Defining the Digital Environment

These are ideas that explore how the digital environment has influenced Graphic Design:

Marshall McLuhan is seen by many to be the leading light of the digital and electronic age. In his book “The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects” written with Quentin Fiore he experiments with collage style, with text superimposed on visual elements and vice versa. In this book, which was 160 pages long, some pages are left intentionally blank, whilst others are printed backwards and are meant to be read in a mirror.

Marshall McLuhan was a thinker and writer. In 1967, he looked at the impact and the possibilities of electronic communication.

Print is static, fixed and linear.
A book is a one-way communication

-Static
-Fixed
-Linear
-One Way Communication

The Guttenberg Bible was the first large book printed with moveable metal type – static and fixed.

PRINT

“The Electronic Word” a collection of 10 essays by Richard Lanham looks at the emergence of digital technology and explores how electronic text is transforming the structure of contemporary communication.
'The assumptions that come with a book – that it is authoritative and unchangeable, transparent and unselfconscious p. 8’ Lanham voices that the book cannot be changed. The reader can only express what the author is saying.

Bruce Sterling’s statement 'innovators shaping our creative future’ p279 states “New media are so metaphorical. People struggle for words to describe the eruptions. Commonly our struggle is falsely framed as one single clean transition. There, Old Media, reeking of ink and celluloid – here, New Media, fast, clean, interactive”. Here Sterling talks about the change to new media and even though the transition may not be easy, it is important to embrace new media, as it is 'fast, clean, interactive.'

DIGITAL

Digital environment is opposite to unchangeable print.
It is MALLEABLE, which means that you can change it and mold it , as well as being accessible.

-Fluid
-Malleable
-Simultaneous Media
-Accessible
-Two Way Communication

Jacques Derrida was one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy, and is best known for developing a form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction.

Lev Manovich “Language of New Media” offers the most rigorous definition to date of new digital media; 'it places its object of attention within the most suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan'. Below is a link of an interview about the book.

Helen Armstrong’s book Graphic Design Theory is a concise overview of graphic design theory.

'The practical conclusions are clear. PowerPoint is a competent slide manager and projector. But rather than supplementing a presentation, it has become a substitute for it. Such misuse ignores the most important rule of speaking: Respect your audience.’ Edward Tufte. Here Tufte criticises that PowerPoint is an easy way to put a presentation together, but that it précises the information.

Alejandro Tapia 'Graphic Design in the Digital Era' 2003.

'The other characteristic of this digitisation of information is it’s electronic nature, which makes the data processed both more virtual and non-material and also more ephemeral. This is substantially more than analogical predecessors. Information contained in this way is more easily transferable, reproducible and modifiable, it takes up little room and weighs nothing, so transition is practically immediate.'

In this book Tapia is saying that the digitisation of information makes it easier to change, reproduce and transfer, taking up little space. Also with this digital information, virtual design issues may arise. The fact that he states “ephemeral” means that “transition” is almost straightaway.

For further inspiration, don't forget to click on the images.