Graphic design-specific essay “Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than to hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain. There is nothing simple or dull in achieving the transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline.”
From The Crystal Goblet, or, Printing Should Be Invisible, by Beatrice Warde (1900-69), 1955
Read the piece above carefully, and then answer the following two questions:
1. What do you think Warde was trying to say? Don’t just paraphrase her text – explain it
2. How relevant is her text? Answer this with specific reference to five different examples of graphic design taken from five different lectures in the module’s lecture programme.
The essay must be designed on one A3 sheet as an article for a design magazine such as Eye or Elephant etc.
It must have 1,500 words +/- 10%, inc. captions and refs, and 5 pictures…each with exactly 20 words caption
Title The Crystal Goblet: A Fine Vintage? By…(fill in your name).
You should support your argument(s) with references and visual evidence according to Harvard – it will not be enough just to ramble subjectively. You will get help with all this.
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