The Vignelli Canon is a book publishing Massimo Vignelli’s views on design principles and the ones he considers to be the most important. Semantics is the search for the meaning of whatever we have to design, one of the most important processes to undertake before the designing can successfully begin. This is a design principle that I have found to be the most influential when approaching each of the studio briefs as without the research, my designs would have no substance or historical importance.

"Design without semantics is shallow and meaningless”

We design in a way in which we believe to be semantically correct and syntactically consistent but if this is not understood by the audience, then the work is essentially useless.

"Love complexities but hate complications"

Vignelli also highlights the importance of appropriateness, choosing the right kind of media, materials and scale for our work. This is something I will have to consider when approaching each new brief as one method of presentation may be appropriate for one project, but not another.

As designers it is thought that we have 3 responsibilities:

1.     To ourselves – integrity of the project

2.     To the client - solving the problem in a way that is economical sound and efficient

3.     To the public – providing a final design that is useable

"The computer allowed anybody to design new typefaces and that became one of the biggest visual pollution of all times"

Studio Practice