Pual Rand and Stefan Bucher

Paul Rand was a graphic artist known for a few corporate logos, including logos for IBM, UPS, Enron, Westinghouse, and ABC. He is also known for his design philosophies and as an influence on the Swiss Style used in graphic design. He strongly opposed postmodernist design theory. He believed in a perfect balance between form and content. He said that too much form and the design loses meaning and too much content and the form loses interest. This balance is an objective all designers strive (or should strive) for.

 Stefan G. Bucher is writer, illustrator, and graphic designer. He is in charge of the design studio 344 Design in California. He is best known for his animation series Daily Monster, in which he drew a new monster and filmed himself everyday for 100 days. He then posted these drawings and videos and viewers would comment and write stories about the monsters. These drawings and stories were later compiled into a book called 100 Days of Monsters. The series has been featured in Communication Arts Illustration and American Illustration annuals and was recognized by the New York chapter of AIGA. 

I particularly take to Stefan's philosophy about how he lets the images form. He doesn't form them himself entirely. Some of the creating is in the happening. It's a little like chaos theory. He makes a Rorschach-like blob and finds the monster within. He only controls the form of the blob to a certain extent. The rest is really unpredictable. I also liked what he says about his preference for monsters. He claims that he has no preference for monsters and that he didn't choose to start drawing monsters, but the monsters chose him. He also talks about how he sees these ideas and others can't, so in a way it's his duty to let people see them. 

This concept that Stefan employed in making his monsters is extremely similar to the motifs we made for our haikus. He saw the form in the blobs like we looked for the forms to match our thumbnails in the pages and pages of blobs and marks we had. We had to tie the two forms together to create something that had a balance of content and form.