Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Careful! I too am frisky.

The Full English Project by editorial designer Sharon Spencer
(A rant)

I could be way off here, but does anyone else—when reading the Visual Research text—find him/her self saying “who the hell cares?” I feel like these people [namely Sharon Spencer] are the food critics of the design world—pretentious and arrogant about things/ideas that really don’t make any difference. I apologize to anyone who loves this case study but I can barely stand to think about it—I’m getting more and more irritated as I read.

So, you’re going to place all these symbols next to each other, stack rows upon rows, and then assign them meanings like, “this is the row that reflects the widespread increase in fast food take away culture?” Sweet. I can also place multiple pictures on top of one another, assign them meanings and then make up a concept that pretends to tie everything together. So what? Information architecture is one thing, but when the information is pointless is it really doing anyone any good? Good personal project maybe, but not a design technique I want to praise and/or dissect. Why should I care?

Phew.

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