ROSS EVERTSON, PHOTO (BLOG, INFO)

My friend Mike Essl made a website encapsulating the perpetual question between the disciplines of art and design. Totally stripped of context and debate, free from the defense of ego people can vote on one of the most annoying questions that follows designers from their first viz comm class to their death bed interview.

http://isgraphicdesignart.com/

There are so many levels to both “disciplines”—from a preteen grandson making a website for his grandmothers quilts, to Damien Hirst living to see himself make millions and millions of dollars—how do we place ourselves on this spectrum for the purposes of a conversation like this?

I imagine, for most people that are informed in an average way about the fact there is potentially a difference between design and art, it is a matter of “I know it when I see it.” I think this is a totally reasonable place for most people to be. After years and years of their son going to various school for design, photography, and fine art, my parents still don’t understand why or how I delineate those three things, and they get along just fine.

For me, I stopped worrying about the delineation because it served no real purpose except for to occasionally help describe what I do in a more palatable way. To my wife’s parents I am an “art director” because that is my most recent job title. To my brother I am a photographer because that is what he sees me doing.

I don’t know many people making a living as a graphic designer, art director, creative director, design researcher, design analyst, interaction designer or anything else calling themselves “artists.” At least in regards to their day job. They don’t have any need or interest in defending any particular position. Design being design is just fine, they don’t have to aspire to be artists.

All this terminology is very loaded for anyone even remotely creative. I remember my first art history course, and the teacher kept referring to “plastic” and an hour or so into class a girl stood up and screamed “WHY THE HELL DO YOU KEEP TALKING ABOUT PLASTICS!?”

Since we all have different backgrounds and have no idea what someone else might think the word plastic means in the context of art history, it is very hard to have our comments accurately received.

In a conversation with Mike last night he put it simply, “…graphic design is graphic design. I don’t care for it to be anything else.”

Initially when I started at the paper I wanted to jump in and redesign the whole thing. I’d still like to, but in the time I’ve been there with the new editor (who started as the same time as I did) we have just been working on the back end…Capacity building, getting the schedule to a more reasonable place, trying to figure out how to be autonomous money wise…

Of all the collateral documents that were floating around, the one that should be the most useful and informative is the shipping list, and the one that we were using was neither. It was adopted from another publication at some point. Put together in Excel it was small and hard to read. The first month I was there the issue got rearranged and it took us 2 weeks to realize we were short two pages.

I wanted to put something together that was more accessible, but would still retain all of the relevant information. I ended up making a more visual document, that illustrated spreads, basic layout, word count as well as communicating the names of the writers and artists for each article, and the due dates and acceptance of submissions.

You can see the grey blocks inside of each page which represents the space allocated for each article, and a slightly newer version also includes the word count for each space. Everybody working on the paper gets an updated copy weekly, and everyone has their own way of using the document. I need to keep track of the progress of layouts, and as I get things finished I get to cross spreads out with a sharpie so I have a very obvious read of what is done, and what needs attention. The editor uses it as a way to manage versions and locations throughout the editing process.

It hasn’t been as glamorous as redesigning the paper, but considering we are all dealing with this document all day everyday I wanted to make sure it was as pleasant and useful as possible.

My friend and former New Orleanian Samia Saleem has just released a book of post-Katrina postcards created by displaced NOLA designers. I interviewed her about the project for the next issue of MakingRoom, which will be online soon. You can read more about the project or buy the book now (with a custom slip cover+posters+buttons) at http://www.degreesnola.com/