For the Print Magazine Rant & Raves Issue Mother Design was asked to comment on the zeitgeist of graphic design with either a rave or a rant. Writing a complaint as an insider looking at other design seemed counter to the spirit of Mother Design while gushing about design we made or others made also created a weird feeling of being a critic.

We decided to do what came natural and make something that addressed the state of design as an open ended evolving process. After much debate we chose the phrase ?A function lost, A form found.? to address the dominate current in design of repurposing functional objects as forms. This process gives new meaning and life to objects that have been made obsolete by changes in technology or other shifts in society.

This conversation also led us to discuss the future function of print as a medium since this assignment came from a magazine called ?Print.? Will it have a function? Will it have the same form? How will print be utilized 10 years from now? 50 years from now?
Obviously, we cannot answer for the future of print, but we tried to propose a positive future possible through this process of design. By reusing the metal objects discovered buried for years underground as letterforms, we hoped to propose a future where print does have a purpose beyond how it functions currently.

We chose to juxtapose these metal letterforms with the graphic forms used in testing print quality. (e.g. the lines, gradients, and other forms on the sheets that get printed when a printer is turned on to show a printer is ?working? properly) Technicians use these forms to gauge if and where a problem exists in the printing process. These forms currently have a very real function, but we wanted to represent them as forms to see if we could shift how people view the function of these test forms.

In the end, we wanted to communicate a positive future for print, but not as it is now. We wanted to make something to show that print is not a dying medium, but one that is ripe for redefining and to demonstrate through our actions how this might start to happen.