Beyond Screens

CREATER/S/. Qiuwen Li

CATEGORIES. Experimental Design, Typographic Form, Web design

KEYWORDS. Typographic Elements, Form and Counter-form, Design for Play, Abstract and Applied Form, Multidimensional Space, Interaction Design, Systems Design, Grid System, Experience Design, Motion Graphics

ABSTRACT.

Beyond Screens, uses form, type, motion, and coding to enable the audience to see and play with typographic elements in both abstract and applied form by creating dynamic and interactive environments. To engage people in various ways, my work is designed as a system to be used across various media. Beyond Screens includes two components—four posters and a website. Rather than relying simply on 2D or 3D, it is a more complicated dimensional space; I am creating enjoyment for the audience beyond the screen, both digital and print, by inviting them into a multidimensional space. For the website, I created five pages based on rhythm; point, line, and play; form and counter-form; color words; and color in space. All the form in the poster design were inspired from the web design. As a designer, I understand the need for legibility, but I am more concerned with communicating something more visceral, expressive, and imaginative. Instead of drawing conclusions, Beyond Screens seeks a field of discovery, one that requires inquiry as opposed to conclusions.

Inspiration.

Portland-based visual artist Joshua Berger argues, “Language is anything that communicates information. Type is no longer merely the letters and punctuation marks that form words, sentences, and paragraphs, but the building blocks of meaning in whatever form that meaning arises”. I support this idea in the context of my work and I believe type can be an image, type can be a sound, and type can be a color. By researching and making work, I found the relationship between type and color. The same ways are used for me to find the relationships for other topics. ““Code” looks at the innovative ways designers, tired of using the computer as a tool with applications that are analogous to conventional media, are becoming creative programmers, unleashing the computer’s processing powers to discover new worlds of extreme beauty”. Sound artist, designer and electronic musician Yuri Suzuki once said: “Good design don’t need to do anything. Users immediately understand it”.

In interactive design, function should serve content. I think good interaction design is transparent; in other words, people will be able to figure out how to use and play with your work without costing a lot of time and effort. Instead of writing code to create some appealing visual effect or making software, I am more concerned with making experiences, like we use visual effects and make software so that in the end it turns into an experience, and it is the experience that actually matters, which is the thing I am focused on for this project.

In Beyond Screens, I used the grid system and background slide effect shows to make all pages consistent and wrote code for each page to add playful and simple interactive effects. By using simple interactive effects, like hovering, scrolling page, and mouse click, I want people to enjoy the experience and play with typographic form in the work Beyond Screens.

Beyond Screens will be displayed in the gallery, but it is accessible to everyone who can spend time in front of a computer to play with it. Like Rafaël Rozendaal, who projected his work in the public space, for my future studio practice, I would like to work in both gallery settings and also in public space.

How “fun” design can be

Rafaël Rozendaal, a web artist who uses the Internet as a canvas for his works, has had a huge impact on the way that I think about how “fun” design can be. In his art pieces, simple shapes in striking colors move, twist, and bend continuously in ways that are never the same. Unlike other types of art, a painting or sculpture, Rafaël Rozendaal’s works exist online for everyone to enjoy. For instance, in the piece Into Time, people can sit back and watch a fluorescent snake-shape bounce around the walls of their computers. If they want to change the colors, they can simply click. Rafaël Rozendaal makes works in a way that looks simple, but is unbelievably pleasurable for people to interact with, and I believe that is what computers were made for.

My thesis work, Beyond Screens, uses a web and projector as canvas to enable people to interact with typographic forms in a way that is playful simplicity and meaningful complexity. The project is an extended piece from the typographic book I made inspired by designer Emil Ruder. Instead of teaching foundational typographic principles, in Beyond Screens, I am more interested in using coding to produce an interactive experience for viewers to play with. Playfulness is the key word for this project. Play is how we learn, how we grow, and how we are inspired.

Modern graphic designer Paul Rand once said, “There can be design without play, but that’s design without ideas. I use the term ‘play,’ but I mean coping with the problems of form and content, weighing relationships, establishing priorities. Every problem of form and content is different, which dictates that the rules of the game are different, too”5. As a designer, I want to design systems which evoke play, are easy for people to play, and are easy to explore and experiment with.

During the process, I first started with deciding the topics I want to work with. For the experimental web design, I purposefully chose seven topics related to the exercise and experiments I did for the book typography. They are form and counter-form; point, line, surface; color; rhythm; shades of black; type and form; and geometry. After that I started to select writing, which is also the content I need for the web design and motion graphics. I selected those from the book I did. Some are my own writings; for example, in the section of rhythm, I wrote: “Typography involves the very technical and complex process what makes it visually unique. Line up letters to form a word, a line, a form or counter-form area all offer further opportunity for introducing the concept of rhythm. Good typesetting just as music consists of something more than choosing notes. Rhythm, in particular, enables a sequence of notes to beat with musical life; tempo sustains their wit. It is much the same for the world of typography” Other writings are thoughts inspired by other designer. For instance, in the section point, line, and surface, the content is inspired from Emil Ruder’s thought “Dot at first, then the dot begins to move and give rise to a line. A row of characters produces an optical line. The individual type faces join together to evoke an imaginary line.” During the process, I also researched ways people interact with typographic form through different media from physical to screens. For instance, Josef Bauer makes type form as three-dimensional objects that are set in relation to human bodies that people can reach out and touch, and the project Type Reinvented from art studio FIELD. The next step I did is research ways to communicate the seven ideas I chose by using typographic form. “Designers cannot completely evade the issue of form. It makes no sense to talk of graphic design that is purely conceptual: graphic ideas are visual ideas–ideas about word and image–and form is a vital element in their execution”.