«Канон» Массимо Виньелли

А вот и обещанная заметка про «Канон» Массимо Вильелли (ПДФ).

Цитаты из первой части, «Нематериальное»:

Unfortunately, there are designers and marketing people who intentionally look down on the consumer with the notion that vulgarity has a definite appeal to the masses, and therefore they supply the market with a continuos flow of crude and vulgar design. I consider this action criminal since it is producing visual pollution that is degrading our environment just like all other types of pollution.

The consistency of a design is provided by the appropriate relationship of the various syntactical elements of the project: how type relates to grids and images from page to page throughout the whole project. Or, how type sizes relate to each other. Or, how pictures relate to each other and how the parts relate to the whole. There are ways to achieve all this that are correct, as there are others that are incorrect, and should be avoided.

Whatever we do, if not understood, fails to communicate and is wasted effort. We design things which we think are semantically correct and syntactically consistent but if, at the point of fruition, no one understands the result, or the meaning of all that effort, the entire work is useless.

We like Design to be beyond fashionable modes and temporary fads. We like Design to be as timeless as possible. We despise the culture of obsolescence. We feel the moral imperative of designing things that will last for a long time.

There is no room for sloppiness, for carelessness, for procrastination. Every detail is important because the end result is the sum of all the details involved in the creative process no matter what we are doing. There are no hierarchies when it comes to quality. Quality is there or is not there, and if is not there we have lost our time.

Design is one — it is not many different ones. The discipline of Design is one and can be applied to many different subjects, regardless of style. Design discipline is above and beyond any style.

Visual strength can be achieved also by using delicate layouts or materials. Visual strength is an expression of intellectual elegance and should never be confused with just visual impact — which, most of the time, is just an expression of visual vulgarity and obtrusiveness.

Цитаты из второй части, «Материальное». Вот это сразу ввело меня в ступор:

The A4 is the basic size for stationary. Two thirds of it is a square, a nice economical happenstance resulting from the golden rectangle.

Культ сетки:

Nothing could be more useful to reach our intention than the Grid. The grid represents the basic structure of our graphic design, it helps to organize the content, it provides consistency, it gives an orderly look and it projects a level of intellectual elegance that we like to express. There are infinite kinds of grids, but just one — the most appropriate — for any problem. Therefore, it becomes important to know which kind of grid is the most appropriate. The basic understanding is that the smaller the module of the grid the least helpful it could be.

Sometimes we will position the logo (or the symbol) on the first column, right below the first fold (речь о фирменном бланке).

It is just like in music, where five lines and seven notes allow one to make infinite compositions. That is the magic of the grid.

Разное про шрифты и типографику:

The advent of the computer generated the phenomena called desktop publishing. This enabled anyone who could type the freedom of using any available typeface and do any kind of distortion. It was a disaster of mega proportions. A cultural pollution of incomparable dimension. As I said, at the time, if all people doing desktop publishing were doctors we would all be dead!

I do not like typography intended as an expression of the self, as a pretext for pictorial exercises. I am aware that there is room for that too, but it is not my language and I am not interested in it. I don’t believe that when you write dog the type should bark!

I strongly believe that design should never be boring, but I don’t think it should be a form of entertainment.

Justified is used more for text books, but it is not one of our favorites because it is fundamentally contrived.

Вот так вот, fundamentally contrived.

When using rulers I set a hierarchy of weights to clarify the different parts of the text. In a form, for instance, bolder rulers (2 pt) will separate major parts of the text, light rulers (1/2 pt or 1 pt) will separate items within each part of the form. In that situation the type between the rulers will be 8 pt, always set closer to the ruler above.

Scale is the most appropriate size of an object in its natural context. However, it can be manipulated to achieve particular expression in a particular context — actually by being purposely out of scale.

Most of the time we use color as a Signifier, or as an Identifier. Generally speaking we do not use color in a pictorial manner.

Once again, in designing any kind of publication the most helpful device is the grid.

A publication, whether a magazine, a book, a brochure, or even a tabloid is a cinematic object where turning of the pages is an integral part of the reading experience. A publication is simultaneously the static experience of a spread and the cinematic experience of a sequence of pages.

Too much diversity creates fragmentation — a very common disease of badly designed communication (речь о фирменном стиле). Too much identity generates perceptive redundancy and lack of retention. Therefore, it is necessary to achieve the proper balance between those components.

The relationship between the size of type and the space around it is one of the most delicate and precious elements of a composition.