Neil Scott

To say that I’m still a design novice is something of an understatement - for all the manifest benefits of being self-taught (the main one being that you’re forced to trust your own eye), I do sometimes yearn to go to design college to learn about history, theory and technique in a systematic fashion.

As it is, I read books on photoshop and others, I experiment at home, I devour works on design, usability, and art, and I skim about 160 RSS feeds per day. Such are the course requirements for BA (Hons) Design at the University of Neil Scott.

One of my favourite classes last year was reading through Rick Poynor’s works of design criticism. Unlike literary criticism, which has been elevated into a subject worthy of study itself, design crit is generally quite dull, lacking as it does the means with which to approach the object on equal terms. Indeed, the amount of exegesis you can wring out of some designer’s works is quite risible. There’s just not that much you can say about it unless you really engage with the culture around the object.

This is what Poynor does superlatively. In Designing Pornotopia he links the edginess of contemporary design with the moral degradation of modern society in a way that makes design seem richer and more interesting. Everything from Nathan Barley virals to the gruesome integrity of Stefan Sagmeister is game. Which, for a design student, is fantastic. How can you find your way around design (or indeed literature) without a travel guide pointing out historically significant landscapes?

A great guide also prevents you from becoming a mere vessel for received opinion. I was most struck by Poynor’s assertion that he disdains good taste in design, rejecting all those pseudo-Swiss photography books with their abundant white space, tasteful sans-serif fonts and style mag photos. Far more interesting is bad taste. On reflection it is obvious. Bad taste overflows with interest in a way that cold modernism never can. Shoddy amateur typography is fascinating, bizarre colour combinations are stimulating, and kitsch never fails to bring a smile (of sorts) to my lips.

Alas, when it comes to designing things myself, I am extremely reluctant to lapse into bad taste.

At the moment I am designing a site for Young Writer magazine, a fantastic commission that I agreed to in a shot, offering massive potential for creating a site that can engage children and perhaps - you never know - even change lives. I had an image of something colourful, chic, and decorated with hip illustrations. I imagined something with Erskine Corp-style underline links, Cookie Magazine-esque grid, and TAK design cuteness. What I got in the magazine was, at first glance, a mess of mismatched typography, visual cliches, poor alignment, garish colours: the kind of design that would leave Jan Tschichold apoplectic.

Of course it occurs to me that there is a vast difference between the kind of kidulty design that is so popular these days and what kids actually like. If you’ve ever seen a young child’s website you’ll know that they adore vulgarity: glitter, pink sparkles, flash animations that take an age to load and absolutely zero content to speak of. But is this just because they are crap at design, without an eye for what works? The real question is what sites do they use?

According to The Center for Media Education’s 1999 report kids like TV and film-related sites primarily, then games and toys, followed by portals like Yahooligans. The latter is a great example of bad taste done well and gives me ideas for how I can escape the charge of tastefulness whilst still keeping my integrity.

The crucial point I’ve learnt from this experience is that following Bauhaus principles of space, weight, rhythm and colour really doesn’t mean that you have to subscribe to Bauhaus conventions of using Akzidenz Grotesk, black lines and white space.

Tonight, Matthew, I am going to be vulgar.

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