Week 4 Reading

Wonders Revealed: Design and Faux Science

.001 Real Science
Science influences everything we live in. It is pervasive and it has now used by graphic designers as a way to earn credibility due to lack of validation in graphic design itself. There are little attention paid to the scientific side of visual communication.

.002 Faux science
Images such as genetic DNA are being used as branding schemes. Enzymes, molecules, atom structure appear on packages to sell products.


- Science is a graphic placebo
- Lab Chic
- No substance, weightlessness

- science is the most essential phenomena of the mod age

- hygienic and objective, rational and finite, grounded in numerical certainclarit, physical density, gravitational pull

- new look and feel for GD

- easy to iminitate – fsystematic language of documentation, methodical alignment.

- Safe, counterfeit

False Authority
- Information design: instant credibility.
- Numbers, bullets, charts, graph
- We buy into the form unquestioningly
- Ahistorical
- Extreme modernism: form masquerading as content.

Panceas

Morphology – form and structure of organism with no consideration in function
- no true function
- celebrating form at the expense of content

Documenting
- too busy documenting

Cataloguing
- science analyze, design amass
- close cropping is artifice
- scientists migrate from observation to analysis to discovery
- designers make wordless books with pictures

The New Vernacular
- Design beyond reach