1. Objectified
Objectified is a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them. It’s a look at the creativity put into work to build everyday objects like toothbrushes or tech gadgets. It’s about the designers who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability.
Through vérité footage and in-depth conversations, the film documents the creative processes of some of the world’s most influential product designers and looks at how the things they make impact our lives. What can we learn about who we are, and who we want to be, from the objects with which we surround ourselves?
2. Helvetica
A documentary about typography, graphic design and global visual culture, that looks at the proliferation of one typeface as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.
Helvetica is an independent feature-length documentary film about typography and graphic design, centered on the typeface of the same name. Directed by Gary Hustwit, it was released in 2007 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the typeface’s introduction in 1957 and is considered the first of the Design Trilogy by the director.
Its content consists of a history of the typeface interspersed with candid interviews with leading graphic and type designers. The film aims to show Helvetica’s beauty and ubiquity, and illuminate the personalities that are behind typefaces. It also explores the rift between modernists and postmodernists, with the latter expressing and explaining their criticisms of the famous typeface.
Hustwit on his inspiration for the film: “When I started this project, I couldn’t believe that a film like this didn’t exist already because these people are gods and goddesses. What they do is more than just logos and corporate branding – they design the type that we read every day in newspapers and magazines, onscreen and on television. Fonts don’t just appear out of Microsoft Word: there are human beings and huge stories behind them.”
3. Design is One
Italian-born Massimo and Lella Vignelli are among the world’s most influential designers. Throughout their long career, their motto has been, ‘If you can’t find it, design it’. The work covers such a broad spectrum that one could say the Vignellis are known by everybody, even those who don’t know their names. From graphics to interiors to products and corporate identities, the film brings us into the work and everyday moments of the Vignellis’ world, capturing their intelligence and creativity, as well as their humanity, warmth, and humor.
4. Adapting Ourselves to Adaptive Content
Karen McGrane, Founder, Bond Art & Science
For years, we’ve been telling designers: the web is not print. You can’t have pixel-perfect layouts. You can’t determine how your site will look in every browser, on every platform, on every device. We taught designers to cease control, think in systems, embrace web standards. So why are we still letting content authors plan for where their content will “live” on a web page? Why do we give in when they demand a WYSIWYG text editor that works “just like Microsoft Word”? Worst of all, why do we waste time and money creating and recreating content instead of planning for content reuse? What worked for the desktop web simply won’t work for mobile. As our design and development processes evolve, our content workflow has to keep up. Learn how to adapt to creating more flexible content.
5. The Curious Properties of Intuitive Web Pages by Jared M. Spool – An Event Apart Boston
In this 60-minute video caught live at An Event Apart Boston 2012, Jared M. Spool discusses the surprisingly unintuitive logic behind the creation of “intuitive” websites.
When a web page works, your users know exactly what to do. Everything makes sense, and they accomplish their goal, pleased with your site. Yet, often pages don’t work, and users get flustered and confused. It turns out that intuitive web pages abide by a set of curiously unintuitive properties. Watch Jared explain how to merge interaction design, visual design, information architecture, and other skills together to assemble web experiences that delight your users.
Jared M. Spool is the founder of User Interface Engineering, a leading research, training, and consulting firm specializing in website and product usability. One of the most effective, knowledgeable communicators on the subject of usability today, Jared has been working in the field of usability and design since 1978 before the term “usability” was ever associated with computers. At User Interface Engineering, he has guided the research agenda and built UIE into the largest research organization of its kind in the world.
6. TypeFace
Set in a print studio in rural Wisconsin, this documentary traces the lives of old-school designers who are devout to the art of letterpress design printing. The film takes place at the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum, which is run by a pair of retired craftsmen who has spent their lives devoted to the increasingly rare design technique which saw its rise in the 1950s and 1960s before being replaced by digital design.
This documentary has a lot going on, there are various themes, a love of the ‘steampunk’ technology of old style printing, a hipster love of letterpress and design, and the stories of a city far too far from anywhere that was once successful, and is now too far from the digital hipsters that would flock to it.
People will salivate over the plentiful footage of wooden carved letters, from the days when using a font was a huge investment, and resizing up a point size required a tray full of ‘sorts’. Others will enjoy the real people enjoying their enthusiasms. One of the best, and full of charm.
7. Why Man Creates
Why Man Creates is a 1968 animated short documentary film which discusses the nature of creativity. It was written by legendary Saul Bass and Mayo Simon, and directed by Saul Bass. It won the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject.
Why Man Creates focuses on the creative process and the different approaches to that process. It is divided into eight sections: The Edifice, Fooling Around, The Process, Judgment, A Parable, Digression, The Search, and The Mark.
In 2002, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
Through several amusing live action and animated vignettes, Saul Bass illustrates a fundamental and essential particularity of human nature that keeps us alive and the world turning, evolving and reaching new designs and possibilities: the necessity of creation. And by creation, Bass means everything from art to mundane things, from words and numbers to unusual abstract works.
Bonus: Design Disruptors
DESIGN DISRUPTORS reveals a never-before-seen perspective on the design approaches of 15+ industry-shaking companies, and how they’re using the power of design to disrupt billion dollar industries.
DESIGN DISRUPTORS is a full-length documentary featuring design leaders and product designers from 15+ industry-toppling companies—valued at more than $1trillion dollars combined.
The film chronicles the true nature of design and the design-driven business revolutions being shaped around the world through the designer’s eyes.
DESIGN DISRUPTORS reveals a never-before-seen perspective on the design approaches of 15+ industry-shaking companies, and how they’re using the power of design to disrupt billion dollar industries.
The film chronicles the true nature of design and the design-driven business revolutions being shaped around the world through the designer’s eyes.
Get a never-before-seen look into the perspectives, processes, and design approaches of leaders at industry-toppling brands and discover how these companies are disrupting billion dollar industries through design.
Featuring:
John Maeda (KPCB)
Julie Zhuo (Facebook)
Tobias van Schneider (Semplicelabs, Formerly Spotify)
Jason Mayden (Accel Partners)
Evan Sharp (Pinterest)
Film Screening here: https://nvite.com/DesignDisruptors/73q9qp
Grab a drink, some movie treats, and be the first to see the film.
