I was particularly delighted last week to happen upon an article published by John Rousseau on AIGA Seattle’s site entitled Infosthetics. It centers on the infographics fad that has expanded dramatically in recent years, and highlights some of its more bothersome characteristics.

We can empathize with Mr. Rousseau as infographics have remained a vexatious subject for The Journal staff. The article pinpoints what makes them so very irksome; they typically provide an unclear spatial representation of data and continually tip the form and function scale to an unnecessary degree, leaning fully upon the form, of course.

To put it simply, modern infographics are too confusing. One cannot help but feel as if they are piecing together a puzzle or solving a logical word problem. To put it crudely: they’re a visual face smash.

James Houston is an filmmaker and artist from Glasgow, Scotland. He has been featured throughout numerous print publications and his work has appeared on hundreds of different blogs. Many of his films are characterized by a colorful, retro aesthetic. Mr. Houston was kind enough to answer a few of our questions regarding his films and filmmaking process.

Your degree is in graphic design; traditionally, most people would associate this with print/web design. I have seen some prints you have made, but it seems that film dominates the work found in your portfolio. What initially sparked your interest in film and how long have you been actively creating films?

I almost failed my penultimate year at art school. I didn’t have a great love for creating typography or layout although I’ll always have an admiration for the work of others who do it well. I asked my tutors (Steve Rigley & Jo Petty) if I could go off on my own and try some video experimentation. Luckily, they welcomed the idea and I haven’t opened InDesign since. That was in 2008, the same year that I created the Radiohead video. I owe a lot of thanks to Steve & Jo at GSA for allowing me to take that risk.

What inspired you to create Big Ideas (don’t get any), and what exactly did the conceptual process entail?

It was never intended to be a Radiohead project. Dr. Roland Shregle from Ganjatron.net wrote a tutorial back in the dark ages of the Internet on how to replace a default sound file that’s inside every HP scanner. The original file is Fur Elise and was intended as an Easter egg for early technology enthusiasts. I couldn’t help but notice the excellent bass sound and so the next logical step was to find other instruments that would accompany my bassist. Look Around You probably inspired the final treatment.

Sean Stiegemeier is a filmmaker and photographer from California. He received his Masters degree in cinematography from the American Film Institute and has been featured in numerous publications including American Cinematographer.

He has recently received international attention from his stop-motion film of Iceland’s volcano Eyjafjallajökull which has received neary two million views on Vimeo. It was shot on the Canon 5D MarkII on a stage zero prototype MILapse motorized dolly track built specifically for stop-motion. This trip to Iceland was pure self-motivation, paid out of Sean’s own pocket.

You mention that you went to Iceland to out-do the mediocre pictures you were seeing in the news. Amongst the comments left for the film you say that this trip was of your own accord, payed out of your own pocket, and I can imagine it was quite expensive. How were you able to justify this trip?

I had just finished doing some well paying jobs and thought why not?! Its like a vacation.

How soon after the initial eruption happened was your trip planned?

It was planned 2 days before I left.

This last week Cory and I explored the depths of our city’s oldest and largest library, the Multnomah County Library, (in fact, it’s the oldest library west of the Mississippi River) to do some research for an upcoming post. I checked out a couple of books for myself, both written by Paul Rand.

One of the books I picked up was a collection of his writings, Design, Form, and Chaos. It provides insight into the mind of the designer and the marketer, the current state of technology and education, and trends within art forms. I found this excerpt of the book quite fascinating:

The ability to intuit is not reserved to any special class of individuals, although many painters, writers, designers, dancers, or musicians believe that this ability is something special, something God-given. The intuitive faculty does, however, seem more pervasive in matters of aesthetics than in those of daily routine. Except in a most general sense, one cannot prove the validity of color, contrast, texture, or shape. Compliance with all the laws and systems of form, restraint, texture, and proportion will not provide proof of the soundness of a work of art, nor guarantee its coming to fruition. This is one of the reasons it is so difficult to understand or teach art and why countless books on art are mere inventories rather than meaningful explanations. Even the brilliant exposition of historians such as Roger Fry, André Malraux, or Rudolf Wittkauer, however inspirational, however compelling, cannot directly generate great or even good works.

Without regard to available systems (e.g., the Golden Section, DIN proportions, typographic grids), the designer works intuitively. This is something about which one is often confused. No system of proportion, color, or space articulation can possibly insure exceptional results. Very often a system is used merely as a crutch, a kind of rabbit’s foot or a good luck charm, regardless of need. A system can be applied either intuitively or intentionally, interestingly or tediously. There is always the element of choice, sometimes called good judgement, at others good taste.

Aside from practical considerations, in matters of form the typographer must rely on intuition. How else does one select a typeface, decide on its size, line width, leading, and format? The alternatives are to repeat one’s previous performances, to imitate what others have done, or simply to make arbitrary decisions.

Rand, Paul. Design, Form, and Chaos. New Haven: Yale UP, 1993. Print.

This approach requires that designers ask themselves the reasoning behind every decision within a process. What qualifies the use of this tool or property? Is it relevant to the design, or is it implemented out of lack of originality? It also allows one to relax and not depend primarily on the formal systems, but purely on one’s intuition and intellect.

All designers strive to produce good work. This is an irrefutable fact. What do artists use to base judgments and criticisms?  Are there absolutes in art? Is it all relative? This fundamental question has fostered entire art movements, fueled arguments and provided a healthy amount of confusion in the artistic community for centuries.

To counter this unsettled dispute, visionaries created manifestos, rules, lists and ideologies. In 1995 (revised in October 2009), Dieter Rams contributed his opinion to the historic examination with his Ten Principles of Good Design:

With an endlessly updating list of browsers being used on a variety of operating systems, web developers and designers require a tool for compatibility testing. Adobe fills this void in their suite of applications with BrowserLab, a new cross-browser compatibility tester. Released by AdobeLabs as beta in June 2009, it is still being revised through user comments and feedback. Adobe currently provides a free, limited version lasting through the end of 2010, for users to preview the application’s functionality and debugging. Starting in 2011, there will be a $10-20 monthly fee to use the service. For Dreamweaver (CS4) owners, there is a free plug-in available for download on Adobe’s website. This plug-in allows local testing of websites, while the web version requires a site to be live in order to download the code.

Currently, you can test with:

• Firefox 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 (Windows XP and Mac OS X)
• Internet Explorer 6.X, 7.X, and 8.X (Windows XP)
• Safari 3.X and 4.X (Mac OS X)
• Chrome 3.0 (Windows XP)