After seeing a recent article about graphic design hero T-shirts with matching iconography, I couldn’t help but feel a certain cliche ringing in my ear. Although the t-shirts themselves are sorta cool and I would semi-reluctantly wear one (as a personal hatred of trends) I couldn’t help but feel these t-shirts literally embodied the current status of students solely being able to list off the all too familiar cast of Design Watchmen without any real context or information about what these designers really stand for. Is it a credit to the life of Milton Glaser to just “heart NY”?
As a student I sometimes find myself massacred by a world of over stimulated design inspiration and reliance on trends and hero designers. This over stimulation I find quite damaging with developments of a personal voice and style. Over fixation on the designer hero model can sometimes be quite irrelevant and sometimes just plain trendy. It is only when we study the concepts and applications of a piece of known design can we find any relevance. It is only a designers approach and work flow that we should find relevant, not the graphical end product.