It is beautiful ... then gone

In my typography class last week our prof mentioned a book by a designer that was called "It is beautiful ... then gone" and I am just now getting to thinking about it.

I think the book was about found objects and was a collection of the designer's work, but after thinking about it, the title just sums up so much of what we as designers do, exactly what our role is. If you think about it, we're creating images to make a huge impact, in a relatively small amount of time. Glancing from a car window at a billboard, looking at a poster on the walls of a subway station as your train pulls out. Nobody ever spends a lot of time looking at it, it's just there for a moment, and then it's gone. It needs to be as beautiful and as incredible as it can in that moment, or it is lost entirely. We'll spend hours, days, weeks staring at every letterform, making sure that everything lines up, that it is interesting, it has balance and rhythm and adheres to a certain tone. We are composing little symphonies of type and image, persuading, informing, and hopefully pleasing you. And we've got seconds to do it in.

We work on a canvas that exists not only in depth, height and width, but in time as well, in a very specific and small amount of time. It is beautiful then gone.