ToW #25 - Visual Text by EPIC.MEDIA: "Minimalist effect in the maximalist market"

A designer's take on the progression of brand name products towards minimalist packaging design.

Reading Goal: Find and analyze a visual text that lacks a specific claim.
Writing Goal: Develop a purpose for the text based on my perception of it.

    When it comes to aesthetics, people of all cultures tend to appreciate the succinct and simple over the cluttered and complex. However, when the need comes to disseminate information for whatever purpose arises, complex design holds its educational property over simple design's aesthetic appeal. Thus, a compromise must be made; a creative mind has to balance descriptive complexity and beautiful simplicity. This dichotomous truth is applied to the art of product packaging design by Pawel Kozera in his blog post "Minimalist effect in the maximalist market". Kozera, a web designer, illustrator, and musician, tries "to find alternate simple versions for some package samples of the international brands" in this collection of comparison shots of actual product packages and his progressively simple designs. Seeming to have done this exercise for nobody but himself, Kozera leaves no implication to help us understand his work. Still, it proves a powerful point thanks to its layout and professional execution: popular products no longer need to have packaging as complex as it is; these brand names are so ingrained in our minds that they need no advertisement more than what a wartime package of rations gets: HAM SANDWICH or PEANUTS.

    As Kozera designed these re-imaginings of international franchise packaging, it was surely a conscious decision of his to show the progression of design from complex to simple. The effect of this, however accidental, is that a logical scenario comes to mind in which a corporation may undergo major simplification of branding. Kozera's work reveals that, while a brand may need complex, cluttered, and informational packaging initially in order to effectively describe its product, it no longer needs that clutter as it becomes more and more famous. Thus, once a brand is so well-known and ubiquitous that it needs no descriptive graphics, it may enter the realm of simplicity, one of raw information and minimalist aesthetic. At this point, the brand has a name equivalent to a fruit or vegetable; COKE is a word used as MILK or WINE is, and sales boost further as the product connotation transitions into staple connotation.

    The beauty of this visual text is that it seems unconscious of this lesson; for all we know, Kozera simply wanted some design practice with his favorite supermarket brands. Nevertheless, he provides convincing evidence for an important dichotomy: when information is required, complexity is required; when information is assumed, simplicity is desired. We, as humans, desire escape from the inefficiencies of overstimulus; a simple, single word is often all we need to make our choice.

ToW Source

IRB #4 Introduction: The Last Lecture

        Thanks to this amazingly fast-seeming school year, I was startled to find that I had a fourth independent reading book to choose for my fourth and final semester as a high school Junior. Luckily, amidst my semi-scramble to dig up a suitable IRB, I've found a nugget of gold: The Last Lecture, co-authored by Randy Pausch. A former Carnegie Mellon professor of computer science, Pausch was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2006. Knowing that he had only months of good health left, Pausch took it upon himself to give his "Last Lecture", the ultimate summation of the wisdoms that his life had taught him.
        This book expands on Pausch's speech, going into great depths in order to convey what Pausch felt were the major lessons of his life. In it, I expect to find a collection of stories followed by important messages to take to heart from each. I hope to learn from The Last Lecture not just the concluding ideas of a great person, but some insight into what it is like to be at the forefront of computer science. Pausch himself pioneered a program that we spent a few weeks learning from in my Advanced Computer Science class. I simply wish to see what a man whom I respect without knowing had to say about life.

ToW #24 - IRB by Ernest Hemingway: "A Moveable Feast"

    Reading A Moveable Feast has gone off without a hitch; the smoothness and consistency with which I can read Hemingway's prose is a testament to the skill put into writing it. I find that I never have to reread a paragraph, a sentence, or even a word when reading Hemingway -- he recounts only what he observes and describes it all in effective layman's terms. As the natural ebb and flow of the writing brought me into the second half of A Moveable Feast, I noticed that the chapter subjects moved away from Hemingway's time spent alone -- writing, eating, and thinking -- to his time spent with others -- in cafes, meeting contemporaries, and drinking with friends. This outward progression changes the tone of A Moveable Feast from the secluded turmoils and happinesses of Hemingway's mind to the populated turmoils and happinesses that Hemingway shares with his fellow Parisians.
    The wealth of social interactions that Hemingway suddenly has does not seem to change his overly pragmatic outlook (seen in the first half, for example, when he uses his poverty-caused hunger to help him focus on his writing) -- his time spent with others only proves his complete lack of romantic thinking. At one point, after accidentally insulting a suicidal drug addict, poet Ralph Cheever Dunning, and getting hit by a pegged milk bottle, Hemingway's only remark was "For a poet he threw a very accurate milk bottle." There was no outwardly expressed worry for the man's well-being or appreciation of the oddity of the situation. He seems so scarred from his time in World War I (after all, he did have to clean up corpses and then was nearly killed by a mortar blast) that he could not think about anything other than stark reality. This frame of mind, in truth, may connect to Hemingway's eventual suicide forty years later. Seven years before his suicide, he was nearly killed again by two successive plane crashes -- burn wounds and damaging concussions. Unequipped with the wishful thinking that most of us have to relax our worries, his slightly controlled alcoholism developed into heavy dependence. Equipped with liver disease, high blood pressure, failing eyesight, and chronic confusion and pain, he lived out the rest of his life bedridden. It seems that, when faced with the reality of everyday pain and low-quality living, it was Ernest Hemingway's lack of romantic thinking that took his life.

This ToW's writing goal: To make up for the romantics that Hemingway lost.