Anatomy of Design

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ANATOMY OF DESIGN

Minimalism and maximalism are two sides of modernism. While orthodox

modernists of the 1920s and 1950s (the Bauhaus and the Swiss, respectively)

preferred economy and thus rejected complexity because it limited accessibility,

which impeded functionality, minimal and maximal can nevertheless serve the

same utilitarian ends. Moreover, they can be equally balanced in the same work

at the same time, as The Chase shows in its unique design for The Manchester

Dog Home Annual Report, an atypical venue for the application of contemporary

modernism or any other ism.

The Manchester Dog Home is an underfunded charity in the United

Kingdom that in 2002 was desperately seeking a fresh influx of cash to

support the care of the 6,796 strays handled by the facility in the previous

year. The design brief to The Chase was to somehow appeal to potential

donors efficiently, emotionally, and compellingly, and on the barest of budgets.

Through short lines of text and clever visual aids the story of the home,

combined with facts and figures of their accomplishments, fill the pages. But

not all the pages are filled.

Sure, the cover graphically illustrates how many dogs were rescued last

year—each image a portrait of an actual orphan filling the entire image area.

And the following spread is a type-packed listing of the name of each dog that

had passed through the home. But the next spread is as paper-white as can be,

with only a small visual and text block in the lower right corner. Coming off

such a complex presentation of picture and text, the designers decided to give

the reader some relief while at the same time making a statement—“every dog

counts”—that would resonate. The entire publication was produced cheaply as

an A3 size, unstapled newsprint report, and was the only fund-raising

mechanism for the entire year. Cheap as it was to produce, this was no dog of

an annual report. Owing to its bite, it generated considerable income.

One would be hard pressed to show the precedent for this piece, as no

other dog shelter has ever employed a similar graphic solution. Nonetheless,

the designers did employ concepts that had been used before and some that

reveal contemporary trends. In recent years, designers have become more

interested in using clutter no longer as a postmodern critique of Swiss

minimalism but for its own eye-catching, playful virtues. In this attention-

deficient multimedia age, readers and viewers are actually more apt to focus on

cluttered surfaces as a kind of game in the same way that children (and adults)

were captivated by “Where’s Waldo?” The dogs shown on the cover invite the

reader to find their own perfect pup in the crowd. And the crowded list of odd,

funny, and familiar names is equally compelling, like reading the names on

commemorative walls and monuments.

Not everyone can be relied on to patiently read every last name on the

list, but companies like Nike and the Yellow Pages, which have produced

advertisements where even more names are packed into space, have found that

readers are often hypnotized by such data and will scan them for hours.

Similarly, but for different reasons, listings of the dead and missing from major

catastrophes draw attention. While not comparing stray dogs to lost humans,

committed dog-lovers are no less concerned or compelled to read the lists.

For the minimalist component of the annual report, The Chase was

certainly cognizant of examples where white space was used as a design element

to draw attention to a message. The Beatles’ so-called White Album, designed by

pop artist Richard Hamilton in 1968, exemplifies how effective empty space can be

in capturing attention. Likewise, Volkswagen’s “Think Small” and “Lemon” ads,

designed by Helmut Krone in 1960, emphasized the Lilliputian character of this

automotive beetle. In the end, miminal and maximal together in concert helped

make a distinctive and totally accessible fund-raising tool for a worthy cause.

Manchester Dogs’ Home Annual Report

Designer: The Chase

2002 Manchester Dogs’ Home Annual Report, cover/spreads

ad: Harriet Devoy d: Stephen Royle s: The Chase c: Manchester Dogs’ Home

MDH is a charity that rehomes dogs and is clinically underfunded. The annual report is A3

in a size on a newspaper stock and it is unstapled (like a newspaper). The cover visually

shows how many dogs were rescued last year.

Lots of things piled up neatly

Lots of type set neatly

Lots of neat white space