Annotated Bibliography No. 2

Rutledge, Andy. "The Design Lesson." Design View. 28 Sept. 2010. Web. 13 Oct. 2010. <http://www.andyrutledge.com/the-design-lesson.php>.

Andy Rutledge here defines the abstraction of design elements, offering advice. He claims that there is only one lesson to learn in graphic design once all of the understanding of artistic fundamentals are there. He states “nothing is what it actually is” and that “everything other than content is representative of something else.” This is the lesson that he asserts it the only lesson required. His main point, at stated at the end is “no designer is likely to achieve any significant level of competence without the firm understanding that design requires the employment of representative components.”


I agree with Andy Rutledge that the abstraction of design elements is important — a line is not a line, a box is not a box, etc. — and his point is that this is an overarching lesson in design, universally applied. I don’t think it is his intention to discredit tutorials offering advice in other areas such as technique. When he speaks of “the only lesson,” I believe he is referring to the sole philosophy of design rather than the practical applications. It’s very obvious that elements in design represent other things and are basically metaphors introduced to aid the conveyance of content, but I don’t think this fact has to be overanalyzed like Rutledge has done here. It needs to be suggested, but in the end, design comes down to understanding your audience and applying specific techniques. It is unfortunate, I think, how little philosophy’s role is.