THE NEW ‘UGLY’ DESIGN
Poster 01 | Ou's favourite poster from Autotypography
A note that Bailey had for my zine layout was to emphasise the ‘ugly-childish’ aesthetic a bit more, so I researched some contemporary ugly design in practice for some composition inspiration.
Autotypography.
Singaporean graphic designer Darius Ou began his Autotypography project seven years ago whilst bored at design school, and has since produced a collection of 365 posters. They are now showing as part of the Dissolving Margins exhibition at Lasalle’s Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore. Ou has experimented with breaking the principles of “good design” from stretching typefaces to blending amorphous forms adding to contemporary ugly design.
“I see a lot of graphic design rules very loosely now and I don’t follow them like a bible,” he says. “To me, I’d rather people say I hate your work than to not get any comments at all.” - Darius Ou
Poster 12 | A poster from Autotypography paying homage to a reddit comment on his work
“If we always follow the rules set by designers who lived in the 20th century—but we live in the 21st century—then what are we blindly following?”
Ou began to see his works as questioning the rules that he was taught in design school, rather than seeing it as ugly design, the meaning had changed for him. He realised that pushing boundaries is contextual and comes in many forms, it doesn’t have to be ugly but needs to be different to be able to be remembered.
He added on to this appeal, stating that design can only progress if we as designers look for unconventional methods to approach a brief and challenge current aesthetics. “If you stay true to always asking ‘Why?’ and ‘Why not?’, you will always stay ahead,” he said. “It is always change that will evoke change.”
Looking into Ou’s work has asked me to question my own design aesthetic. I knew that choosing a subject like Comic Sans for this brief was already going to break me out of my minimalistic style but I never realised how challenging it REALLY would be. Looking at your work and saying ‘this looks ugly’ makes it rather hard to continue working if you don’t know what your true intent is.
I think I now have a good understanding of ugly design, it’s not just ugly, but it’s breaking design rules and creating conversation. It’s eye catching!
From looking at Ou’s posters, I’m hoping to experiment with blending shapes with a gradient and consider the form of my type, such as stretching it or using type on a path in Adobe Illustrator. There is much to be explored!
Captured images at Dissolving Margins exhibition
SOURCES
https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/schooled-in-the-new-ugly-lessons-from-darius-ous-autotypography/
http://dariusou.work/autotypography.html
IMAGE SOURCES
http://dariusou.work/images/works/autotypography/2.jpg
http://dariusou.work/images/works/autotypography/4.jpg
http://dariusou.work/images/works/autotypography/at3.jpg
http://dariusou.work/images/works/autotypography/at5.jpg
