Snooch vs. Massimo Vignelli, just kidding --

Sitting here in a room full of undergraduate designers, dreaming of ways to reinvent the aesthetic value of all "Exit" signs or the future of the Syracuse mascot as we know it -- I am excited for Vignelli to prove all the young thinkers of Syracuse wrong. Haha. Yes, I laugh at you.

Vignelli's "Design is One" lecture was interesting. The first thing Massimo did was awesome. He drank his Pepsi, or some form of drink in a Pepsi cup. This was awesome, and made me giggle. Vignelli continues to discuss his view of design.

"I see graphic design as the organization of information that is semantically correct, syntactically, consistent, and pragmatically understandable. I like it to be visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all timeless", says the power-point presentation at the beginning of the lecture above Vignelli.

One of the things that worked with his lecture and our class -- is this notion of design being 'timeless'. Just like web design, for a website to be applicable and maintainable, it must be timeless in design, simple and usable. Vignello hits the nail on the head, when he talks about consistent and understandable design, because I think it should be applied to all design theories, especially for the web.

Early in his career --designing was like creating a language to Vignelli -- you never know what it will be in the beginning or how it will end. He liked using things like silver and glass in his earliest designs: lamps, vases, water vases, etc. In the 60's, his image began to change to type and writing: which is another important aspect of web design. Vignelli thought that type and different type-faces -- was an incredibly creative and special part of design -- all the way from pamphlet covers, to the program of a play. Space and the response of the reader/viewer, are ideals to good design.

Just like web design, spacing, type and the response of the viewer/browser, will reflect how good the design is of that website via the navigation, colors, control and spacing. The design for the Subways of NY really impressed me. He didn't talk about it a lot, but he was also difficult to understand -- so maybe I missed something. "Great type-face, what more to do you want?" Vignelli says kind of in a way, laughing, as he referred to his design of American Airlines logo. I may have got this quote incorrect -- but I wanted to talk about American Airlines, becuase Vignelli makes a good point saying that some design is so simple, and sits well with a choice of a great font-type or color, and size.

"Luck is a great thing. You have to be lucky," says Vignelli, as he started designing the logo for Bloomingdale's. One of the best design choices of his lecture was his choice to use glossy style boxes for the packaging, and the simple design for the name.

Overall, I really liked the lecture -- in that I realized that a world-renown designer like Massimo Vignelli isn't much different than you or I in his thinking. He worked with simple aspects of design like light, color, texture and size. Ideally, all of his values for design can and should be applied to web design.

And as a final note to Vignelli's lecture -- Here are some words of wisdom from one of the greatest designers of the 20th century: "Can I take this out of my pants?", responds Vignelli, as he was asked to change microphones during his lecture.

Until Next time--