A short time ago I was cycling around Amsterdam when I spotted the offices of Surinam Airways and invariably their logo. I stopped the bike to take a closer look at its resemblance to the Lufthansa logo. A couple of weeks pass and I see another airline logo, this time it’s Air India; once again it had characteristics of the Lufthansa bird. After this I began to think more about familiarity within design, there are predefined rules and expectations for nearly every single piece of design out there. When these expectations aren’t fulfilled we can easily feel lost and uncertain. If we are going to change convention it needs to be replaced with something better. There is a very fine line between hitting the right visual note or succumbing to tiresome solutions or in some cases direct copying. I cannot stand plagiarism, it is totally inexcusable; however in this article I am discussing the influence of convention as opposed to stealing. Personally I find many of these airline bird logos to be highly generic and very forgettable. Design with the expectations of the end user in mind is crucial, if it is a box of cereal it needs to look like a box of cereal. On the contrary preconceived notions and ideals can easily play too much of a role in determining the final solution all the while forgetting about innovation and creativity.

It is important for a logo, particularly in the service industry to communicate the service of the company. Birds fly, as do planes, it’s an obvious connection which communicates exactly what it needs to. At what point does designing by convention or common rhetoric become a lazy or boring solution. Design conformity is something that I struggle with on every single project I work on, convention makes it very had to try something drastically new or different, we need and want to feel familiarity. Trying to change convention can easily result in confusion if we’re not careful. If The New York Times decided to change it’s title header type it would no longer be The New York Times. It’s possible to dramatically change things, so long as the change is for the better, but as usual change will met with resistance.

I recently attended a seminar on way-finding, we were introduced to fundamentals, theories and logical reasoning behind way-finding decisions. Way-finding diagrams rely a lot on the convention of urban-planning maps and educated guessing, a green patch on a map means grass, a blue patch translates to water and a gray block is read as buildings; these are not rules but rather elementary standards which define how we approach such a task. We feel comfortable when we see what we know, disregard these expected standards and you better have a superior alternative. We feel comfortable buying a blue carton with a white splash on it as we know it’s milk, even if we can’t read a word on it, mix up the colours and you’ve got a different product. Convention is useful and unavoidable, most of the time it exists because it works but it can nearly always be improved on. As designers this is where we come in, to improve what is already there. This leads me full circle back to the airline logos, they are conforming to the basic idea of a bird in flight but are failing to improving on the concept, all the logos begin to look the same without any clear distinction between each of them.

From a customer point-of-view some of these logos are so similar that in most cases they could be interchanged with one another, there is very little distinction between them. We see this in many areas of design, people who conform to preexisting standards for no reason other than feeling safe, afraid to take risks because they know what has worked, not thinking about advancing but rather freezing in a moment scared to break the mold. The thought of failing is too much to worry about so they settle on the safety of tried and tested design, this way of working will only lead to blind ignorance and tiresome solutions. On your next project try something very different, open up and see what happens. Take a risk.

I’m currently living in Rotterdam in The Netherlands and as you’d expect the majority of everything is in dutch. As I don’t speak any dutch I depend heavily on visual rhetoric and visual associations to understand the message. For example, I was looking for some biscuits I came across a shelf full of different varieties, I found what I wanted purely based on the colours. For some reason dark chocolate is nearly always associated with the colour red and milk chocolate with blue. I’m not sure exactly why but perhaps it’s because red is usually associated with being a rich colour, a regal colour, which links back to the rich dark chocolate.

There are a lot more examples; dark blue and light blue milk cartons, full-fat milk and semi-skimmed milk respectively. Red/White combination is closely connected with ‘Sale’ or ‘Value’. These colour associations are basic, perhaps somewhat obvious but are an intrinsic part of visual rhetoric. Aside from colours, images too are reliant on their rhetorical value. This is a tricky area as different cultures and environments will have vastly different reactions to the same image. A solid understanding of the audience you are trying to communicate to is imperative to appropriate rhetoric.

Having said that I am not suggesting that you should settle with whatever image is most obvious, and ‘does the job’. In the case of chocolate cookies maybe it is more valid to do just that; I don’t believe that a package design for cookies should be challenging cultural issues or perceptions. On the other hand when presented with the challenge of designing something that needs to engage with the end viewer then I feel it’s important to augment the meaning and touch the heart of the viewer.

Objectivity

Quite often, particularly in advertising I feel there’s a lack of personality and heart in the work we see. This links back to the cookies example earlier, the packaging is a form of advertising, but what about other pursuits. So often design becomes too objective, lacking in any personality of the designer. Frequently I see a very mechanistic approach to graphic design; I sometimes think you could interchange many of the graphic elements of two polar opposite designs and it wouldn’t make a difference to the message because they are purely empty ornament. Perhaps I’m being purist but there’s sincerity and reason behind what I’m saying. Since living in The Netherlands it has opened my eyes to a wealth of solid, considered design, it’s part of this countries culture. Coming from Ireland, which doesn’t have such a rich design history like most of Europe, however it is progressing internationally, I don’t see as much of an understanding for design in Ireland as I do here in The Netherlands. Dare I say it, but making this comparison is much similar to comparing the master and his apprentice.

Quick thought on Irish Graphic Design

In Ireland when mentioning graphic design, it’s quickly followed by confusion about what it is, usually with a blank opinion. This is possibly because graphic design was never a huge part of Irish culture and life, it’s their but it’s for the most part frivolous. I find there’s a massive ignorance of what we do and what it means to be a designer. Only a select few, generally those involved in the industry know what ‘graphic design’ implies. In recent years many Irish companies have sprung up, producing some great work that is pushing forward and experimenting. Ireland has a very closely knit design community which allows for collaboration and awareness of whats going on. I think it’s growing and will continue to do so, but slowly.