PATH FINDER

One Designer’s Journey Away From the Screen

Intro-duc-tion

I N S I D E C O V E R : Overlayed comparison of street maps from Portland, Oregon (magenta) and Berlin, Germany (blue). Notice Portland’s strict grid structure and Berlin’s chaos.

I was looking for an internship for the summer of 2011, and I ended up getting hired to design a website for a study abroad program through the University of Southern Mississippi. A few short weeks after hearing about the project, I was on an overnight flight from Detroit to London where I stayed for a week before traveling up to York, down to Normandy, over to Paris, Berlin, and back to a small town in France called Pontlevoy.

During my three week trip, I spent a lot of time away from my computer, in the midst of foreign countries, often by myself, armed with little more than my camera. I thought I was getting away from graphic design. Taking a break. Instead, I found myself thinking about my new experiences in ways that often had a lot to do with graphic design. This book attempts to explore some of these ideas and observations.

Watch where you walk

In the United States, especially western cities established more recently, cities are often set up in geometric modular grids. For example, I had a three month internship during the summer of 2010 in Portland, Oregon and the system was simple: one street north/south and another east/west, which created order and predictability. This is essentially a template. However, European cities developed over centuries, paving new roads on top of the old ones. Instead of determining a grid and then building up a city, the grid devel-oped naturally, according to the needs of the people and expanding only as the population increased. While it seems like a city without a strict grid would lack organization, these cities possess strong focal points and dominant axes (streets, rivers, etc) that act as important land-marks and hold the whole system together. This tension makes for more interesting compositions than a standard uniform grid. A grid determined by the content? There’s an idea designers can get behind.

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Words are nec-es-sary for commu-nication

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I left for Europe without speaking any French or German, outside of “Hello,” and “Thank you.” In hindsight, I should have also learned the phrase,

“Do you speak English?” However, I learned very quickly that communication was not limited to language (It turns out people aren’t really that different). While a lot of pointing followed by

“Merci” (thank you) might have worked for order-ing food in France, more was needed when trying to get through daily activities. How do you find a bathroom if the only signs you see say “W.C.” (water closet) with an arrow? Sometimes there was the universal man and woman symbols found on restroom doors in America, but not always. Other clues are required. Without language, everything becomes a symbol. I think the same is true in graphic design; a good concept communi-cated without words makes for a message that is quickly understood and often more powerful.

L E F T : A dentist’s office in downtown Berlin. Who needs a sign with words when you can put a smiling tooth in your window?

The Normandy American Cemetary and Memorial in France is home to over 9,000 American burial sites. Less than one quarter of them are shown here.

A simple white cross takes on a much deeper meaning in this context when each one represents an American soldier who lost their life on D-Day and throughout World War 2. Ideas and emotions relating to war, family, politics, religion, life, and more are evoked in a way that words can’t fully explain.

Em-brace LIMI-TA-TIONS

Out of the handful of cities I visited, Berlin was the most interesting visually. There is almost nothing consistent about it: the architecture doesn’t match, the street signs don’t match, there are remnants of WW2, the Nazi’s and the Fascists, the Communists that came after, and the current democracy. Posters shout for attention while covering entire walls, and anything not already full of posters is covered in stickers and graffiti. Nothing is off limits from social commentary, and everybody seems to have something to say. But perhaps my favorite example of making the most out of what you are given is what the city did with exposed water pipes at a construction site. Normally these big pipes would be an eyesore, but since they had to be there, they painted them bright pink.

I have found that some clients always seem to want a random or subjective element included in their project, whether that be a color, an image, a typeface, or something else, and my first instinct has most often been to minimize these “client restrictions.” But if it has to be there, why not paint it bright pink?

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There’s no way to hide a large pipe system like this one, so why not paint it bright pink?

About the Design-er

I am a senior at Grand Valley State University where I will graduate with a BFA in April, and the President of the AIGA student chapter. I am inter-ested in moving to Minneapolis after I graduate, and I am currently looking for a job to make this possible. I will be visiting the Twin Cities during Spring Break from March 3–9, and I am looking to set up interviews on the 7th, 8th, and 9th. I will be emailing you within a few days and if you are intersted I would like to try to set up a time to meet.

To contact me you can email corey@corey-price.com, or call me directly at 734.233.1624. To view more of my work please visit corey-price.com.

Thank you for your time and I hope to speak with you soon!

Corey Price

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