Karl Gerstner, Designing Programmes
The role of a designer is to deliberately select elements, and combine them in a logical way to say something specific. Like the author describes, it’s an act of selection, which in order to be integral, needs a method.
Today, in a way everything is stylistically allowed, and the elements of a “unified” design have been revisited over and over in time. Therefore, the author believes designers must find new innovative structures within the existing basic constraints. For Gerstner, the designer finds creative freedom when pondering and understanding all the components of his task; for a typographer, language and type, and content and form. But it’s not these elements per se that give meaning to the work, but the way the designer chooses to have them combined. Only in a specific order will letters like “Y,” “E,” and “S” have a meaning, and will be more powerful than the letters combined individually.

How I see this article is that in order to create and deliver a personal, original design, one must master the basics. In a way, you must know the rules before knowing how to break them effectively. With the amount of content delivered in today’s media, it’s important to methodically break the rules. I consider rules are made to be broken, because once the designer knows them, again, through an act of selection, he can decide which ones to maintain untouched, and which ones to alter. In a way, learning the limitations teaches you how far and in which ways you can manipulate them. Once you know how you’re going to use these rules, you can design your own structure.

Qs: The author claims that “there remain only open doors to be unlocked.” Is this true? Will the fundamentals of design that we have today, shaped by our design history, will always be relevant? How much does design (in its essential form) change?
The author talks about the typographer’s freedom. Considering the fundamental purpose of designers, can they ever be free when it comes to their work? How does this compare to the level of freedom of artists?