Critical Reflective Journal

Paula Scher is one of the most influential graphic designers in the world. I like her thoughts on design “Design has an impact in real life.” “Design also needs to intake human behavior in count. For example, horizontal read is always better…” I like her work on the maps Stefanie Posavec is a U.S. designer who…

Paula Scher is one of the most influential graphic designers in the world.

I like her thoughts on design “Design has an impact in real life.”

“Design also needs to intake human behavior in count. For example, horizontal read is always better…”

I like her work on the maps

Stefanie Posavec is a U.S. designer who moved to London after completing her MA at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. After a period working as a cover designer for Penguin Books, she now works freelance on information design, data visualization, book cover design, and book design.

Posavec tries “to find ways of communicating with a more

intangible feeling about the data, shaping it metaphorically.” For example, “For the OK GO artwork, the album was called Of the Blue Colour of and it was based on an old pseudo-scientific text that talked about how blue lights could heal people and mentioned prisms and rainbows and ice and diamonds. So those were the colors and shapes we were trying to use when we made it.”

Posavec explains she is guided by her subject matter, both the raw data and the larger concepts: ”I’m using the data to create form, so I try to find meaningful data in the subject matter-data that creates interesting patterns and where the pattern has meaning. So even if the main intention of the design work isn’t to show insight but just to be decorative, or communicative, you can still see that there’s a harmony, or something interesting.”

Tara Austin and Paco Conde, Ogilvy &Mather

Tara Austin came up with the idea for The Power of Cute in the aftermath of the 2011 London riot -the reaction to a police shooting of a Tottenham man, which saw youths looting and setting fire to shops and businesses within the poorer boroughs of the city. She comments on how disturbing it was to watch people destroying their own communities. “Woolwich was a really sad example; people actually burned down the pub that they drank in.” The obvious reaction of local businesses was to improve security, but the local council was reluctant to grant planning permission to add shutters.

Tara wanted to “humanize the shutters”. She wanted “to see if we could bring down antisocial behavior in the area and increase feelings of love and community and social cohesion.” So, they came up with the idea of having baby pictures on the window (local babies)

here some work: