My wife and I have been making an effort to walk more, and now that Spring weather is around the corner we’ve been taking the exercise outside. We’ll talk about all sorts of things but with her being an illustrator and being a graphic designer myself we often turn to discussions on art and creativity.
I don’t remember what the initial topic was, but a recent conversation turned to the idea that amazing art can be made when you bend or break “the rules.”
The idea of “rules” with art is a little iffy, but with design there are baseline concepts of what makes for good design. Everything from kerning and grids and spacing, complimentary colors, typeface, etc. When you’ve worked within those boundaries for so long, and know them well, you can take liberties in a way that makes for killer art.
Just today I saw a video from designer Jack Chen on Instagram about the typography of Evangelion, both Japanese and English. The video itself (which I highly recommend) is a cool history lesson on design in Evangelion, which perfectly touches on more than one of my obsessive interests. He makes a point to address the “mechanically compressed” type in the show and how it goes against the “first thing you learn not to do in typography.” (I’m having flashbacks to typography class right now…)
Jack quotes Peiran Tan’s wonderful analysis of design in Evangelion and how it “did evoke haste and, at times, despair—an emotional motif perfectly suited to a postapocalyptic story with existentialist themes.”
Jack and Peiran both express why it’s so brilliant better than I could hope to, but I have to rant a bit about how the design is in that show, and by extension, merchandise and even other works by Hideaki Anno. If you’ve seen Shin Godzilla, you know. I don’t know that Matisse EB or Matisse EB Pro was actually used in the film, but trappings of the design in EVA are present throughout. It gives the same sense of urgency and fear that the design work in Evangelion did.
I’m getting off topic but the Funimation localization of Shin Godzilla removes Anno’s trademark type and people were not happy, and rightfully so.
Anyway, I guess the point here is that when you know how to break the rules the right way you can make excellent art. Anno (and his team) have amazing design sense and you should absolutely, under no circumstances, remove it in the localization process!
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