Volume 25–3.pdf

Spreads and a telephone from Graphics Handbook
People often skip introductions in books of this
kind, so this one is printed in a larger size of
type in the hope that it will not suffer such a
fate. I want to persuade you to read it before
you get into any particular section; otherwise
you may be puzzled by some of the things that
have been included. You may wonder, for
example what a description of the Universal
Decimal Classification system is doing in a
hook on graphics. And how did that stuff about
topological graphs get in? And whom is the
author kidding with his 'telephone as a tool for
the graphic designer'?
Everyone is the prisoner of his own
preconceptions and those concerning his own
abilities and working potential are frequently
the most constricting ones of all.
Why, at a time when communication systems
of all kinds are increasing in scope and
complexity, we should feel bound by any
narrow definition of the scope of graphic
design, I don't know. But we still are.
I remember the sense of outrage I felt when
a few years ago it was suggested to me by an
industrial psychologist that it would be
perfectly feasible for magazine and catalogue
layout to be executed by a properly instructed
computer. As I was engaged in the layout of a
periodical at the time, perhaps the outrage was
fairly understandable. His subsequent
proposition that the redundant graphic
designer would then be able to devote himself
to the really creative task of programming the
computer so that it could undertake such a
subtle and exacting task as the layout of a
periodical was just so much eyewash to me at
the time. But if you think about it, it doesn't seem
that crazy. Why should not the graphic desig ner
undergo some metamorphosis of this kind?
Only two things could stop the graphic
designer from growing up with the rest of the
technological world: a failure to familiarise
himself with the new areas of knowledge
springing up alongside his own; and an
inability to free himself from the strait-jacket
of his preconceptions about the kind of tasks
with which he expects to be confronted. So
everything is grist to his mill: now read on.
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12
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From its "oversize" designer, Ken
introduction to the Garland's Graphics
telephone as a tool Handbook was stark
for the graphic and pragmatic.
J