A fun exercise  to try when you’ve run out of design solutions: set Futura Heavy Oblique knockout on bright red – maybe Pantone Red 032. Then take said layout and share it with a colleague, casually asking, “Does this design resemble anything you recognize?”

Design students are fairly educated today, but there was a time when some of us spent our nights in studio, cutting letters, and an occasional finger, with X-Acto blades. The result being, Art History 101 didn’t serve as well as a source for design inspiration as it served a practical time for sleep. In response to Futura Heavy Oblique resembling anything, very few could answer with the correct response, which is, “oh yeah, that looks just like a piece by the Barbara Kruger. Your layout is a complete knockoff of the artist who referenced advertising and leveraged design to make bold, graphic statements about feminism, struggle, and power in the 80’s. Didn’t you go to art school?” That’s the response you should be looking for, of course. 

Instead, you might get a response like, “it kind of looks like that ‘Obey’ guy, what’s his name?” To which, its actually appropriate to lose your mind. Calmly explain, oh, you mean Shepard Fairey? I love his reference to 1920’s Russian Constructivist movement, though I tend to view his work more from a purely illustrative standpoint than with any deeper design motivation. The Russians really had a great handle on typography, didn’t they? By the way, did you notice that knockout type on the bold red background? Maybe don’t be quite so snooty.

Perhaps bring the conversation full circle with brief explanation of post-modernism and use of Appropriation in art. It’s okay to copy, even steal, from artists. But know who you are stealing from, so that you can reference them in conversation. At the very least, always acknowledge Barbara Kruger if you are going to set Future Heavy Oblique knockout on a bar of red. Having launched a sophisticated discussion and debate about design and history, consider the exercise a success. 

I hardly knew anything about graphic design, or its history, as an art student in the college of Visual and Performing Arts. As part of my work-study program, I was getting paid $5 an hour to assist students load Microfilm and Microfiche machines in the basement of Byrd Library. The “computer consultant,” who sat on the other side of the desk from me, helped visitors copy photos on the flatbed scanner and import them into a program called, “Photoshop.” She made $7.50 an hour. 

I wrote an essay about Nike in high school, so I suppose I knew what a logo was. I was also once asked to develop a “graphic” for a T-Shirt that would include type on it. That vague understanding of how design works, plus the allure of a sweet $7.50 an hour salary, lead me to declare “Communications Design,” as a major my Sophomore year. But, to tell you the truth, I still couldn’t name one professional designer if my life depended on it. 

So you can imagine the horror I faced, when, on my first day of Intro to Communications Design I (CMD 251), our professor, @wonderingthealphabet, played a bit of an ice-breaker with the class: let’s go around the room, introduce yourself and name your favorite graphic designer.

I drew a complete blank.

Luckily, the library was right next door the Schine Student center, where I had just picked up my stack of required  textbooks the week before. Among them, “The Elements of Typographic Style,” by Robert Bringhurst, “Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works,” by the genius, Erik Spiekermann, and “The History of Graphic Design,” by the saint, Phillip Meggs. I had thumbed through all of them because, to tell you the truth, students weren’t exactly clamoring to scan Microfilm.

As we went around the room, my classmates confidently claimed their design heroes. I was nervous, perhaps a little sweaty. Who declares a major they hardly know anything about? Think, John, think!

“Josef... Müller... Brockmann? Yeah, Josef Müller-Brockmann.” That’s what I said. 

My professor said he respected that response, made some remark about the grid and his education in the International Typographic Style, and the class moved along. Josef Müller-Brockmann saved me from embarrassment. To this day, I have no idea how a hyphenated name, complete with umlaut, popped into my head.

After class, I rode my skateboard back to my apartment, looked up the Swiss Style in my textbooks, and vowed to learn more about the history of graphic design.