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Impeccable References

Posted by Clinton Duncan on 15th August 2010

Not long ago, a bit of a 'great leap forward (or backward)' happened in my design career. I started a reference folder. For some reason, I'd never had one before. I could see how it made sense - many designers have folders full of useful bits and pieces, from hi res images from old photoshoots, logo libraries, photoshop brushes, stock vectors (2 business man pointing, anyone?) or just bits and pieces that inspire them.

On more than a few occasions, whilst working with a designer on a project, I'd see them pull out the perfect photo, in hi res no less, that was needed for a mockup or concept "where'd that come from?" I'd ask, "oh just something in my reference folder". I also noticed that suddenly every freelance designer started showing up to the studio with a big fat external hard drive under their arm. "Why have you brought that?" I would ask, alarmed they might be making off with half my server - "oh it's just reference".

For some reason, despite mounting evidence that perhaps this might be a good idea, I ignored it. I stuck with my classic, good old method of finding inspiration: a blank pad and a library full of design books. Some of my happiest moments in design happened whilst chewing the end of a pencil, sitting on a bean bag (I believe they should be compulsory in all design studios, along with a tea lady named Bev, but that's another post). So why'd I suddenly decide to hop on the bandwagon? I'm still unsure, but now I'm on the bandwagon, I've decided I really don't like where it's going.

The internets have well and truly made it a lot easier to access stuff that get the creative juices flowing, things like Flickr, Ffffound, Tumblr, blogs - the list just goes on and on. Not only does the amount of material available dwarf even the most extensive and lovingly curated design library, it also trumps it on immediacy. I'm a keen consumer of blogs (something else I'll admit to being late to) and it's amazing to see how quickly Ffffound and a few of the 'image aggregator' blogs I subscribe to on RSS pile up with unread items almost instantly. 

Indeed, these bloggers, image book-markers and aggregators have become quite high profile, and this, I must admit, rather puzzles me. I have a respect for some editors and writers in the design press who construct an issue of a magazine with a theme, a context, and attempt to engage in thoughtful critique and review of the work in their pages. But online, the immediacy, and desire to 'feed the machine' means many just post whatever they can, as quickly as they can, as often as they can. It's rather interesting to look through one's Google Analytics, follow the referrer links back, and see just how many 'blogs' simply re-blog, word for word, without attribution, something from another blog. Does running a blog of this nature count as being creative?

I remember the first time I saw another designer present reference images as 'creative' to a client. I was shocked - it seemed like it was cheating, it was too easy or perhaps dishonest. Soon I was forced to get over my reservations when I started doing more branding work, and needed to use 'mood boards' - but I must admit, I absolutely loathe them. As time went on, I started to use the images from mood boards as 'placeholders' in my designs "oh I'm thinking something like that" as a way to have dense and complicated illustrations or graphics in my early concepts without having to waste the hours developing something that won't go ahead. 

These seem ok, but the problem I have, is when the references, become the ideas. I've seen it a number of times, print out a bunch of references - paste em up on the wall, gather the team for a 'catch-up' and start reverse engineering those graphics into ideas. "What's wrong with that?" I hear you ask "We won't just use them, we'll develop our own take on them, we won't blatantly plagiarise!"

A series of books I read in my Uni days informs a lot of my concern for this practise. In the Foundation series, Sci-Fi author Isaac Asimov created a distant future where humanity had spread to every corner of the galaxy. Almost everything that could be invented, had been, and tens of thousands of years ago at that. In vivid detail he described a planet entirely covered in one, massive city - at it's heart was an all powerful emperor who ruled all the trillions of people on the millions of planets. At this centre of great power, everyone lived in a mechanical world, and rarely saw sunshine. 

But there was a problem - things started to not work anymore and no one could be bothered, or worse still, no one knew how, to fix them. What Asimov had imagined, in an amazing feat of insight in a society, and genre, obsessed with technology, was an end to innovation and with it, a general malaise afflicts society. When you live in a society that has faster than speed of light space travel, teleportation, cures for every ailment or disease, and almost anything else, figured out, there's no incentive to create anything new, no need for innovation - the status quo is fine, thank you very much. The same happened to ancient Rome, and many thinkers and writers have been theorising the same long, slow decline is in motion for America. 

"There's no new ideas"
Every designer says it, almost every day, partly because it's true. But looking back to history, almost any point in history is full of people saying how amazingly advanced everything humanity has created is, and surely we're reaching a point of everything we need has been invented. Equally history is full of balmy hard men (and women) who decide it's a great idea to climb a mountain, sail across a sea, try to fly or see what happens when you mix a bit of this with a bit of that, and then set it on fire.

Has this malaise affected design? Have designers stopped trying to create new aesthetics and ideas in favour of the convenience and low risk of refencing whts been made before. Or is it the client's fault? I read a great quote somewhere recently, that clients "always ask for something completely new and original, and then 6 examples of where it's worked before".

Given the huge changes of the last decade, and it's effect on how designers work, I can foresee an end to progress as Asimov described. A sort of infinite feedback loop will be created. Designer is briefed, designer reference searches, designer creates solution having been heavily influenced by those references. That work is publicised and blogged. Somewhere else, another designer is briefed and jumps on their favourite design blog... 

Obviously we need to look at things to get inspired - whether we create something similar or dis-similar to that which inspires us is, as with almost everything in this crazy caper, is subjective and dependant on your talent, hard work and skills. What one person sees as being exactly the same, would be completely different to another observer. It's also incredibly important to educate ones self of the history of design - it's greatest hits, the super heros and the underlying principles we take for granted today, that were being formulated and discovered back in the day.

The hazards of a reference based approach was brought into sharp focus for me, half way through this article, when I happened on a retweet of 3DEEP Design's twitter feed. It seems the new identity and key graphic for the 2010 Melbourne festival was more than just a little bit similar to something from 3DEEP's previous work. Here's a link and make up your own mind as to what happened there - after making enquiries and getting a few different flavours of 'No comment' - I've certainly made up my mind...

There was a great quote from 8vo, a seminal 'Swiss approach' design company in the UK (8vo is the thinking man's SEA, Farrow or North, for those who aren't aware of them) - they had a mantra they shouted, literally, on a BBC documentary once "Erudition not Inspiration". They're point was that a great design solution is arrived at through careful consideration of the problem, research, and options, options, options. I'd like to update this saying for our modern internet enabled world - "Erudition not Imitation". 

Perhaps it's essential to have a reference folder, I have grudgingly come to admit. Perhaps it's necessary to use reference images during the design process, I get that. But the skill, the real trick - what's always been called 'the craft' - is to be able to see all that stuff out there, close your eyes, and see something else. Perhaps something not entirely unprecedented and new, but simply something that isn't a re-construction of the last 5 days of your internet browsing.

Trying to do something new, or original, is incredibly hard, and frustrating. It takes more time, tests your confidence and sure as heck isn't a smart way to make money in the competitive world of graphic design. But bugger me, what an awful world it would be if all the designers stopped trying to dream up new ways of doing the same old things - that's when designers become aggregators or visual DJ's, and not creators. And don't get me started on those DJ's...

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