There are rules to design. And as in everything, the more you understand the rules, the more equipped you are to break them.

- Lex

The impractical aspects of design are largely subjective. The practical aspects are not. And what is practical and impractical is also subjective, especially if the brief is quite open. If your professor just doesn’t like your fonts on arbitrary aesthetics grounds then use the fonts you like. But if you have picked fonts that fail to meet the project brief, or that keep the design from functioning as it should, pick new ones. Make sure to ask your professors why they aren’t crazy about your designs—you’ll learn more that way, and so will they.

I can see it both ways. My initial thought is that taste is subjective, we all like or dislike different things. Design itself is less subjective because a piece either accomplishes what it's meant to accomplish or it doesn't (with varying levels of success, granted).

There are pieces that I may not like or might not be similar to my personal style, but if they communicate their message well I can agree that they're well-executed. It sounds like your professor's comment was similar, he thought your piece was innovative but didn't particularly like it.

Of course there are certain rules which make a design that will always have some degree of aesthetics, think of the golden ratio, using only red and black as printing colors for typography or things like contrast types (color or shapes) They will always give you an image, if correctly used, that will be pleasing to the eye.

But mostly, these rules are there to be broken, to make more visually appetizing designs. Those rules have been in use for a long time and give us visual clues on what to expect since we've seen them so much around. But in the end the main point the design will have to convey is information or a message, which in the end is what graphic design is all about, and that's how such assignments (at least in my opinion) should be rated.

So design isn't really subjective, it's all down to the message you want to get across. If you think your instructor is letting himself be led by own opinions and not the briefing, it's best to analyze why he would find it that way (or better just ask him) Myself, of course depending on the brief, wouldn't let conventions or strict uses of a type hinder me with creating a design, but of course I don't know how strict the assignments are.

Remember, your own design always makes perfect sense while a different person can sometimes just not understand it, or find it pleasing.

Out of curiosity, which three typefaces did you use? Which one was the one that was critiqued?

Rules? What rules? There are some ‘rules’, of course, which matter, because they are based on the common ground of the experience of what works best — based, again, on the common ground of the properties of the human eye/neurology/perception, etc. They are invaluable. Beyond that, there are no ‘rules’.

Second the points James has alluded to.

It really depends on information you haven't given us.

This won't be the last time as a designer that your pride and excitement in your own work is not shared by another.
 
 
Paul Ducco
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Design Melbourne

Thanks for all the feedback you guys. Here's the actual layout.
I hope this helps answer my question better.

yes, yes it is, subjective, that is

I'll refrain from going into a personal opinion about design, kerning and typography but will go down another avenue, which is Arial.

Readability and all aside, does this poster convey what Arial is about ? [A cheap rip off with awful glyph finishing and details.. er.. sorry]

Now, you can of course place it in any timeframe, but I'd place Arial where it originates, which isn't the slick y2k era but early computing. Also, the C in 'thic' and R in 'arial' aside, there aren't many 'blow-ups' on what defines the font, the g and o glyphs in arial aren't that characteristic [while the capital G for instance is on the other hand]

I think the main issue with your design [for me at least that is] is that, especially when it's meant as some form of typespecimen it doesn't really bring the message of what kind of font Arial is, and perhaps that's what your teach was after as well.

Although I must add something else, Arial is heavily used on the web, and will always pop up in designs since everyone has it on his computer. Perhaps if you had shown just a digital version with some changes, exaggerating the idea that 'everyone' has Arial, you could have come up with a pretty solid specimen, showing Arial use and what it stands for/is used for (nowadays)

Hope I din't get too lost in opinions, but reading from your original post it sortof looked to me as an assignment to deepen out the uses of various fonts and how to visualize them. English isn't my best language when talking about this stuff so I hope it comes across sortof okay.

I understand everything you said, but the assignment was to emphasize the typeface family, in this case gothic/sans serif, rather than the font itself. He didn't even read the content of the copy, just wanted us to practice formatting it. I did some research and found that a lot of these types of fonts emerged during the Art Deco movement, which served as inspiration for my design.

I like the dynamism of your layout, it has a lot of promise, but it must be said that the rivers, hyphens, column spacing, kerning - pretty much all the factors governing the rational use of legible/readable body copy in those two columns look as though they weren't even considered.

I look at projects I've done in the past and I shake my head. I think this will be one of those projects for you, and there's nothing wrong with that. When you finish school, remember to revisit this piece.

Design is subjective, but using a tool like typography to its best advantage shouldn't be. People build creative things with hammers and nails, but they don't swing the hammer in a figure-eight when they do it... if that analogy makes any sense.

I remember when I did a similar project, we were encouraged to highlight features of the type and lay them out as if they were features of an automotive advert... There's no allusion to what the face is intended for...

I hope this is helpful feedback. :/

It is very helpful, thanks a lot :]

As stated, there are objective and subjective aspects of it all.

I think the issue you ran into is good vs. bad critiquing. Critiquing is a skill/art form in and of itself with both objective and subjective aspects.

Subjective or not, there is still such a thing as bad taste. ;)

I will give you credit, you somehow made Arial look better than I thought it could look. I would have chosen a different typeface to highlight the Gothic sans serif family of typefaces. That said, having been a student I know that students don't always have access to a wide variety of fonts. As oranginas pointed out there isn't much that's remarkable about Arial. It's pretty much a cheap knockoff of Helvetica and Franklin Gothic because Microsoft didn't want to pay licensing (that's the story I've heard at least).

You're going to run into a lot of subjectivity in design. When I was in school my advisor and I had vastly different ideas about design. He is very old-school, influenced heavily by the Swiss aesthetic whereas my heroes are designers like Paula Sher, David Carson and Miles Reid. None of whom can in any way be linked to the Swiss aesthetic. Aesthetic is aesthetic and it's purely subjective. Some people prefer structure and minimalism and I prefer to see designs that break rules. In order to break those rules though, we need to learn the rules, and we need to learn what can or cannot be broken.

Anyway, good luck in school. It's very important that you don't take criticism personally, even if someone is trying to make it a personal thing. They're probably making it personal because we are all human and we all react to design in personal ways.

In order to break those rules though, we need to learn the rules, and we need to learn what can or cannot be broken.

What we really need to learn is that most of those rules are entirely subjective to begin with. The legacy of modernism expressed by design pedants and pundits of the USA and Europe would love us to believe that there are all these universal rules and principles that must be learned and manipulated. But a good afternoon spent studying design untouched by modernism reveals that it’s all just a matter of taste, and tastes change with the wind.

Very good points, James.

I think the only rule that can't be broken is that a successful design must tell a story. That story can be as simple or complicated as the designer wants to be but in order to be design, instead of fine art, a piece has to communicate.

Tastes change with the wind, but legibility lasts forever.

James

The legacy of modernism expressed by design pedants and pundits of the USA and Europe would love us to believe that there are all these universal rules and principles that must be learned and manipulated.

For me, modernism is the most poignant idea. I return to it time and time again to measure the ideals against the realities. The term is misleading because is at once a philosophy (perpetual) and a movement (partially eclipsed). It is a misconception that modernism is a rule, given that it's origin is dynamic departure, and that the modernist movement encapsulates a broad spectrum of political ideas from socialism to fascism, disparate and united all at once. The search for empirical truths is one emergent aspect of modernism, but by no means definitive as suggested.

But a good afternoon spent studying design untouched by modernism reveals that it’s all just a matter of taste, and tastes change with the wind.

I think it is also important to note that the protagonists of the modernist movement took many cues from outside their own culture and time, Josef and Anni Albers looked to indigenous South American culture, Gaugin worked toward primitivism etc. In that sense modernism is touched by the things one might consider untouched by modernism. These influences have been taken up inside of it, as an influence, something to react to, something to learn from, some forgotten value – eclipsed by religious art, illusionism and the weight of European culture – reinstated.

This is what a college assignment should challenge, embrace, assault, imbue.

There was already some sensible advice so I thought I would add some extra curricular component.

So my question is, are typography and design subjective or are the universal rules and boundaries that must be adhered to in order to be successful?

Yes.

but in order to be design, instead of fine art, a piece has to communicate.

This the main design 'rule' that I go by. I went to a tech collage, so was taught more about the technical process of designing without a lot of theory (which I'm catching up on now), but for me, the main thing I've come to learn about design over the last 10 years is that it's about relationships, as is any artistic work (type, painting, music). Although this isn't a 'rule', I definitely feel that by understanding the relationship of elements on a page, you are better able to convey what you want, which ideally, is communicating the message behind the design.

Design is subjective only when the "aim" is lost to the viewer or from the designer when creating it. When you watch a film you take in something through your own world view. However when you see the making of the same film and understand the "aim" of the director, you will better understand the work to see it through the director's eyes, their personality, their world view.

So rather than asking is design subjective, remember that design is intention.
A few questions arise from this:

- Did your work truly communicate what was intended?
- Did your work come out based on the limitations of your own style?
- Or you designed for the problem at hand instead?
- If the receiver doesn't think so, then why?
- Did their justification help you understand what you missed?
- Does the receiver understand what you communicate? Why or why not?
- If you had more time, more skill, more budget, would you have done it the same way? That is to say, did you execute this in the best way possible for the problem at hand.

i think the word design depends on who you are selling to. If its for a drum n bass poster or if its for a catalogoue. The main aim is design something which appeals to your market.