the vignelli canon reflection!

Design has always been something I was interested in, always judging logos and the design of things we see everywhere. But I’ve never looked into actually going in and trying it, or reading and learning more about how it is done.

For class, we were asked to read The Vignelli Canon by Massimo Vignelli, which talks about many different aspects of design and the ones he felt were important. There were so many parts that stood out to me- from the idea that designs should be timeless to the line that read “we love complexities but hate complications”. This was never something I realized prior to reading this. Typically, I’d just look at the design of something and judge it by its readability or quality, but never realized that they are made to be understood at any point in time. Of course, quality is still extremely important to the design. It’s easy to tell when one has put effort and thought into a design, and this aspect can completely push someone out of understanding what the design was for.

I also enjoyed reading this because it went in a little about design in the past, for example, talking about paper size. I greatly admire designers who never had access to technology like we do now. I could never imagine doing something like graphic design with ink and paper.

The last thing that stood out to me was the use of grids. Vignelli goes in depth about how grids help create balance and overall act as a structure for graphic design. In the future, I’d like to look at designs and slap a grid on them, just to see if it was taken into account. I will look at future designs with a different eye now, using what I read in The Vignelli Canon to understand design more strongly.