April Osmanof | MFA Thesis in Graphic Design | Maryland Institute College of Art

“Providing meaning to a mass of unrelated needs, ideas, words and pictures—it is the designer’s job to select and fit this material together and make it interesting.” —Paul Rand

The role of a Graphic Designer is a very open ended one. It is organization. It is collaboration. It is experimentation. It is taking something plain and making it beautiful. It is creating something tangible from an idea. Graphic Design is many things, but is it itself content?

The idea of design is a very simple one. Good design is taking something and making it more accessible, but is it design’s simplicity that makes it so complex? Does design exist without its content?

This thought process brought me to an interesting dilemma. If Graphic Design does not exist without its content, then how does one approach a Thesis centered around Design? Should the content and the design be made simultaneously, and if so, is that using design to its fullest potential? Much of the fun of design comes from the obstacles that one comes across while figuring out how to creatively and concisely present the information at hand.

For my Thesis I wanted to create something more communal than just organizing my own content. I wanted to make something that involved my peers and existed in the world outside of my own Thesis. I wanted to make something social.

“By listening to some music, by reading some books, by looking at paintings, and most important by hanging out with one another - by collaborating with one another and creating your own network—you can achieve something that is much better than what is out there.” —David Amram

I spent most of my life working as a fine artist. I found this form of creativity to be a very fulfilling yet isolating experience. As I entered into the world of design, I became intrigued by the constant collaboration. While on a design project you collaborate with your clients and audience. You feed off of each others outside knowledge and experiences. Design is hardly ever about design. It is usually about something else. Design morphs itself with the content it is confronted with. It is a collaboration, and collaboration is a vehicle to get great things to happen.

For my Thesis I wanted to take the works of my peers and help to elevate them by organizing and promoting them to the outside world. I gathered content from various sources under a single topic and presented them as an exhibition of sorts.

“The nice thing about the gallery shows is that without having to pay any money you can just go and see it.” —Yoko Ono

The internet much like a gallery show, is free to attend. What is amazing about the internet is that it is available to almost everyone, everywhere at all times. The internet never shuts down. A person can participate in the culture of the outside world while sitting in their kitchen typing in their underwear.

Placing content on the web, is publishing in the strongest sense of the word. The whole idea of the internet is so expansive and accessible. The internet is an ideal place for a gallery.

“Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.” —Jeffery Zeldman

We are smack in the midst of a new form of communication. Design on the web is at its infancy stage. It is a new frontier yet to be conquered. The web exists as a place, while simultaneously being a kind of non-place. It is linear. It is circular. The internet is architectural.

When designing a building consideration must be given on how to navigate people through its space. Once a building is built the way in which people interact with that space makes it immediately apparent if the design is a failure or a success. This is what makes Web Design like Architecture. A successful web design must guide its viewers to behave with the site in the ways in which its design intends. As this principle is a commonality between the web and architecture, it is also what sets web design apart from print design. Print design is static. It typically has a singular entry point and a lateral path for its viewers to follow. The unique flow of the internet is what pushed me to believe that the web was the right sort of media for me use to publish my Thesis.

“We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police.” —Jeff Arder

What would the first issue be about? I wanted the site to be a representation of our current time. We are in an era when fast food has infiltrated our very existence. The constant bombardment of the fast food industry permeates through to our every day lives. Fast food is a part of our American culture. Now is the era of the “McMansion” and the “McDonaldization” of the world. Picking fast food for the inaugural issue just made sense.

“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” —Jack Kerouac

The end result is hungup.org. The site acts as a gallery and a zine simultaneously. It’s playful but it also provides a clean enough backdrop that you can imagine it away. I gave it a hand made feel to keep with the informal presentation typically associated with a zine. Hungup.org is my collaboration with my generation.

hungup.org about hungup.org