-
Dubberly Design Office
2501 Harrison Street, No. 7
San Francisco, CA 94110 -
415 648 9799 phone
415 648 9899 fax
*The following is an interview of Hugh Dubberly by Ken Coupland in 2000. Originally published in **Critique magazine**, number 14 and 15, Winter and Spring 2000.*
**What impact is the Web having on graphic design now? Is there anything about all of this that’s truly new?**
The Web is an interesting medium that has great influence, but the profession is in the midst of a tremendous change that has to do with far more than just computing. It goes back to the beginnings of professional design at the turn of the century, when mass production—particularly printing—separated the making of a thing from the planning of making a thing. When you plan how something will be made from the beginning, as when the Industrial Revolution moved us into mass production, you make objects which are generally the same. Now, at the end of the industrial era, we’re manufacturing things that can account for a lot of variation—custom PCs are a perfect example—and we’re designing systems with their future permutations in mind. Customization is even more of an influence when you begin to design online communications. No one’s experience is the same as someone else’s, and everyone’s experience changes over time. You have to ask what effect those differences will have on design.
*First published in **Adobe Art Line**, Issue 8, June 1997.*
*Also published in **LOOP: AIGA Journal of Interaction Design Education**, Number 1, November 2000.*
*Later Published in **The Education of an E-Designer**, Steven Heller, Allworth Press, 2001.*
Over the last five years, the rapid growth in the number and complexity of Internet Web sites has created a demand for designers with skills and experience in Web site design and Web application design. The increased demand has bid up designers’ salaries. The public spotlight on the Internet, and the job opportunities it presents, has increased demand from students for classes that will prepare them for the Web-design market.
*Originally published in **Communication Arts**, March/April, 1995.*
Experience has taught me that two elements are critical for ensuring the success of any complex design project. First, the people involved must agree on the problem they wish to solve. And second, they must agree on the process for solving it. I want to share with you the tools that I use to facilitate those tasks.
*First published in **Communication Arts**, January/February 1995.*
*Later published in **Design Issues: How Graphic Design Informs Society**, 2001.*
If we took a survey of the steps people follow when starting a new business, we would probably find that creating a logo is in the top ten. From coffee shop to computer company, almost no self-respecting business goes to work without a logo.
One reason there are so many logos may be that designing logos is fun. Design problems do not get much more focused, visual, or direct. The possibilities for exploration and iteration are broad and deep, and few things in design are so pure and clean.
But things don’t remain pure and clean for long, because logos almost always end up being used by someone other than the designer.
*Originally published in **U&lc**, Volume 17, Number 3, Summer 1990.*
The question is not easily answered. From different perspectives the response can be a resounding yes or a qualified no. Electronic typesetting and type designed for a computer and on a computer have made some type lovers anxious. Yet other fastidious and committed type users have found working with type in this electronic age a compelling challenge.
*Originally published in User Interface Design Workbook, Multimedia Computing Corporation*
*Hypermedia, sometimes called interactive multimedia, offers one of the greatest promises for computing. It brings together numbers, text, drawings, photographs, animation, video, and sound, presenting them in an interactive and therefore nonlinear format.*
*Such a rich, new medium almost invites confusion. With no tradition to follow, and so many media available, information often becomes hopelessly complex and obscure. Sadly, early results have often been a confusing mess.*
*Still, the potential for hypermedia is great. The challenge for designers and authors is to find ways to make interactive multimedia clear.*
*Originally published by Graphic Design Education Association (GDEA), Annual National Symposia*
**Abstract:**
*Computers are a new medium—not merely tools.
They combine many forms of information and offer
new ways of organizing information. Designing
for computers—using computers as a medium—
can open up business and creative opportunities.
Design education should recognize the opportunities,
embrace the use of computers as a medium,
and adapt curricula accordingly.*
*Originally published in **AIGA Journal of Graphic Design** Volume 6, Number 4, 1989.*
Imagine an interactive catalog in which you can point at a picture and expand it into a video demonstration, or imagine a history of design with references to the histories of art, architecture, and music. This new medium will be like books, movies, and games all rolled into one.
I would like to introduce a new medium and a new structure for organizing information. This new medium is the personal computer. It is distinguished by its ability to simulate other media: today primarily paper, but increasingly it also combines photography, recording, film, and television. The personal computer opens up the possibility of organizing these media into multi-dimensional structures.
*Originally published in **CG: The Magazine for Compugraphic Customers**, 1988.*
**How would you define the terms “visual communication” and “computer graphics”?**
Everybody is involved in visual communication. When you start to talk about people using technology to communicate visually, most of what we use the computer for today is for simulating paper. We are seeing now with hypermedia the move from using the computer to simulate paper to using it as the place where you create information and perform manipulation and actually see things—models of real, imagined, or projected worlds.