I recently found out that Robert Quine, nephew to W.V.O. Quine (one of my favorite philosophers) was in The Voidoids. What next, do I find out that Kurt Cobain is Adrian Frutiger’s great grandson?
None of this matters in any significant way, but it makes me feel all tingly inside.
UPDATE: He also played guitar on Girlfriend. Jim DeRogatis once said that the guitar solo on Serve The Servants sounds like Robert Quine.
I believe that graphic design can exist in a vacuum.
I know of some designers that work using a data-based approach. They do things such as market research, usability studies, focus groups, etc. Generally speaking, they conduct studies, and use the methodology that the majority of subjects approve of.
Using academic disciplines as an analogy, this would be the soft science. Sociology, psychiatry, economics, etc.
I prefer a different approach. My methodology is based on my knowledge of history, intuition, and an ability to generalize. Sometimes I will ask other people if my intent is clear. Often I won’t. Sometimes I try to base my designs on logical principles. When I’m feeling more poetic, I won’t.
Using academic disciplines as an analogy, this would be the humanities. Art, Literarure, Philosophy.
What makes this analogy interesting is when you compare philosophy to psychology. Both subjects are concerned with the mind, and its relation to the external world.
Both approaches to graphic design are concerned with displaying information. One uses science, and one is primarily concerned with logic. There’s a lot of overlap, but ultimately, I prefer using logic as a tool to present information.
Furthermore, I believe that using market research, focus groups, etc. creates a lowest-common-denominator approach to design. This makes it difficult to innovate. It’s like design by a very large committee.
Design as an arts discipline allows for innovation, style, individuality.
I think there is a place for both. But I prefer art to science. Although there is a large amount of evidence supporting design choices, such as UPS’s new logo, Paul Rand’s original seems more authentic to me.
It is seldom useful when people speak in complete generalities. Propositions without concrete subjects cause one’s brain to infer meaning wherever one (or one’s brain) sees fit. This can cause a reader to attribute to the author thoughts and feelings that in fact generated from the reader, which in turn causes the reader to grossly misunderstand the author’s intent.
I am a firm believer in intent. Authors rarely write without an intended message. Certainly, there have been works written to inspire rather than inform (Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky comes to mind.) But in the case of philosophy, and especially contemporary academic philosophy, being vague in this way seems to go against the point.
When you do philosophy, and especially when you are writing it down, you are concerned with establishing that your thoughts are true. This is considerably more difficult when you attempt to write clearly, because your thoughts must be organized and be supported by evidence, examples, etc. When you write vaguely, you can say anything, and whatever the person is thinking of when they are reading becomes what you wrote about. When you write vaguely, you do not own your thoughts. They become the property of the reader. You can not legitimately claim to have written these ideas.
So if someone comes away from your work and has a different idea than what you intended, can you say that they have understood you? Have you communicated your ideas? In both cases, the answer is no.
In philosophy, if you write vaguely, you aren’t writing at all.
This is why I tend to dislike the continentals. Hegel, Heidegger, etc. I stick with good ol’ boring analytic philsophy — Russell, Wittgenstein, Ayer, etc. I deeply distrust anyone who says they are interested in continental philosophy, because it’s really just a bunch of essays. That’s fine, for literature. Philosophy, and philosophers however, need to be more serious.
Where I work, our offices are near the back of the building. The alley, right outside our door, is quite busy and we often hear noises — trucks bringing shipments of food to restaurants, yuppies parking their cars in their garages, that sort of thing.
Today, the guy who owns the apartment building directly across the alley from us was doing something with his motorcycle. I don’t know what it was, and I don’t care. It was loud and it bothered me. So I started making comments to my coworkers about how people are inconsiderate and why do motorcycles always have to be loud, etc.
I asked my boss if his motorcycle was that loud. He told me it wasn’t. So then I asked if the dude that owns the apartment building fixed his up to make it louder, and if so, he was an asshole. My boss wouldn’t really say. He just kept repeating “some people just like the way it sounds” when I asked why would anyone want a loud motorcycle.
I generally have this idea that you should never do anything that’s going to bother somone else, especially if that thing is just small mundane activity you do to make yourself feel better. Like the guy who sat next to Elaine and made the lip-smacking noise after every sip of coffee.
It’s not worth it. I just plain think it’s wrong, but even from a Utilitarian standpoint, the numbers are just staggering.
Say you work with 10 people, all within earshot of your cubicle. You really enjoy singing, especially the popular songs of past decades. Chances are, those 10 people aren’t going to enjoy your vocal stylings.
So you shouldn’t sing because you are going to annoy 10 people, and only make 1 person happy. And really, does that make you happy? Shouldn’t you be spending your time, doing, say, work, instead of singing James Taylor songs? But the point is — you shouldn’t do it because 10 is larger than 1.
This brings up another interesting point — if I ever start doing philosophy seriously, and I want to be remembered, this would certianly be a recurring theme of mine — the ethics of the mundane.
Utilitarianism is generally concerned with doing the thing that will benefit the most people. The examples given in a classroom setting are generally of the murdering your rich neighbor to get all his money and save the poor children, speeding traincar headed toward a group of old people variety.
I don’t think this is a very good way to go about teaching ethics. I see, every day, people doing things that offend me on moral grounds, but they aren’t life or death sorts of things. They’re things like holding doors open, and getting off at the front of the bus. Stuff that doesn’t really matter, on a biblical scale. But this stuff impacts my life. And yours. And everyone elses. And it happens to you every day, time and time again.
If people can’t be trusted to hold a door open for you, then they certainly can’t be trusted to save your life if a traincar comes rushing toward you and they’re the only ones who can throw the switch to make it jump to the other track.
So, because I heard motorcycles in the alley, we are living in a moral wasteland. Fuck all this war for oil shit — let’s have a war for common fucking courtesy.