You are about to enter *a graphic design exhibition.* Go ahead now, walk
into the gallery. It’s a darkened room, not small, and seems to be roughly
a cube. On the walls surrounding you are three large-scale projections,
each is cycling through what appear to be abstract graphics, scanned
pages, short movies. what binds these various bits together? Well, you
check out where the projections are coming from, and you find three
projectors standing on pedestals. On each is an identifying label. The
first reads VIS 215, Graphic Design. After what appears to be a room
number and building name (one eighty-five Nassau Street) is a meeting
time. you surmise, clever visitor, that what’s on the projected loop must
be the work of a particular class in this University. In fact it is. This
first one is ‘Introduction to Graphic Design’ and it shows a sequence of
scans of letter-sized pieces of paper, the results of a collaborative
exercise where twelve students work together in the typography studio to
compose (with individual metal letters) a text titled, ‘the crystal
goblet, or printing should be invisible.’ This is the first class
assignment. The second is to set another text, this time ‘the new
typography,’ using only a photocopier . . . now, you spin around ninety
degrees and find a second pedestal. Its label says VIS 216, Visual Form.
you know the score by now, and you can safely assume this is another
graphic design class. This is also an introduction, but instead of
letters, students deal with graphic forms (logos, icons, signs, and so
on). Three assignments are shown here. The first asks students to design a
graphic symbol which means ‘stop’ without resorting to either graphic or
linguistic convention. Impossible, you say! Yes, well they are next asked
to design a matching symbol that means the opposite: ‘go.’ The second
assignment is related. These are animated gifs, meant to indicate ‘wait’
or to show that something is ‘currently in process.’ These are variations
on the well-known and not-loved, spinning beach ball of death that the
macintosh shows when the system is busy thinking. The final assignment is
more open. Students are asked to design a ‘model’ to understand and
communicate the differences between r-g-b (additive) and c-m-y-k
(subtractive) color. . . deep breath, now turn around again and look
towards the third projection. This one feels largest, and likely because
what you see on the wall is a giant apple watch. The pedestal is labeled
VIS 415, Advanced Graphic Design. Collected here is the work from two
semesters of this intensive workshop class. The assignment is simple and
lasts the full semester — design a new face for the apple watch which
tells the time, and (by design) also changes the way you *read* the time.
Simple, no? The students begin by considering, with a broad historical
scope, how the representation of time affects the ways we understand it
and use it. They proceed to design their prototypes which are here, on the
wall . . . like the time on this giant apple watch, nothing sits still in
this gallery. Each projection continues marching along, showing one
student at a time. And, each slide show is of a different length and they
each play on a loop, so entering the gallery you would (practically) never
see the same thing twice. It’s been seven years since these classes have
been offered on campus and here *now* in this gallery are some of the
results — the assembled works of one hundred eighty-four students (listed
on the gallery wall and the back of a small booklet) who’ve studied
graphic design at Princeton University.
http://www.a-graphic-design-exhibition.org/
