Keeping up to date with reading

I have been addressing the essential reading list and have recently covered  "What is Graphic Design" Newark, Quentin. Notes on reflection on this are contained in studio notebook 1. One major point of note is that the underlying premise of the book relates back to the quotes by Dwiggins "Super Printing"  and Meynall  and the debate of "Artist or Artisan" from "Loooking Closer" The idea of the designer "finding a position".  There are considerations of Art over Design - Art being implicit, Design being explicit. In terms of design evolution the book relates early 20th century design as a "mechanism that would tranform society and help to build a utopia". Industrialisation was seen as a context for this. With regard to "Visual Communication" Jaques Derrida, a french philosopher and fellow theorists root their thinking in "structuralism" - "all language communication (graphic design) is a system of relationships between signs (semiotics) and each individual sign only has a meaning because of its relationship to other signs - word/pictures/symbols etc" I found that this linked to the idea of Bias and Context discussed in recent seminar with John Hammersley. Contexts in which design is made - the self - what is self expression? The idea that we all take our influences and bring them together to create our own design.

Other books which I am already familiar with through my own work (education) include "A Smile in the Mind" and " The Art of Looking Sideways" My current reading from the esssintial list is "Visible Signs" - more on this later.