Bad Design

Have you ever called design work “bad”? What did you mean? Was it illegible? Underdesigned? Did it draw too much attention to itself? Was it something to do with the designer? The content? The audience? Wait. What about good design? What does that look like? Is it clear? Simple? Just right? How do you know?

Bad Design is an ethos that questions hegemonic standards of universality, clarity, and function, in order to give room for specificity, mess, and uselessness in graphic design. It wants to make you think about what you deem good and how you learned that. So things can change. This lecture will tour popular design conventions, make the case for resisting them, and push forward alternative possibilities for visual representation.

This talk is scheduled to take place Saturday, June 15, 2024, at 11:35am New York time (EDT/UTC-4) as part of the main Typographics conference. Conference registration is required to attend in person.

About Luiza Dale

Luiza Dale (b. 1988, Rio de Janeiro) is a graphic designer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work explores (1) how live performance happens in print and digital reproductions and (2) visual representation that pushes against norms of clarity. Luiza designs independently, co-runs the studio The Aliens, and publishes as Quickbooks. She is Lecturer at the Yale School of Art and Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts, and Part-time Lecturer at Parsons School of Design. Luiza is currently graphic designer in residence at ISLAA (2023–2024). Starting fall 2024, she will be Assistant Professor at VCUarts. Luiza holds an MFA from the Yale School of Art where she was awarded the Charles Sawyer Prize.

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