Got a new book. Problem Solved, by Michael Johnson (Phaidon, about 25). Subtitled ‘A Primer in Design and Communication’, that’s pretty much what it is, and not too bad either. It’s essentially a book about problem-solving (in the context of design and advertising) – I like this approach, as that’s what we (try to) do. Johnson runs through 18 classic types of ‘problem’ e.g. The Message is The Price Problem, The Paradigm Shift Problem, The Can’t Learn Won’t Learn Problem, The Over-designed Problem etc.
These are fleshed out with numerous examples, in a format lifted from John Berger’s classic "Ways of Seeing" (text flowing around pictures it relates to – an approach now reminiscent of <table>-less ‘vernacular’ web design!). Which really works. The text as a whole has an advertising bent, but is interesting for all designers none-the-less. Specific case-studies, well-illustrated though light in detail, include recent campaigns for French Connection, Tango, The Economist, VW Polo, as well as considering national flags, maps, charity-based work, bookjackets, branding without logos, museum signage, typefaces for phonebooks, ethics in design etc. Hundreds and hundreds of examples.
NB. Some are of work carried out by Johnson’s practice, johnsonbanks.
It’s handsomely designed and usable, and would sit well alongside The Art of Looking Sideways, say.
It only really falls down, sadly but not untypically, when the book briefly covers websites (for all of 2 pages). Check this:
"Many of the principles of three-dimensional navigation can also be carried over into the world of web design. As this new discipline struggles to find its feet in the face of sluggish browsers and lengthy download, the elements that users have come to treasure more than anything else are speed and the ability to navigate the space easily. Early website structures, often produced by programmers rather than designers, assumed that their visitors knew that websites work in tree-like forms and tended to include buttons like ‘up’ and ‘down’ rather than ‘backwards’ and ‘forwards’. Luckily, sense soon prevailed and designers began to think about their sites in terms of the way visitors, not experts in HTML, would approach them. The website for MTV2 takes the approach of turning the whole site into a kind of 3D object where the visitor can choose which floor, or area, to access. This makes the experience clearer and also makes navigation a memorable part of the design. Users of the British Design Museum’s site spin a cube device that helps them decide in which direction to turn their attentions next (as though they are simply walking around the museum itself). " [p.169]
God this makes me angry. Never mind the fact that the two websites Johnson mentions are singularly difficult to actually use (I’ve been an unsatisfied user of the Design Museum site on numerous occasions) – and could be argued to be slow, inaccessible, un-intuitive, utterly un-adaptive examples of interface-over-content, and probably due for total, wasteful, redesign anyday now, at large expense. No offence to any of the designers involved. Really. I’m sure the initial brief was met efficiently and the clients were happy, but these seem classic examples of late-90s thinking.
There’s so much to pick apart in that paragraph: talk of "visitors" is telling (look, but don’t touch?); not wanting to make ‘seamful’ designs which make clear how things work (Peterme’s recent post of Donald Norman on the importance of people understanding what they’re doing is highly relevant here (via Jones)); the fact that speed and ease of navigability, which Johnson rightly picks out as, er, "treasured", are lacking in his two sole examples; that only visual designers can recognise how ‘visitors’ might want to approach sites (the Shedroff debate springs to mind). Listen: you are not really walking around the Design Museum – "revolving a cube" will hardly have the same effect anyway. Listen: MTV2 does not have ‘floors’! These are lame attempts at learning from real-world spatial navigation, serving only to get in the way of the user’s tasks. Where’s the depth of thinking Johnson applies to design for other media?
What makes me really mad is that you start with a book about problem-solving, and casually dismiss the work programmers do ("Luckily, sense soon prevailed"). How demeaning, and how wrong-headed. Programming is the most intensively problem-solving work I know. The essence of my recent adaptive design thoughts have been about learning from technologists as much as ‘designers’ in the traditional sense. The UK is a particularly unreceptive environment for engineering-as-design. It’s sad to see that reiterated in a book about problem-solving.
Sigh. Still, 1 dodgy page out of 290 ain’t bad.
[Johnson also bizarrely overlooks a subtle but brilliant aspect about Milton Glaser’s reworked I >heart< NY logo – the charred edge of the heart. It wasn’t just a textual ("I >heart< NY More Than Ever") addition, as he suggests.]
Never mind. Plenty food for thought still there, and I’m learning quite a bit, not least how Lambie-Nairn’s lauded ident for BBC2 looks to be just a straight lift of a WGBH in-house adaptation of Chermayeff & Geismar’s ‘WGBH 2’ ident (1973-1985).
Definitely worth a look, certainly in terms of lifting design solutions from other media. Have a browse through it some time …
Problem Solved: A Primer in Design and Communication. By Michael Johnson
I’d been eyeing this book for a couple of months in the bookstores in Berlin, but it was too expensive there. Thanks for the nice write-up. (Buy.com seems have have it cheapest, BTW.)
I’m interested in your irritation with the word “visitors” – it’s a word I often use in preference to “users”, because it seems to me less dismissive and less certain of the loyalty of the person who comes to the site. User also reminds me quite a lot of consumer – the relationship is still a passive one – we make things and they consume/use them. In community sites or in social software, I tend to like using the word “Citizen”, albeit slightly spuriously, because it reminds me that I’ve generated a social space in which other people have an investment (but mostly are denied control – which is something I keep aiming to work at more thoroughly)…
i take your point, tom. i guess i was irritated by the use of the word visitor in the context of the sites johnson recommended – where both are ‘museum exhibit’-like in approach (again, look, don’t touch). the word user is hardly an improvement (the standard line there is the one about heroin being the only other industry/context the word user is frequently employed) – if feels more ‘tool-based’ (as in UCD) which is good on the one hand, but again, implies a rather one-way relationship (albeit thought-thru from the user’s p-o-v, rather than the designer or client) … i very much like your idea of ‘citizen’ because, as you say, it implies a responsibility as well as rights (you say ‘investment’, which is good too) – maybe feels a bit spurious right now, as large sites are only beginning to touch on a more meaningful interaction with people, but it’s a more useful, more provocative, way of thinking for sure.
I think (on balance) I should be flattered to at least be discussed in blogworld.
You’re correct, those 2 sites aren’t perhaps the best examples (please nominate new ones for me and I will amend for any future edition). But hey you try writing a primer on advertising and design and keeping everyone happy. Pretty tricky. I’m currently resting from the whole writing business. Trying to remember how to be a graphic designer.