Ambition/Fear
Ambition/Fear by Zuzana Licko and Rudy VanderLans (1989) http://www.emigre.com/Editorial.php
Moderators:
Keywords:
- Design with computers
- New design techniques with new paradigms
- Computer-like design
- Glitches not as part of the software yet as part of the experience
Summary of key points raised in the text:
This is an article from 1989, talking about problems and possibilities that designers will face in the future regarding computer as a tool to make designs.
It celebrates that less skill is needed to make a design and states that designers have to think about the basic rules of design (which are not mentioned in any way making it difficult for a performer to fully grasp the meaning). The text is saying that design will take less time, but it is absolutely certain that this extra time will be spend on explorer more design solutions (haha). It also claims that custom fonts will be normal. Then it raises a few problems like how to make choices in the growing supply of design and how copyright will be protected. Lastly it states that the computer-like images will become different over time and that designers should not get stuck in old designer paradigms.
Discussion Notes & Afterthoughts:
Olia wants to start with the notion that the computer-like design indeed has changed. Then she names an article in The New Media Reader called “Seen and Writing”, that is a critique on the ideas formulated in this text. That text states that designers have stayed stuck in the old paradigms like the idea of “paper” on the computer screen.
After this we had a talk about glitches and how glitches become/are part of the software and are part of the experience of the program. In this sense there can be no mis-use of programs while on the other side (from a programmers perspective) glitches are obviously flaws that should be dealt with as seen as possible (especially if it is a security glitch). Such glitches are, in the eyes of many, not good to keep in the software for users to play/experiment with.
Fako
To a none designer the absences of a short description in the text about what the "basic design principles" are is quite annoying. I get the idea that it has to do with harmony, but that's really only a guess.