SEAN WOLCOTT ― TRANSCRIPT
I think the most core reason of why design is "Because". Because I want it to be, you know, it's just that point of conviction is where good things happen.
The mission is just carrying on the love of design and utilizing that in a way that can just help make less ugliness in the world and make things easier for people. Spread that love of it to help other people to be good at it and to help solve problems.
My name’s Sean Wolcott, I'm a graphic designer. I run my own design studio called Rationale. I’ve been designing for over 20 years now, from the Seattle area and work here and lived here most of my life.
In the sort of early to mid-2000s, I discovered the work of Massimo Vignelli. And when I saw that, that was just the answer for me, like somebody turned on a light, this is the thing I was looking for that I didn’t know I was looking for. Ended up eventually developing to a point where I sought out Massimo Vignelli, like personally, how can I get some experience with him?
I'm a community college dropout that just did my own thing and really kind of learned from studying what he had done and at that point he had put out something called the Vignelli Canon, just a free online book that really kind of blew my mind in terms of its clarity of what a designer should be.
I'm a community college dropout that just did my own thing and really kind of learned from studying what he had done and at that point he had put out something called the Vignelli Canon, just a free online book that really kind of blew my mind in terms of its clarity of what a designer should be.
From that point on, that ended up turning into a pretty close friendship up until he passed away just a few years ago. Where I'd show him my design, he'd give me feedback, he'd start sending me things that he'd done, and asking what I thought, which was incredible, for somebody that kind of had that epiphany to get to be friends with that person.
One of the things, him and his wife Lella said is “If you can't find it, design it.” So the Minimal Calendar application definitely is that. So there was one, just to bring the kind of typographic purity and clarity, that I still find lacking a lot in the digital medium..
You'll see a lot of apps that will do like animation and things for effect to add a level of polish, which actually we’ll reject, unless it brings something meaningful to the experience, we don't want it as a part of it.
The interaction design I think it's, we're looking for ways to make it analogous to a physical experience. Can it be more like handwriting in terms of the content you put in? It's not about forms and fields, it's about entering things in typographically that then the computer or the system can interpret and turn into things along those lines.
Part of design, for me, really came through interest in music and how design was a part of that. I mean, as a child I would go through my dad's record covers and I didn't know it was design yet, but that left an impression on me and I've talked to lots of other designers who had a similar experience.
So for Fascination Movement there was a grid that I defined and was experimenting with a different colour palette, so the idea that there would be these five singles, which eventually come together for an EP that we see here. And everything is built on this fundamental basic design library. So what we have is just a simple grid and then you can see how that gets applied to different things that are all leveraging the different colours.
I'm really intrigued by the idea of movement and graphical sequence. For this, we felt with the music it was really appropriate, so we see that happening. And again here, this is like a more simple visual system where the forms are more complex, but it's just about three colours and using them in three different ways for two singles and then a cover.
I think the more you're familiar with the elements that you use as a designer, the better you can be in how you use them, as well as are forced to challenge yourself in finding new ways to use them.
And from a graphic design standpoint I think of things like Paul Rand's IBM poster or the work of Pierre Mendell. What's successful about those and what really brings compelling visual design is doing something that anyone else could have done but they didn't do it. It's finding that unexpected way of looking at the world.