Photo of HTML5 for Web Designers taken from the designer’s website, Jason Santa Maria

I recently read Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 for Web Designers and loved it. It is a great overview of the up and coming web standard. The light, concise tone achieved through Keith’s witty brevity and Jason Santa Maria’s pitch perfect design almost make you forget that the subject is of weighty importance for anyone involved in the web design field. HTML5 is the manifestation of the recent push towards web standards, but instead of dumbing down the markup language for the benefit of the disparate qualities of today’s browsers, many advanced features previously found only in Javascript have been brought inline.

This double edged sword will make our lives easier and harder at the same time. For example the following video tag allows me to provide content to every browser and device, even Internet Explorer through a Flash embedded fallback (yeah for progressive enhancement!). But because browser makers do not agree on video formats, instead of one video and one Flash fallback I must include 2 videos, one for Safari and one for Firefox and Chrome (in the future 3 might be needed with Google’s recent release of .webm). The other issue for us designer minded folks comes in skinning the video player. Because video playback has been handed to each browser to implement how it sees fit we not only see multiple formats but multiple video player skins. For those who wish to control the look of the player simple CSS will not do, a knowledge of Javascript is necessary to override each browser’s built in player.

The bottom line is that HTML5 is pushing us forward, simplifying our lives on hand while pushing us to learn Javascript on the other hand. The major takeaway that I’ve gained from the last few months of HTML5 excitement is that a web designer’s toolkit can no longer be limited to HTML and CSS, but must now include Javascript. Guess it’s time for me to buy a book and start reading.

1. For a great overview of using HTML5 see Mark Pilgrim’s website here.

The design of the 8 Faces is definitely great, clean layout with wonderful full color photographs. The content is where I had the greatest surprise. The interviews with these luminaries of the field are not that different from what you might find online but isolated in a magazine rather than in series of blog posts with ads and other distractions running along the side really make a difference. I can’t say much more than it really is a pleasure to sit down and read through the PDF on the iPad, and in a way that I have not achieved online. I highly recommend anyone interested in the design field or typography generally to do the same. 8 Faces does a much superior job than the regular industry publications, I’m looking at you Print and HOW, at tickling the inspiration center in my designer brainer.

Fidel Black

Calluna Black and Semibold Small Caps

Tungsten Medium & Black

You can find the original sized version here.

League Gothic Regular

Univers—39 Thin Ultra Condensed

Univers—39 Thin Ultra Condensed

What gets me excited is that Wired isn’t seeing the iPad as a way to connect with its readers through its website, but create a different experience that is more immersive than a website can, and maybe should, be. The irony of course is that Wired is delivering their new product through Adobe AIR, a Flash platform. The way I see it, this is the kind of thing that Flash was made for. A website that is supposed to be accessible to all should not be based entirely on a plug-in whose dependability varies widely depending on the user’s operating system. Adobe’s packager technology for creating Flash based apps on the iPhone and iPad puts their plug-in in its appropriate place, as a tool to create a special immersive experience but not as the corner-stone for the world wide web.

If enough developers, publishers and journalists see the iPad for the opportunity it is and create things worth reading and experiencing then I will pay to do it. That’s why I’m excited about the iPad.

The last person I focused on in my Bachelor’s Degree Senior Thesis was was the german designer Otl Aicher. The image above is actually what gave me the idea to post portions of my thesis to the web. My parents gave me this poster for Christmas this year. I’m not sure if it’s an original or not (probably too affordable to be original) but it’s the fencing poster for the 1972 Munich games. You can get yourself a poster here and read more about Otl Aicher below.

Otl Aicher was a German designer whose work has been enormously influential in many areas of design. Like Rand, he understood the need for simplicity and clarity in his work. Yet, rather than making a simple mark to represent a company, he created entire visual systems that were minutely controlled. His work on Lufthansa Airlines is still largely utilized today, decades later (see Figures above & below) (411). He redesigned their crane logo, making it sleek and simple, and thus reproducible across a range of applications. Helvetica was chosen as the typeface. Once seen, their logo is easily remembered. Aicher did not stop with the logo, but designed how the mark would be displayed on the airplanes themselves. His chosen Lufthansa colors were implemented in the uniforms for the flight attendants. He designed ticket stubs and itineraries, as well as, promotional materials (Rathgeb 62–71). All elements fit nicely together due to Aicher’s forethought in the design of their collective system.

Aicher’s knack for visual systems caught the attention of the 1972 Munich Olympics, he was hired as head designer (78). Although the Munich Olympics are remembered worldwide primarily for the Black September terrorist attack on the Israeli wrestling team, the design world remembers Munich for the introduction of the now ubiquitous Olympic pictograms (see Figure below). The consistency of the visual system for the 1972 games, makes Munich one of the most memorably designed Olympics. Aicher began with a distinguishing mark for the Olympiad, a seashell pattern of repeating shapes. This mark was used in addition to, and sometimes in place of, the traditional Olympic hoops (83). He then created posters for each type of event using easily recognizable photographs in bright posterized colors (see Figure below). To overcome language barriers, Aicher created a series of simplistic pictograms representing each event (82). Variations on and iterations of these pictograms have been present in the Olympic Games ever since.

Following the Olympics, Aicher expanded the use of simple pictograms for the visual design of the Munich Airport (114). Through these applications, he demonstrated the usefulness and necessity of using design for a successful and ordered society. After his successes in Munich he went on to create two typefaces, build visual systems, and design books. His work is an example of improving quality of life by communicating clearly through design. Aicher’s talent is not personified in any single design, but rather in the planning and thinking that unified many smaller parts into a cohesive whole.

Upon researching Bass, Rand, and Aicher, three prominent figures in the modernist movements of graphic design, it is clear that sound thinking produces the concepts that are present in sound design. These concepts are adaptable to any application, and effectively communicate the intended message.

Meggs, Philip, and Alston W. Purvis. Meggs’ History of Graphic Design. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006, 357–423.

Rathgeb, Markus. Otl Aicher. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2008, 62–114.