About Barry Deck Design

Designed from Graphic Design History II. Roads to PostModernism and Beyond. Art Center LAT Media Center.

HC1 – Barry Deck background

Barry Deck earned his MFA degree from California Institute of Art in 1989. The year after he first published his font designs, they still appear on numerous books and magazines such as Wired Eye, Emigre, Ray Gun, History of Graphic Design, and I.D. One of the most recognizable font he designed back in the early 1990s, the “Template Gothic” was entitled as “the typeface of the decade”, which typified the “new wave” typography movement.

At the time, design has entered the computer age, many software tools have given the potentials to designer streamline design processes. Barry Deck was one of the first designer who used computer tools for font designs. He had a large influence on graphic designers moving into desktop publishing(DTP) era. Fontographe, the software he used for his font design allowed him quickly make his fonts accessible to many users world-wide. After the typeface went around the world, it appeared on Cigarette ads in Germany, a nationwide Taco Bell campaign and Scientology billboards in L.A[1]. It made Deck became one of the most noticeable designer in the early 1990s.

Here comes the momentum, Deck didn’t need to market himself to sell or beg people to give him work. He didn’t need to steer his career. The market was set on auto and focused on Deck himself. The world different till his business in designfreelance got pigeonholed. He learned that design without plan means letting others drive your design interests. In 2007, Barry Deck delivered a commencement speech in DMAC, Design Media Arts College. He used himself as living proof to suggest self-marketing as a tool for design students to out-compete on the job market.

Continuing down the path, Deck set up his own company – Dysmedia, in New York. Deck expanded his firm from production based models to a resourceful design consultant firm. He provides branding, design thinking and strategies to serve business at all sizes. Major clients include: Coca-Cola, Pepsi ColaReebok, Nike, Apple, AT&T. etc.

HC2 – From design is a specialty to “who create are designing” –– Barry Deck

In the end of 19th century, designers like Rosemaire Tissi, Wolfgang Weingart, April Greiman, Lucile Tenazas and others have lead the mainstream typography trend because of the influence of computer technology. Reading habits were challenged. Page design involved large overlapped and inverted forms. Just a couple example: white texts on color shapes, letters were surrounded with ornamental elements all scattered on the surface of the entire page. It helps to burn calories when reading because reading involved with eye movements and hand gestures to adjust reading angles. Behind every layout theme was a design specialist who contextualizes the stories into a master piece.

HC3 – Barry Deck’s website study

When I first visited Barry Deck’s website, Barrydekgroup.com, I was surprised by how the information was presented because the overall theme of the site is very close to the current web design trend. In fact that the site was built in 2011. There are 30 design albums that have been put together and showcased on the home page. It is arranged in timely basis. All posts are in order from recent on top, latter on the bottom. One of the most recent posts he wrote was in July 29, 2013. Because the site centralizes many design work of Barry Deck, I think it would be a great study opportunity for me to learn how he came across the website design and how it communicates his design thinking.

Barry Deck’s website layout is conventional. The logo is fixed on the top and consistent on every page. The website is intentionally designed to communicate. It is persuasive rather than informative. We can tell this from the subline underneath the logo.

Navigation is shown on the right hand side, listed vertically as a series of questions: why > what > who > where. They are meant to provide a straight forward messaging of what the site is about and who’s the target audience. There is prominent space for contents. The footer and copyright statement is wrapped at the bottom of the site – again, a conventional approach for website design.

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Each section is followed by a detailed explanation. The reward is to give tankful information from every click. Every button leads to a specific destiny. It is very easy to navigate and jump from page to page without following the sequence. Questions and answers always comes immediately. I can’t imagine if the site was designed a decade ago or not. Visitors might have already clicked everywhere on the screen to find the real button!

Many traditional typefaces were redesigned to meet the contemporary web design standards that emphasize on cleanliness, readability and objectivity. Barry Deck choose Lekton for the site, a slab serif type similar to Consolas. Even though Lekton is not a screen font, it appeared less sharp compared to san-serif font that is designed for screen usage. To me, Lekton on Barry Deck site preserves an original lettering taste that neutralizes the cold digital experience.

Speaking from a user perspective, a common website design challenge is to balance the visual elegancy with site functions because every object on the screen has to translate from a block of code. This could be frustrating sometimes Especially when coding is not a designer’s specialty. In Barry Deck’s website, he presented all of his design work in a modular fixed grid structure. Size, color and space are evenly distributed. This allowed the visitors to have a quick glance of all his work. However, some of the design details are compromised because they have to fit in a 200×200 gird.

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To me, Barry Deck is a good example to demonstrate the intermedia connection between creative design and the business reality. He incorporates functional elements as a part of his design package including the use of bitmapped graphics mouse to handle commands, menu bar, etc. It preserves fundamental design principles and stimulate visitor’s mind.

Design practice carried out from the last decade begins with adopting software tools as a part of the design process. There are numbers of computer softwares, such as Adobe system, MacWrites, MacDraw and Macpaint. They give the Freedoms to the contemporary designers to accelerate electronic workflow. However, design with today’s tools is meant not only enhance the visual appearance but also design to influence human behaviors. The result is seamless, but the process is technical. Designers should have the knowledge to use their design functionally.

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The computer interface is a major game-change and it will continue to change as it goes. nowadays, Many of our content consumptions have moved to our mobile devices with smaller screens, therefore information flow has to be dynamic. Design for our high tech devices has to consider screen dimensions and pixel density. I have redesigned and rebuilt Barry Deck’s website with embed responsive function: An evolution of the iconic masonry theme that adds a bold confident. It is designed to handle any screen size and improves just about everything.

Original Barry Deck’s website – http://www.barrydeckgroup.com/

Redesigned Barry Deck’s website – http://njoy.cc/BarryDeck/index.html

Thank You

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[1] Zuzana Licko and Rudy VanderLans “Ambition/Fear”. Emigre 11. This article was first published in 1989.

[2] Ellen Lupton, and Abott Miller, Design Writing Research, Writing on Graphic Design, 1996.

Geoffrey Downding, An introduction to the History of Print Types. 1998.

[3] Phillip B. Meggs, A History of Graphic Design, 1983.