When ready, create a new post in this OpenLab Course. At the top of the post copy and paste the following:
Warde, Beatrice. The Crystal Goblet, or Why Printing Should Be Invisible Princeton Architectural Press, 2009. Pages 39-43., Kepes, György. Language of Vision: Painting, Photography, Advertising-Design, Paul Theobald, 1949. Pages 200-221

  •  Select a design or design object created after 1971 in which the influence of the theories considered thus far can be seen.
  •  Begin with a brief description of the object, the designer who created it, and the historical circumstances under which it was made.
  • Your goal is to provide a critical examination, not an account of historical details.

 

A design that I would like to talk about is the UPC bar code. This simple design we see on everything we buy or touch nowadays was designed by Norman Joseph Woodland and was first introduced in 1974.  Norman was at a beach in Miami when he started to draw lines with different weights and later on realized it looked like some sort of morse code. He then took his design to pen and paper making this as simple as black and white. the line strokes would vary as well as each number at the bottom. Many designers saw this simple design yet so comprehensive that they decided to give it a try. They introduced the first products with a UPC scanning bar at the Marsh Supermarket in the small town of Troy, Ohio. Finally, at 8 a.m. on June 26, 1974, the first product was scanned successfully and the rest is history, something so simple and without much color has shaped the world we now live in. The 99% of things we purchase or use have a UPC barcode on them. This has made the mailing industry distribute our packages at an intensive rate and it has also served the food industry in the best way possible by giving them the power to be able to sell products at a fast phase. Simple black lines have transformed the world we now live in.

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