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Dubberly Design Office
2501 Harrison Street, No. 7
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415 648 9899 fax
Articles
The Information Loop
Written for CIO Insight Magazine magazine by Hugh Dubberly.
Industrial age companies increased efficiency through mass production. They also used the tools of mass production to talk to their customers, sending the same message to as many people as possible. But mass communication isn’t uniformly efficient. As John Wanamaker quipped, “I know half of my advertising is wasted; I just don’t know which half.”
Notes on the Role of Leadership and Language in Regenerating Organizations
We collaborated with Michael Geoghegan, Paul Pangaro, and Peter Esmonde to produce a booklet for Sun about leadership and language.
Below are a few interior spreads. You can also download a PDF of the entire booklet.
Alan Cooper and the Goal Directed Design Process
Originally published in Gain AIGA Journal of Design for the Network Economy Volume 1, Number 2, 2001.
Alan Cooper is not your typical graphic designer—he’s an engineer and a card-carrying member of the AIGA. He inhabits both worlds and has something important to say to designers and other engineers.
Cooper is not one to say things softly. He’s outgoing, quick to offer an opinion or an aphorism, and seems to like nothing better than a healthy debate. His favorite topic: what’s wrong with the software that increasingly fills our lives.
The Next Web
The following is an interview of Hugh Dubberly by Ken Coupland in 2000. Originally published in Critique magazine, number 14 and 15, Winter and Spring 2000.
What impact is the Web having on graphic design now? Is there anything about all of this that’s truly new?
The Web is an interesting medium that has great influence, but the profession is in the midst of a tremendous change that has to do with far more than just computing. It goes back to the beginnings of professional design at the turn of the century, when mass production—particularly printing—separated the making of a thing from the planning of making a thing. When you plan how something will be made from the beginning, as when the Industrial Revolution moved us into mass production, you make objects which are generally the same. Now, at the end of the industrial era, we’re manufacturing things that can account for a lot of variation—custom PCs are a perfect example—and we’re designing systems with their future permutations in mind. Customization is even more of an influence when you begin to design online communications. No one’s experience is the same as someone else’s, and everyone’s experience changes over time. You have to ask what effect those differences will have on design.
The Baseball Projects: A Step-by-step Approach to Introducing Information Architecture
First published in Adobe Art Line, Issue 8, June 1997.
Also published in LOOP: AIGA Journal of Interaction Design Education, Number 1, November 2000.
Later Published in The Education of an E-Designer, Steven Heller, Allworth Press, 2001.
Over the last five years, the rapid growth in the number and complexity of Internet Web sites has created a demand for designers with skills and experience in Web site design and Web application design. The increased demand has bid up designers’ salaries. The public spotlight on the Internet, and the job opportunities it presents, has increased demand from students for classes that will prepare them for the Web-design market.
Managing Complex Design Projects
Originally published in Communication Arts, March/April, 1995.
Experience has taught me that two elements are critical for ensuring the success of any complex design project. First, the people involved must agree on the problem they wish to solve. And second, they must agree on the process for solving it. I want to share with you the tools that I use to facilitate those tasks.
Protecting Corporate Identity
First published in Communication Arts, January/February 1995.
Later published in Design Issues: How Graphic Design Informs Society, 2001.
If we took a survey of the steps people follow when starting a new business, we would probably find that creating a logo is in the top ten. From coffee shop to computer company, almost no self-respecting business goes to work without a logo.
One reason there are so many logos may be that designing logos is fun. Design problems do not get much more focused, visual, or direct. The possibilities for exploration and iteration are broad and deep, and few things in design are so pure and clean.
But things don’t remain pure and clean for long, because logos almost always end up being used by someone other than the designer.