cullmanndesign blog

Google celebrates their contributing doodlers.

In the last 20 years, the @ symbol has grown to mean many things to many people. It’s part of our identity, our brands, communication-in business and friendship. It can symbolize an independence that allows us to share our thoughts and ideas without censorship or it can represent a media that affords no privacy to anyone. Regardless, @ has become a significant part of our culture and of new media.

It is with this spirit that the Museum of Modern Art has recently acquired @ as part of their collection. The MOMA blog positions the acquisition as an opportunity to recognize and celebrate those intangible objects that cannot be housed or contained through traditional means. There is also a more traditional approach to the @ as a typographical element—a design that is elegant and well balanced—and as a cultural idea. The Department of Architecture and Design at MOMA recognizes how many different cultures and social sub-groups have adapted the @ to suite their needs. Examples include technologist who have adapted it for an identification device, others as a n expression for gender neutrality and others as a short-hand for animals and possessions.

The work, not currently on display, is featured as ITC American Typewriter and attributed to Ray Tomlinson, a typographer and designer. You may view the work by visiting the MOMA Collection.

Milton Glaser’s thoughts on drawing are documented in a video directed by C. Coy. The video exposes Mr. Glaser’s believes that drawing grants him the ability to better digest and process the world around him and better interact with it.

I had watched the video and it had stuck with me for a few days. I began to think about my own though process and how I have used drawing myself to ingest information and make it relevant to me. I’ve found, especially in my professional life, that drawing has allowed me to explore ideas that I would otherwise not have developed. Drawing has also been an easy way for me to digest information and preserve it. My notebooks in high school and college looked me like sketchbooks: visual diagrams, doodles and scribbles that I was able to associate with information I needed. I also found it much easier to associate the visuals I had created with the information than the written notes or formulas.

Looking into how drawing affects a person’s cognitive ability, I’d found a very dated reference in a University of Chicago text by Fred Carleton Ayer, The Psychology of Drawing With Special Reference to Laboratory Teaching, that criticized the use of visual charting and drawing as a crutch and alternative to best study practices. I don’t think that anything could be further from the truth. The author had stated that despite an improvement in test scores of those students who had made use of charting and sketching in their note-taking, only those who relied on strict written notes had scored in the highest percentile. The data in Mr. Ayer’s article had indicated that although the top percentile had scored highest, it was the group that had sketched that had made up a high-scoring median in the group.

The need for someone to draw isn’t clear. We start children off drawing, and use it as therapy for people in emotional and physical recovery. I believe that everyone carries devices and characteristics that help them internalize information. For me, drawing has always been a way to easily express my own ideas and share them with others. The older I get, the more I realize that drawing is also a way to make the world my own. I have an easier time remembering my own drawings, my record of the world, then some of the actual events and concepts that the drawing represents. I used to feel as though drawing was a distraction from my focus, I’m now very comfortable with it keeping me focused and attentive.

MILTON GLASER DRAWS & LECTURES from C. Coy on Vimeo.