Style, Design, and Craft
Sep. 19th, 2024 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeRogan: A long time ago, me and Sneak were talking about design. Mac, who isn't artistic or design-oriented at all, was curious and asked what the difference was between style and design. This blog post is based on that long ago conversation. It also has the addition of a discussion of craft, because Mori has a hate-on for the Cybertruck a mile long but is also fascinated by it, and craft is why.
Style is the outward appearance or affect of a thing. Style is superficial, skin-deep, the equivalent of polish or paint job. Artists should basically never worry about cultivating a "style," because style is a natural outgrowth of your design and craft process. Work on those, and style will never be a concern. Meanwhile, no amount of polish on a turd will make it anything but shit.
Design is deeper, the decisions made in advance and built into the structure and function of the thing. That inevitably INFLUENCES the outward surface, but it's so much more than that (or at least, it SHOULD be). For instance, if I want to make a comic book that'll print easily and cheaply, I will make it in black and white. That is a practical design choice which will influence the look, to the point that probably some people consider that black and white look to be part of my "style."
Things can have very similar styles and VERY different designs. Take a motorcycle jacket intended to protect its wearer and its cheap knock-off. They might look nigh-identical... but one will shield way better against road rash. Another example is if you've ever dug into the source code of two very similar-looking websites... only for one's code to make you go "OH JEEZ!" and hastily close the window. Design is more than just the superficial polish, how the thing looks. It's about the function the thing is supposed to perform, the choices made in its construction to help it fulfill its function. A lot of those choices may be superficially invisible.
Craft is the older, slower, wiser cousin to design. While design is generally choices made before the thing is constructed (I never decide to make a comic B&W midway through), craft is a gradual process, lessons learned through the hands-on work of making the thing over and over and over, creator learning from their mistakes and gradually adapting their work to the environment, even the subtler influences that aren't noticeable on an earlier pass. For example, every once in a while, someone gets the genius idea of making our buildings dome-shaped, rather than rectangular. So much more efficient! And on paper, yes, these designs are brilliant... but in reality, they leak like sieves and everyone can hear you pee. Craft teaches where design fails.
Craft, much to the frustration of creators in a rush, can usually only be learned the hard way, and it is unglamorous as hell. For instance, Flights of Reality looks worse than Infinity Smashed: Found Wanting, because the lessons I learned from making FoR (how deep to make indents, how big to make back cover text) influenced how I made ISFW. Red Yellow Green may not look that different stylistically than Multi, Orgasmic! but they are very different in design and craft, because I learned how to make zines like that in a way much faster and more forgiving of errors and correction. Those are design choices I learned to make after craft spanked me.
With craft, making mistakes is just part of the process. It's how you learn. Design, at its worst, is trying to avoid ever making those mistakes in the first place, being too smart to ever need to learn better. Design without craft is how we get the Cybertruck. (Nobody has ever made a car like the Cybertruck... and there are very good reasons why.)
I am not much good as a designer; I am better as a craftsperson. Part of why I like making floppy zines is, it lessens the burdens of design, and instead scoots some of that responsibility over to craft. It gives me more time to find errors, and people are more forgiving of flaws in a stapled floppy than they are in a paperback.
For example, my one-pagers were an accidental stumble into a design that really, really worked for their purpose. I have seen other people pulling similar "pocket crisis plans," but I haven't liked any of them. They were kitchen magnets (who EVER thinks of checking the fridge magnets in the middle of a psychological breakdown?), or full of well-intended but often condescending advice that encouraged passivity in the owner, or shiny and glossy (which SOUNDS like a good idea, but... read on). I knew I needed a crisis plan that I could fit in my wallet (because that was about the only thing I always had on me) in case I had a psychotic break while alone outdoors... again. Thanks to my zine training, I knew how to make a pocket one-pager, which miraculously just happened to fit in my wallet. Perfect!
Our first self-help one-pager, Feeling Worthless?, I made on the back of a worksheet while in Loony Daycare. They were teaching me useful skills, skills I knew I would never remember in the middle of a psychotic break, so I decided to just write them down, right there, make a one-pager right in the middle of group therapy, and when the therapist asked what I was doing, I defensively blurted, "I'm paying attention!" Once I explained what I'd made, everyone wanted a copy, and the hospital Xerox machine was commandeered for the purpose. For all I know, the Triangle Program still uses the damn things! Some of my fellow loonies even gave me constructive feedback on them, as have others ever since. (It's why the newer editions have instructions to turn it inside out and use the blank side to add more info. That was a good idea! Thanks, whoever you were!)
By making my one-pagers mostly empty, I encouraged the buyer to fill them out themselves. It wasn't holy knowledge being sent from on high; it was the buyer helping themselves, using their own knowledge. It was also cheap and ugly as sin, which was originally an accident of the circumstance (I was crazy, soon to be homeless, and using the materials I had on hand), but I've come to see as a good thing. Something beautiful and glossy feels like a shame to lose, even if it no longer works. Something cheap and ugly? That's disposable. If it stops working, you can throw it away. If it goes through the laundry by accident, you can make your own in half an hour, no tears.
A lot of people, at cons, will pick up my one-pagers and then unfold them, trying to understand how they're constructed and put together. That's good! It's my hope that someone, looking at their one-pager, maybe does that and goes, "Hey, wait a minute, I could do that! This is easy!" And then they WOULD. And I would bet all my money that what they created would work better for them, it'd be custom bespoke tailor-made, and that's exactly what I want. Yes, build those skills to help yourself! Learn what works and what doesn't! Trash the old and build anew, better! Take your journey into your own hands, instead of waiting for a doctor, a lover, or a guru to rescue you! Create a revolution of cripping sanity! Put me out of business, ahahaha! Then I'll have NO CHOICE but to write my self-indulgent sci-fi romance porno for scratch!
What I'm saying is, these design choices were accidental. I didn't make them on purpose, at first. Craft, a decade of craft, taught me how to build on those foundations, let me experiment, make mistakes, and learn from them. My one-pagers are stylistically ugly, but I am very proud of them, and on a design and craft level, I see them as highly successful. Judging by how they're some of the oldest stuff on my con tables, and they still sell reliably, others agree.
Style is the outward appearance or affect of a thing. Style is superficial, skin-deep, the equivalent of polish or paint job. Artists should basically never worry about cultivating a "style," because style is a natural outgrowth of your design and craft process. Work on those, and style will never be a concern. Meanwhile, no amount of polish on a turd will make it anything but shit.
Design is deeper, the decisions made in advance and built into the structure and function of the thing. That inevitably INFLUENCES the outward surface, but it's so much more than that (or at least, it SHOULD be). For instance, if I want to make a comic book that'll print easily and cheaply, I will make it in black and white. That is a practical design choice which will influence the look, to the point that probably some people consider that black and white look to be part of my "style."
Things can have very similar styles and VERY different designs. Take a motorcycle jacket intended to protect its wearer and its cheap knock-off. They might look nigh-identical... but one will shield way better against road rash. Another example is if you've ever dug into the source code of two very similar-looking websites... only for one's code to make you go "OH JEEZ!" and hastily close the window. Design is more than just the superficial polish, how the thing looks. It's about the function the thing is supposed to perform, the choices made in its construction to help it fulfill its function. A lot of those choices may be superficially invisible.
Craft is the older, slower, wiser cousin to design. While design is generally choices made before the thing is constructed (I never decide to make a comic B&W midway through), craft is a gradual process, lessons learned through the hands-on work of making the thing over and over and over, creator learning from their mistakes and gradually adapting their work to the environment, even the subtler influences that aren't noticeable on an earlier pass. For example, every once in a while, someone gets the genius idea of making our buildings dome-shaped, rather than rectangular. So much more efficient! And on paper, yes, these designs are brilliant... but in reality, they leak like sieves and everyone can hear you pee. Craft teaches where design fails.
Craft, much to the frustration of creators in a rush, can usually only be learned the hard way, and it is unglamorous as hell. For instance, Flights of Reality looks worse than Infinity Smashed: Found Wanting, because the lessons I learned from making FoR (how deep to make indents, how big to make back cover text) influenced how I made ISFW. Red Yellow Green may not look that different stylistically than Multi, Orgasmic! but they are very different in design and craft, because I learned how to make zines like that in a way much faster and more forgiving of errors and correction. Those are design choices I learned to make after craft spanked me.
With craft, making mistakes is just part of the process. It's how you learn. Design, at its worst, is trying to avoid ever making those mistakes in the first place, being too smart to ever need to learn better. Design without craft is how we get the Cybertruck. (Nobody has ever made a car like the Cybertruck... and there are very good reasons why.)
I am not much good as a designer; I am better as a craftsperson. Part of why I like making floppy zines is, it lessens the burdens of design, and instead scoots some of that responsibility over to craft. It gives me more time to find errors, and people are more forgiving of flaws in a stapled floppy than they are in a paperback.
For example, my one-pagers were an accidental stumble into a design that really, really worked for their purpose. I have seen other people pulling similar "pocket crisis plans," but I haven't liked any of them. They were kitchen magnets (who EVER thinks of checking the fridge magnets in the middle of a psychological breakdown?), or full of well-intended but often condescending advice that encouraged passivity in the owner, or shiny and glossy (which SOUNDS like a good idea, but... read on). I knew I needed a crisis plan that I could fit in my wallet (because that was about the only thing I always had on me) in case I had a psychotic break while alone outdoors... again. Thanks to my zine training, I knew how to make a pocket one-pager, which miraculously just happened to fit in my wallet. Perfect!
Our first self-help one-pager, Feeling Worthless?, I made on the back of a worksheet while in Loony Daycare. They were teaching me useful skills, skills I knew I would never remember in the middle of a psychotic break, so I decided to just write them down, right there, make a one-pager right in the middle of group therapy, and when the therapist asked what I was doing, I defensively blurted, "I'm paying attention!" Once I explained what I'd made, everyone wanted a copy, and the hospital Xerox machine was commandeered for the purpose. For all I know, the Triangle Program still uses the damn things! Some of my fellow loonies even gave me constructive feedback on them, as have others ever since. (It's why the newer editions have instructions to turn it inside out and use the blank side to add more info. That was a good idea! Thanks, whoever you were!)
By making my one-pagers mostly empty, I encouraged the buyer to fill them out themselves. It wasn't holy knowledge being sent from on high; it was the buyer helping themselves, using their own knowledge. It was also cheap and ugly as sin, which was originally an accident of the circumstance (I was crazy, soon to be homeless, and using the materials I had on hand), but I've come to see as a good thing. Something beautiful and glossy feels like a shame to lose, even if it no longer works. Something cheap and ugly? That's disposable. If it stops working, you can throw it away. If it goes through the laundry by accident, you can make your own in half an hour, no tears.
A lot of people, at cons, will pick up my one-pagers and then unfold them, trying to understand how they're constructed and put together. That's good! It's my hope that someone, looking at their one-pager, maybe does that and goes, "Hey, wait a minute, I could do that! This is easy!" And then they WOULD. And I would bet all my money that what they created would work better for them, it'd be custom bespoke tailor-made, and that's exactly what I want. Yes, build those skills to help yourself! Learn what works and what doesn't! Trash the old and build anew, better! Take your journey into your own hands, instead of waiting for a doctor, a lover, or a guru to rescue you! Create a revolution of cripping sanity! Put me out of business, ahahaha! Then I'll have NO CHOICE but to write my self-indulgent sci-fi romance porno for scratch!
What I'm saying is, these design choices were accidental. I didn't make them on purpose, at first. Craft, a decade of craft, taught me how to build on those foundations, let me experiment, make mistakes, and learn from them. My one-pagers are stylistically ugly, but I am very proud of them, and on a design and craft level, I see them as highly successful. Judging by how they're some of the oldest stuff on my con tables, and they still sell reliably, others agree.
