The Vignelli Canon

The Vignelli Canon


Today I read The Vignelli Canon and learnt about his form of design and the way he conducts it. I found it very interesting and agreed with a lot of the things he had to say and will definitely take them an board. Some of the platforms he crossed were typefaces and fonts, page layouts, paper sizes and colours. One thing I did really like and could relate to was the way he approached what some people would think to be meaningless work. “Stripes and swash of colour splashed across pages for no reason whatsoever. Well, they are either meaningless or incredibly vulgar or criminal when done on purpose.” To me this means you could turn anything into something great be it a mistake or not which brings a sense of play into work and not worrying about mistakes. He also talks about how design should “stand by itself in all its clarity” and “stand by itself, without excuses, explanation or apologies.” I guess this means when’s you have created a final product or design of some form it should instantly be clear what it is and make sense to the customer instantaneously without question. This is something I think I could learn from personally. Another thing he states is about using primary colours and shapes as their “formal values are timeless”. To me this means keeping designs simple is the best solution for a successful design and referring back to before, it would make the design more clear and easier to understand. He always relates back to simplicity in many forms for instance white space too saying that sometimes the white space is even more important then the black of the letter said in some cases. This can be used in the context of magazine and book layouts. He talks a lot about grids as well, displaying different forms of layouts and where the type would go or the logo and so on so forth. Finally, my favourite part of the book was when he talked about what typefaces to use in certain contexts and how many different typefaces should be used within a single design. “Out of thousands of typefaces, all we need are a few basic ones” This is extremely useful for me as it will help me in my future endeavours decide what typefaces to use and also how to position them on the page. Hopefully this information will turn me into a better designer and help me persistently produce clear work which is easily translated to others.