Problem Solved: A Primer in Design and Communication

by Michael Johnson
Phaidon Press, New York NY, 2004
288 pp., illus. 150 b/w, 500 col. Trade, $49.95; paper, $29.95
ISBN: 0-7148-4174-9; ISBN: 0-7148-4453-5.

Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens
Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, USA

ballast@netins.net

In the U.S., where art schools are often a mixture of artists and designers, the former are typically said to "create" works of art while the latter are apt to more modestly claim that they only "solve problems." To put it another way (as does this book's author), "[while] a fine art student can get away with creating his or her own problems to solve, a communications student is usually handed someone else's, with a looming deadline thrown in." It is itself a problem that designers always have to deal with limitations of time, function, budget, style and print production, and it leads to unending discussions about whether or not it would help to compile a typology (a comprehensive directory) of kinds of problems, and, having done so, to identify trustworthy, time-saving means to address those problems. Among the best-known books on this subject is Forget All the Rules You Ever Learned About Graphic Design (1981), by Bob Gill, whose influence is acknowledged in the introduction to this book. Of related significance are books by Edward de Bono (not mentioned here), who wrote interminably about what he called "lateral thinking"; A Smile in the Mind by Beryl McAlhone and David Stuart (1996); and, most recently, The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher (2001).

This book by a British designer who is Creative Director of Johnson Banks is the paperbound edition of a title that was first released by Phaidon in 2002. Given the excellence and extraordinary number of its illustrations, as well as its vigorous, literate tone, it is a deserving addition to the always ongoing debate in design about how to arrive at proposals that are both unexpected and appropriate.

There are eighteen sections in this book, each given to a certain kind of communication problem, the point of which is summed up by a memorable heading that (consistent with the samples shown) is both surprising and suitable. There are, for example, sections that play up such themes as evolution versus revolution, doing more while using less, making fresh use of historical styles, finding legitimate ways to resolve ethical imbroglios, effectively designing for education, and so on. With each turn of the page, one encounters the finest examples of wit (ranging from hilarious to offensive), such as the political billboard of a pregnant Tony Blair that reads "Four Years of Labour and He Still Hasn't Delivered"; or a book of short stories by Vladimir Nabokov (who was not only a writer but a prominent butterfly expert as well) in which the letters of his name on the cover are mounted on pins in a butterfly case; or a recent ad for Volkswagen in which three of the redesigned Beetles appear to be feeding like piglets at the chassis of an older van.

(Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 20, No. 1, Autumn 2004.)