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They suggest these contests often encourage sub–par final products, as they have been designed with little attention to the formal processes that most professional designers employ (such as concepting, research, sketching, etc.) (Lawson, 2006).

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“‘The beauty of our site is that it doesn’t matter if you have a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design or if you’re a grandma in Tennessee with a bunch of free time and Adobe ... Illustrator’” (Steiner, 2009).

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Is The Pretty Ugly a refreshing reinvigoration of a visual communications industry that has become too flabby and comfortable, or the outward sign of a profession in crisis?

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There’s something undeniably decadent in a group of highly and expensively educated Western designers producing knowingly ‘bad’ work.

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We live in an age where everything around us is (to an extent) competently designed: groceries, restaurants, magazines, medicines, all researched and marketed to the nth degree. A professional patina applied. Design as service industry.

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Many of the the designers featured in our book studied at the design school Werkplaats Typografie, where Armand Mevis teaches.”

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‘Default Design’

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This is a highly educated generation of designers using their knowledge to break with what they were given as rules.

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“It is a new kind of beauty that isn’t based upon pure visual pleasure, it is a beauty based upon context-driven design, being transparent with working methods, tools and materials,” claim the book’s editors, Martin Lorenz and Lupi Asensio of Barcelona design studio TwoPoints.Net, who came up with the Pretty Ugly term to describe the ‘movement’ and who are interviewed in the new issue of CR.

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Wozencroft described FUSE as ‘a new sensibility in visual expression, one grounded in ideas, not just image.’

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1936 Rose Hobart, Joseph Cornell 1958 A Movie, Bruce Conner 1963 Scorpio Rising, Kenneth Anger 1975 Kennwort: Overlord, Stuart Cooper 1976 Die weisse Leinwand ist ein rotes Tuch, Hartmut Geerken 1980 Murder Psalm, Stan Brakhage 1985 Continental Breakfast, Matthias Müller 1987 Dal polo all’equatore, Yervant Gianikian, Angela Ricci Lucci 1990 Home Stories, Matthias Müller 1991 Lyrisches Nitrat, Peter Delpeut 1992 Rock Hudson’s Home Movies, Mark Rappaport 1992 Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies under America, Craig Baldwin 1994 All You Can Eat,Michael Brynntrup 1999 Vacancy, Matthias Müller 1999 Outer Space, Peter Tscherkassky 2000 Phoenix Tapes, Christoph Girardet, Matthias Müller 2002 Metropolen des Leichtsinns, Thomas Draschan

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Metropolen des Leichtsinns

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ALL YOU CAN EAT