our desire to fill in the blanks to complete them.
Would the Venus de Milo be nearly as interesting with her arms intact? I think most people would say no.
♥ The skull-and-bones pirate flag originated in the 1700s and was flown on invading ships only when they came within fighting range of the legitimate commercial vessels they sought to capture. The idea was to give their targets an opportunity to surrender without a fight. If they didn't, the black flags went down and were replaced with red ones-and all the implications that went along with them.
So the black pirate flags were, in the relative scheme of things, meant to be peaceful in a way: submit, and no one gets hurt.
♥
Small fragments can tell much larger stories.
♥ Clarity gets to the point.
I find that the older I get (I turned fifty during the making of this book), the clearer I want things to be. I think this is a natural symptom of maturation-as we age, mysteries pile up, and they're usually not the fun ones:
Just how long do I have?
Why do some people get what they deserve, and others don't?
Why are certain problems so easy to solve, while others are totally impossible?
Will they ever, ever bring working jetpacks to the marketplace?
Whoever you are, whatever you do for a living, you have problems to solve. I hope that this book has given you a little something to think about in terms of how you might proceed to do so. Ask yourself: What is this problem I'm trying to solve? How do I define it? What are its components? What is the goal I'm trying to achieve with its solution?
And remember...
Mystery gives us hope.
As we go on, Mystery becomes more important, too, because it helps us deal with things we can't understand.
It is fueled by faith: belief in ourselves, our friends, "the system," humanity in general, and whatever else it is we need to believe in. There's a reason we don't want great magic tricks explained.
Mystery is also valuable as a coping mechanism-the things that are all too clear are piling up, too:
Life is short.
Love can't be taken for granted.
Everything has a cost.
Just holding on to something doesn't mean it won't go away.
You can try to solve everything, but if you can't, that's okay. As long as you've tried your best.