My name is Annika Hueffer and I study Design for Art Direction at LCC. Art Direction includes a broad spectrum of different art fields that can be explored in collaboration with various artists. I focus on Photography, Graphic Design, and Video making which gives me a good “in”, to the social media world of today. Since starting at LCC and doing DPS, I found my perception of Design changing in many ways. Going into my course I did not have any prior technical skills and thought that made me less of a professional artist. But since developing as an artist throughout these 2.5 years I have realized there is no definition of good or bad in art. So what I created before starting with DPS was following the principle of Anti-Design more than Design itself. In some ways it made me feel liberated even though there were certain constrictions from assignments and deadlines, I was able to experiment a lot and not follow certain guidelines for my work. Since starting DPS I quickly learned that in a professional environment, there can be much less space for this “rule-breaking” of Design principles. Therefore I am questioning Design for the real world vs. a “fantasy” world through the lens of Design/Anti-design, positioning myself towards the Anti-Design realm. While listening to Daniel Kalick’s presentation at the AIGA design conference in 2017 I could look at the beginnings of why Anti-Design even exists (Kalick, 2018). And one of the points he made was about how designers get bored of design rules and the younger generation tries to rebel against those, and create “shocking” visuals without coherent color palettes or using illegible typography. He also discussed that with the increase in the availability of design software, anyone can design. I believe that since the pandemic and other recent events struck, there are people that are simply angry with the world and the change in society or within the country they live in. And I can very much understand and relate to that over these past years. Also being stuck at home for a long time has let artists come up with creative and innovative ideas digitally and through design, without any rules. Sharing their knowledge through social media platforms like short videos on TikTok made it more accessible for non-professional artists to rise. And since Art has always in some ways been a reflection of society, it is clear that since 2019 there has been an increase in the Anti-Design discussion. Looking at design for the real world vs a fantasy world can very much be applied to the pandemic because life didn't feel real and everything was put on pause. Thus the rule-following of design principles, at least for me, seemed less relevant. The satirical women's magazine ‘Mushpit’ is an example of this counter-design approach where Charlotte Roberts and Bertie Brandes parody the industry and provide an alternative and honest voice for young women (Jamieson, 2016). So relating this to art revolting against societal issues, they went against the design rules of fashion magazines to make them more humorous and memorable.
“Anti-Design Trades Simplicity for Complexity” (Glover, 2022) In my practice in the professional industry, I have seen the need for guidelines in Design and how there are specific business needs for it. It communicates on a human-centered level and its purpose is to be fast, frictionless, and easy. So, in the discussion of design for the real world vs a fantasy world it is clear that both need to exist. The “real” world can be seen as the commercialized and taught way of interacting with design whereas the fantasy world can be whatever it wants to be, making its main focus complexity instead of simplicity. Concluding my argument that Anti-Design is what is more dominant and communicates in the “fantasy” world, which in my opinion is necessary for innovations in the real world, I also see that design with guidelines is also just as necessary. Thus both cooperate in the learning of new and existing artists to challenge design which continues the evolution of design principles. References Jamieson, R. (2016) The new wave of anti-design magazines will question your sense of taste-and that's a good thing, Eye on Design. Available at: https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/the-new-wave-of-anti-design-magazines-will-question-your-sense-of-taste-and-thats-a-good-thing/ Kalick, D. (2018) User experience | the rise of anti-design, YouTube. AIGAdesign. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1CLA2MgvrA&t=1072s Glover, E. (2022) Anti-design is intentionally loud and messy, Built In. Available at: https://builtin.com/design-ux/anti-design
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