AlphaDesigner Blogue

I watched The Airships few days ago, an ABC documentary about the history of one of the most amusing flying machines. In a time when air planes weren’t as reliable as they are today, especially for civil flights, these monsters reigned the sky without competition. They were a rare sight, extremely expensive to produce, slow moving, kinda risky, and enchantingly surreal. I don’t know why but I always associated them with fairy tales. I have been fascinated with air planes as a child but it was more about technology rather than adventures. Something like the Mac/PC dilemma - you have a practical device vs an aesthetic one. Air planes won the battle of course, nothing can stand in the way of reason for a long time. There were other factors as well but the most important one was the huge price needed for building and maintaining these ships.

A reminder of the great Art Deco age, today they are used only for scientific needs or as advertisement platforms (what a joke!). But they still posses that magic for me, perfectly illustrating the dream of flying not as a speed race but as an endeavour of the mind. And the heart. As one person describes it in the documentary series:

…you just lean on the edge and it all unfolds in front of you. You can smell the air, you can feel the air, and you get a view of the countryside which is supreme.

Now how can I get on one of those things? Or should I just keep it as a dream. Dreams are always larger than life, aren’t they?

, originally uploaded by streunerin.

This is a photo by my dear friend Brigit who has a passion for polaroids. She has many other passions as well and her photo stream in Flickr always offers a surprising perspective on things that look common only at first sight. Not to mention her taste for symbols and the way they function.

So with this one she was able to strike a cord again. And as I was reading the comments there, one thought came through my mind - why is Mickey so famous. Honestly, I don’t remember seeing any cartoons with him, except in Art History class but that was obligatory when I was a student. And from all the people I know, almost no one seems to remember seeing the bugger on TV. Sure most of us have cards, shirts, key chains or whatever merchandise is available. But the real stuff, where’s the real stuff?

I’ll tell you where it is. Down the drain. Because from what I have seen, Mickey is the most boring animation character ever made. However that doesn’t seem to matter now when he’s the face of a huge, profitable industry. Hence you can find the bugger anywhere, although you just don’t know why. It literary dwarfs Paris Hilton in the “famous for the sake of being famous” chart.

All designers hate their clients, don’t they? This is something like an axiom in our profession. Of course it’s not true. If you hate all your clients, you should simply quit, design is not for you. It’s as simple as that. Many people make their first steps in this profession perceiving themselves as artists rather than true designers. While there’s a huge difference between creating for yourself and creating for other people. Your clients have demands and that’s the way it should be. Compared to what some people call free art, design is a compromise. The final product always reflects a balance between different expectations. When the compromise is disrupted, you end up with a crappy product, regardless of who’s to blame - the over-inflated ego of the designer or the stubbornness of the client.

Of course this explanation is rather long and doesn’t sound as bombastic as the first sentence, hence when we decide to have fun, we prefer the short form and we love to call our clients stupid and stubborn. And this short movie can give you a perfect (and of course funny) example how far we can go when some client finally manages to drive us mad. Because no matter how diplomatic and understanding we are, sometimes there are people whose demands are absolutely ridiculous. No kidding!