Presentation and Feedback

I kept my presentation mostly visual as it allowed me to talk openly about the subject and not confuse my audience by saying something different to what was on screen. Similarly, I like to maintain a conversational aspect when I'm presenting because I have to rely on the knowledge and make sure I know it, instead of reading off the screen. On top of this I think by keeping it casual it allows me to remain calm and not stumble over my words.

To do this I just made short notes by each slide with the points I needed to be sure to cover:

After presenting to a group of 8 others, we each returned feedback to the presenter:

Based on the feedback we received we were able to break it down into useful feedback, 'nice' feedback and unhelpful feedback. While I didn't find that any of the feedback was unhelpful, there was some that went unexplained and so wasn't too useful. On the left I placed the 'nice' feedback and on the right I put the feedback that had something that would be helpful to me on it.

Based on the feedback, I set three objectives for possible improvements to my Summer Brief/presentation and how I should approach it:

1. Be more concise with presentation - I was unable to finish in the 5 minutes we were given because I spent too long explaining my research before explaining the topic - should have spent more time explaining the actual information I found.

2. Explain more about why I chose the topic - I briefly mentioned that I had an interest in learning about using programmes like After Effects to make similar productions but should have spoken more about what drew me to it (interest in film, big Hitchcock fan, want to perfect minimalism).

3. Extend research outside initial topic to enable me to create a comparison - when talking to people about something they may not know about, a comparison would show them my reasoning behind my choice, as well as give them some context and help justify my research.

Level 5 To-Do List

As much as I learnt in first year about my own work methods and approach to graphic design, in terms of design I spent a lot of it in my comfort zone. There is a lot to the subject itself that I wanted to explore and didn't, so second year is my chance to do so:

• Photography- look more into using my own photography in my work and as primary research.
• Screen printing - I didn't spend anywhere near as much time as I wanted to screen printing and need to get to the studio in my spare time and practice if I don't feel my printing is otherwise up to standard.
• Look into some areas that really interest me but have had no experience in - digital collage, film making - use research of these areas to aid my own work when I get around to doing them.
• Go back to what it is that made me want to do graphic design - illustrative typography - use my skills more frequently on top of exploring new fields.
• Use the letter press!
• Blogging! Always go the extra mile and don't just blog the bare minimum - use posts from sessions to aid the work I'm doing.
• Spend more time researching and exploring initial ideas! Stop jumping straight into one thing without exploring other options.
• Use the library more - stop relying on the internet, it is not a reliable source.
• Stop staying in my comfort zone when it starts to matter - a good grade is not gonna be built on being one dimensional, be willing to take some chances.

Saul Bass Cont.

After doing some further research into a couple of the design areas I initially chose, I decided to further the research I started on Saul Bass. I saw a lot of depth in some of the aspects that I was just glossing over in order to research everything.
There were a variety of reasons I chose to further this:
- As the inventor of film title sequence as design, I was keen to see how films translate to design in this format.
- I have an interest in this area and plan to explore it in second year, so this would also lend itself as research into that area.
- Bass' minimalist style is executed to a standard of which I could only hope to reach, as I have struggled with effective minimalist design in first year.


Bass was born in the Bronx, New York in 1920 and studied at the Art Students League in New York and Brooklyn College. After multiple apprenticeships with some design agencies in Manhattan, Bass worked as a freelance graphic designer, after which he moved to LA and opened his own studio in 1950, where his main focus was advertising.

This was until Preminger recruited him to design the poster for his film Carmen Jones in 1954, and after the impressive result, asked him to also create the title sequence. It was the series of title sequences that Bass created that earned him recognition for having a gift of capitalising on one image that then became symbolic for the film, and continued to transform it into a modern style.

"He creates an emblematic image, instantly recognisable and immediately tied to the film"

Martin Scorsese

However, in 1974, Bass returned to more commercial graphic design:

United Airlines logo

AT&T logo

Minolta logo

Bell Telephone System logo

Warner Communications logo

To many younger film directors who were new on the scene, Bass was a cinematic icon with whom they all longed to work, and in 1987 he was persuaded to go back into title sequence design, when he created the title for James' Brooks' Broadcast News and then again for Big in 1988 by Penny Marshall.

At this time one of those new directors who idolised Bass was Martin Scorsese, with whom he found a long term collaborator, and they went on to do 1993's The Age Of Innocence and 1995's Casino:

Not only was Saul Bass iconic as a designer, commercially and within the film industry, he was also an accredited filmmaker, his most recognisable being Why Man Creates which was created as a short, animated documentary in 1968 and discusses the nature of creativity. It focuses on the creative process and the variety of ways in which this process is approached.
The film won the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject and was selected to be preserved in the US National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".

Bass subtitled Why Man Creates as "a series of explorations, episodes and comments on creativity" and keeps the film so tongue-in-cheek and both playful and profound throughout. The film is made up of a series of, at first, unconnected sequences but eventually all fall into place and converge into an alluring exploration of man's fundamental conscious to create.








Saul Bass died in 1996. His New York Times obituary hailed him as "the minimalist auteur who put a jagged arm in motion in 1955 and created an entire film genre…and elevated it into an art."

"Beneath theory and rhetoric, and well beyond technique and jargon, the reason for design is to speak to people in a language that is familiar, but also new, to entice people to understand an old thing in a new way, or grasp a new thing in an old way. There has never been a designer who can do this better than Saul Bass, who adds the 1981 AIGA Medal to his long and quite extraordinary list of honors and achievements. Saul Bass honors this award."

New York Times obituary, April 27, 1996. 

Even to the untrained eye, it is no secret that Bass's work is relatable, not just to designers but simple to many people.

Visual Puns Cont.

A visual pun is an image that holds two or more meanings and may portray a single message with varied levels, or several messages. in 1969 Dan Reisinger's ideally represented the effectiveness of the visual put with 'Let My People Go' which he has made memorable through the clear message which on top of that provokes a level of understanding and an emotional connection. It enters the viewers consciousness through various windows of understanding.

Within the field of design there are two 'toys' for the designers, one being type and the other image, and even the most systematic designs and solutions derive from a form of 'play' within visual  research. However, there are many very talented designers who are still unable to or lack the ability to transform a good verbal sense of humour into a visual one. The ones that work well are those that do not try and fit a previously tried and tested formulae, but those who invent new forms of visual humour.

There are some characteristics to humour within design that are common:

• an exaggerated or improper scale
• ironic relationships between different aspects of one design
• odd or unaccustomed juxtapositions

However, these are all traits that apply to what is called 'straight' design (not intended to be a pun or humorous design), but a big head on a small body isn't considered funny, which goes to show that humour in design cannot follow a set of rules, it has to be recreated and reinvented every time.

Stephen Heller, author of Design Humour: The Art Of Graphic Wit 2002 wrote that the visual pun "is as endemic to conceptual graphic design as the metaphor is to creative writing." Often visual puns will not be made obvious, particularly in logo design, because it makes the second or third meaning more illusive.

On of the most famous puns in a logo, FedEx logo designers managed to create an arrow between the uppercase 'E' and lowercase 'x' without changing it from the rest of the design.

This logo for Spartan Gold Club uses the exact same series of shapes, without altering position to make up two images that are still equally distinct: a golfer swinging his club, and a Spartan helmet. While this one is seemingly more obvious that the FedEx logo, it is easier to appreciate the impressive thought process that went into this design.

This Goodwill logo shows the smiling half face is the same shape as the G in the title.

More lesser known logo examples:

While most will argue that the pun is the lowest form of wit, Eli Kince,  in Visual Puns In Design 1982, argues that "the pun is the conveyor of credible visual messages" and it has been argued by Mashall McLuhan that "the pun is smarter, more devious, than it looks", which may be much more applicable to the visual pun than to the verbal one.

Kince goes further in claiming that visual puns fall into two categories, ones with "humorous effect" and ones with "analytical effect", meaning that not all puns are intended to be funny but to provoke a comparison between one idea and another, through creating a mental jolt of recognition.

Another more complex pun, recognised for the fusion of letters and image, is Herb Lubalin's Families, where the 'ili' in the words are transformed to be recognisable as mother, father and son (similar to his Mother & Child logo, in which the ampersand is positioned over the letter 'o', suggestive of a foetus in a womb).

These are examples of puns that appear simple but the thought that had to go into the designs to make them effective and recognisable and the skill that went into some of the typographic changes would have to have been very sharp.

Puns that are mainly pictorial can appear easier than typographic ones, but again it is difficult to assume this is the case with any aspect of graphic design. There are suggestive puns that are made by combining two or more unrelated references, sometimes used as more of a substitution for a reference, which allows int to convey several meanings. Other puns will capitalise on triggering some sort of recognition for the viewer, be it a fond memory or an emotion.

2004 Olympics poster by Milton Glaser