Learning

I woke up this morning not thinking at all how my mood would be. Neutral. I don't know, maybe just keep doing all daily habits. As work was slow for a while, I decided start reading a book I've downloaded from internet about Graphic Design in the 21st Century (Taschen, 2003).
Surprisingly, some old ideas and goals I've put in my mind to achieve in the near future start seam to be accomplished. Some time ago I decided to inform myself better and develop my art senses as well my professional skills (not well-understanding what profession will be so far).
For a while I've been practicing hand-drawing as well as computer assisted design. I've already have some ideas to make true, but I think some lecture and learning will do just fine first of all.

Well, what i really wanted to write about was an essay that grabbed my attention. It's from an American designer named Milton Glaser (b.1929), actually one of the most - if not the most - respected and active designers in the USA and was presented at the 2005 AIGA National Design Conference in Boston, MA. I've found it while researching in his own web site(http://www.miltonglaser.com/) and it makes really good points about art, design, publicity and the role of the professional in society.
Here we have some pieces of the essay:

"Many of us have been troubled by the passivity of the American people towards the events of our time. Part of this condition must be attributed to the cynical use of fear our government has employed to control peoples’ judgment after the trauma of 9/11. This was made possible in part by television, my favorite whipping boy, and the most persuasive means of indoctrination in human history.(...) Television combines news about the war, Paris Hilton’s career, global warming and Geico commercials into events of equal importance. The result is an enormous population that believes nothing matters."

About Art:
(...)"Not long ago, I reread EH Gomrich’s magisterial Survey of Art History which begins, 'There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.'How liberating, the question is finally answered—if there is no Art, Design cannot be considered Art.'
If we need a definition of Art, the Roman literary critic Horace provided an elegant one. “The role of art is to inform and delight”. Form and light are hidden in that definition. It’s an idea I enthusiastically embrace. Of course, informing is different than persuading. When one is informed, one is strengthened. Persuasion does not guarantee the same result.
Delight is the non-quantifiable part of the definition that speaks to the role of beauty. What artists make is a gift to humankind; a benign instrument that has the possibility of affecting our consciousness through empathy and shared symbolism. We are affected not through logic but by a direct appeal to our limbic brain, the source of our emotional life. Although we don’t fully understand how it functions, I’m drawn to this mysterious part of our work, which we frequently describe as metaphysical or miraculous. These words may simply mean that we still do not understand what our brain is capable of."

Well those, among many others, were thoughts and questions I've already had myself and I believe supported in good references he found a good way to discuss that.

As I keep on learning and realizing things, I'll be happy to write this down. Even if no one so far knows or reads this page.

Mari

"We can reject the passivity and narcissism that leads to despair, and choose to participate in the life of our times."(M.Glaser)