Design Manifesto

A manifesto: "a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, as one issued by a government, sovereign, or organization".

We were given to task to research into different manifestos through the website: http://www.manifestoproject.it

As I read through the manifestos, I noticed that I liked some manifestos a lot than others as some related to me more on a personal level and some of the points that were made from certain people/designers I highly disagreed/agreed with.

My favourite manifestos:

I loved both these manifestos, the first one is titled 'Humans' by Mike Mills and the second one is 'Ten things I have learned' by Milton Glaser. I particularly like the points that Mike makes about 'sometimes being dumb is the only smart alternative' this relates to me personally as I often find myself being 'dumb' about a lot of things, but sometimes it just needs to happen in order to get somewhere, instead of avoiding it. This relates to his point about embracing your sanity in order to be sane.

Additionally, I especially loved two points that Milton Glaser mentions in his manifesto; 1. You can only work with people that you like, 2. Less is not necessarily more. I agree with the first one as working with people that you dislike/negative people can really affect the work that you produce, happy person= happy work. For the second point, Milton relates it to a Persian rug; you cant say that less is more because every part of that rug, every change of colour, every shift in form is absolutely essential for its aesthetic success.

Reflecting on my reading, I have been set the task to come up with my own manifesto:

I decided to make a few clear points/rules for my manifesto:

1. Stop faffing around

2. Stop getting stressed over literally nothing. Stop, think, what are you ACTUALLY stressing about this time? 

3. All work is good work even if you do end up binning it, its helped you somehow

4. If it doesn't work the first time, try it twice more instead of 6 more times... then fuck it and move on

5. Go and see more, constantly! Even if its just random like Ikea, a farm, a 3 hour journey away to some random city, just GO!

From our manifesto notes, we got into groups of 6 to discuss and develop our ideas and suggestions in order to create one refined manifesto point which applies to all of us. We then presented our chosen idea at the end.

Our group manifesto point:

Blood, Sweat and Tears, Each word represents something to us as graphic designers:

• Blood: is the investment constantly bleeding into design
• Sweat: is the hard work that makes good work great
• Tears: is the passion embedded into our work