Great Graphic Design

So half way through this last quarter I shared this formula of mine with a class of my students and was asked about it recently. I've never really shared this with anyone else before but here is how it goes. This scrawl from above is the first page in my moleskin and is usually redrawn at the beginning of every sketchbook I make.

While I was in graduate school I was constantly picking apart what design is (or for that matter what makes up Great Graphic Design). I see it as a system almost of checks and balances between three major parts. The Concept, The Content and The Application. I went on further to create this venn diagram of my formula, mainly because I have this odd obsession with venn diagrams.

I think the only confusion for some would be that I use Concept and Idea as separate entities. This is because a concept may be a theme, a word, a sentence, some ambiguous thing floating in the ether until it is combined with content to create an idea. An example would be my holiday cards for this season, the concept was to be able to interchange words to create new ones but I could have done that with any set of words. When combined with the Content of different holidays it became the Idea for my Holiday cards (the cards were the application of the Idea to create Great Fucking Design).