IMHO, what Glaser is saying is that, like microwave has affected our cooking (too many under forty today can not cook a decent meal if their life dependet on it), computer has – like microwave, by lowering the standard – eaten away the classic knowledge and craft of typographic design.

So, perhaps you should just do a really poor job in 120 seconds. :·)

A computer is just a tool. Giving someone a pencil and paper doesn't make them a brilliant artist.

Nick Cooke

I think he's referring to how old food gets caked in on both of them. Spaghetti sauce all over the microwave and way too many office lunches in the keyboard of the computer.

Or perhaps "if you put something bad in it, it will explode".

What about the tactile? Seems microwave cooking is a sort of hands-off, no mess, no fuss way of cooking--sort of like the difference between kneading dough by hand and using an electric mixer instead. I don't think that the difference is as extreme between pencil and paper vs. computer, but there is still a tactile difference.
The computer is a tool, but it's a different kind of tool, there seems more distance between the hand and the letterform.

*snip*

I'd start with another quote.

Ol' Milton has never gotten over the influence of the computer on the design business. Every lecture he gives, he sounds crankier and crankier, always crapping on digital tools. He had his time, I think his time has passed.

I don't think he understand cooking or computers.

Can the microwave be used as a design tool? Hmm...

@matterst: You are not going to do this design project with a computer, are you?

>...by the great Milton Glaser ’Computers are to design as microwaves are to cooking’

I've never used a microwave for cooking, so I guess Mr. Glaser and I are even.

Cheers!

> Can the microwave be used as a design tool?

Sure. There are enough splatters in mine that I should be able to build an alphabet.

:)

MG designed this c.1963.
Spec'd the type, did the layout (the guitars are not really cropped off), chose the colours, art directed the shoot, and did the writing on the wall, no doubt.

Is this specifically "analog"?

If art direction and design worked now the way it did back then, we wouldn't use computers ourselves. Someone else would do it for us. Somewhere along the way, we all ended up being equipment operators. Not everybody likes this arrangement. (I do.)

> Computers are to design as microwaves are to cooking...

"At the times he made that comment, Glaser had valid point. With the introduction of digital technology, much of the graphic design being created was essentially a reheated, re-served version of what had been made earlier, using traditional methods......."

and the rest: Digital illustration by Lawrence Zeegen (p.66).

> Computers are to design as microwaves are to cooking...

He has a point. Both computers and microwaves are based on technology recovered from the Roswell crash site.

I think what Milton Glaser meant to say is that "DAFONT is to design as microwaves are to cooking."

> we all ended up being equipment operators. Not everybody likes this arrangement

Generally the ones who don't know how to use the computer.

I can't imagine going back to a design process where you specified type one day, got it the next, found it too big/small/wrong looking, spec'd a replacement, got that the next day, etc.

I miss wax machines

(No, not really)

You should ask Milton Glaser how he feels about that quote today. Like Licko’s “People read best what they read most,” the phrase has become one of those notorious moments in design punditry that was rehashed out of context until it took on a new meaning. It’s no longer relevant because Milton Glaser said it. It’s relevant because people resort to quotes when they want to be dismissive but can’t or won’t come up with a good argument.

Right.
Never mind the artspeak BS, typographic interpretation of a celebrity quote is pure kitsch.
It's like program music.

Design is not fundamentally expressive, and your teacher is leading you up the garden path.

I'm surprised this thread went on this long without someone noting that not only are computers bad for type design, but so is the pantograph. Fonts should be designed by punch-cutting!

That battle, though, I think, has been lost. The general public, whatever one might think of its standards of taste, is much too used to the slickness of today's typefaces to accept the results of punch-cutting by hand. They will accept that Aldus' Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii was an improvement on what came before, but even while acknowledging its beauty, they will still resolutely prefer, say, Times Roman for normal use.

That being said, though, it does seem to me that computer type design is in its infancy. I would prefer to draw letters on paper, and then measure them, and locate reference points in the letters I create by number, at least in some cases, than try to design a font by drawing directly on the computer screen with a mouse. And the fact that all the major outline font standards restrict one to using only spline curves rather than (at least for classic Roman fonts) being able to explicitly demand a conic section (never mind Melior, based on Piet Hein's superellipse) is a problem as well.

That's all very interesting, but I take it you're not a type designer.

MIlton Glaser has very generously just designed our 4th birthday poster for us.
http://truthdesign.typepad.com/truth_design/

You may find it interesting as it is very much DIGITAL in both its appearance and construction!

Can I just say anyone who say’s the computer is bad for design is using it incorrectly.
That is like saying Art got worse after they invented the pencil.
It’s just a tool that helps to facilitate creativity, it is one option to express and explore ideas and produce artwork, not the only option.
The problem is to many people rely on it as their only medium of communicating and visualising their ideas and don’t explore other craft based mediums. It is not the computers fault!

it is very much DIGITAL in both its appearance and construction!

So, he heated up a frozen pizza for ya.

Milton Glaser is a great designer; this does not mean that he is also a great philosopher. Frankly, I do not miss the days when "UNDO" meant trashing a project and starting all over from the beginning...

The problem is to many people rely on it as their only medium of communicating and visualising their ideas and don’t explore other craft based mediums.

Would you say the same thing about pre-computer designers who used drawing as their only means of communicating?

Not sure what you mean by the pizza comment Nick?
Please explain!

@James - Prior to computers james drawing was NOT the only form of communication. I was referring to the use of other design crafts for mark making like typography in it’s various analogue forms like letterpress, metal, paste up, their was also photography, painting, montage, to name a few.

I admit I am as guilty as anyone of relying on my mac as my only tool, but I love it, it’s my 3rd arm!

Darren, If MG thinks computer design is like microwave cooking, and he's done a computer design for you, he's cooked you a microwave meal. How does the food from a pouch taste?

Tastes great Nick!
Gordon Ramsey watch out I say!!

>You should ask Milton Glaser how he feels about that quote today.

and... how he feels about using computers to design things for people to view on their computers, like .e.g web sites. ;)

Cheers!

Computers are to design as shovels are to ditch digging.