GRAP 2030 // Week 1 // Class Prep // Graphic design and the making of meaning

"Design is about the future because every form of it manifests the future."

"How and why we affect the future."

"What designers really do... we think."

"Graphic designers think about the meaning of things. How things come to mean what they do. Then ponder how this information might be conveyed and used in a visual manner." — not just visual

"How do materials affect the thing we are creating?"

"Graphic design tries to help others with their world." — external reflection. A form of communication.

"Actively exploits curiosity and mess-making at the same time. Anything close to alchemy practiced today is graphic design. Astounding materials into amazing things. Paid to play." — I've never thought of design as play. Design has always been a process of thinking, sketching, drawing, creating, responding. It's always been structured. The concept of "play" in the sense that coming up with concepts and ideas constitutes unstructured and unrestrained practice, the idea that every iteration of a concept or sketch is working towards a "final performance"—the finished design artefact. But is it play? I'm not sure. I'll have to read into this some more. Hell, sometimes designing isn't fun at all. It can be bloody hard. Like a solid sprint where you wonder if you're getting anywhere at all then "BAM!" the deadline hits and its over and you wonder what just happened. Or a marathon, where your muscles ache and you constantly hit brick walls before finding stride only to need regular water refreshments and in the end you finish the race and collapse to one side and need to recover for a week. Sure, it can be fun sometimes. But if you're working as a designer, it's not fun most of the time, well, at least in my experience. 

"Service oriented profession. Perform transformative role. Change perception of information to provide audience with understanding."

Poor communication leads to greater problems.

Graphic design is mediatory.

Help make sense of what is being said and present this information in visual ways.

We are artists. Analogue and digital media to create beautiful messages to provide better information.

Narrative structure of visual delivery.

"It is our responsibility to show the visual representation of linguistic ideas."

"We use a branch of linguistic philosophy known as semiotics... study the signs and signifiers and understand how this relationship creates meaning and affects communication. Critical tool when crafting messages because it allows us to observe the underlying mechanics of how meaning is constructed."

"Design must understand the greater culture to produce meaning for a particular audience."

"What works in one environment can be disastrous in another."

"I the end graphic design is the visual manifestation of a good idea."

Good design results from honesty, respect and trust. Also, understanding, research and trial and error.

"Design is an investment and investments only mature in the future. Good ideas grow. Our world depends on them."

Is Graphic Design alchemy?

What is alchemy?

What does it mean?

I hate describing design as something so mystical as alchemy. Alchemy wasn't a proven science—it was almost wishful thinking. Like homeopathy.


From Wikipedia: Alchemy is a philosophical and protoscientific tradition practiced throughout Europe, Egypt and Asia. It aimed to purify, mature, and perfect certain objects.^{[1][2][n 1]} Common aims were chrysopoeia, the transmutation of "base metals" (e.g., lead) into "noble" ones (particularly gold); the creation of an elixir of immortality; the creation of panaceas able to cure any disease; and the development of an alkahest, a universal solvent.^[3] The perfection of the human body and soul was thought to permit or result from the alchemical magnum opus and, in the Hellenistic and western tradition, the achievement of gnosis.^[2] In Europe, the creation of a philosopher's stone was variously connected with all of these projects.

GRAP 2022 // Time for Being Against // Mem Fox detained at US border

Mem Fox and me (Daniel Purvis). Picture: Keryn Stevens for The Advertiser

Not strictly an article about design but this struck a chord. I've met Mem Fox and she's a wonderful, friendly and kind woman who is upbeat, strong, defiant and incredibly well spoken. She knows who she is and what she's out to accomplish. This article, in many ways, describes a set of established procedures enabled by the new US Immigration policy that need to be thrown into disarray. This is the perfect example of somebody developing an open, honest and heartfelt critique of an unfair and discriminatory system that needs overthrowing.

"They made me feel like such a crushed, mashed, hopeless old lady and I am a feisty, strong, articulated English speaker. I kept thinking that if this were happening to me, a person who is white, articulate, educated and fluent in English, what on earth is happening to people who don’t have my power?"

Fox is also analysing her own reactions using a critical attitude which has forced her to come to the conclusion she can no longer stand by, it is time to stand up. You could say, she's found something she is willing to "be against".

"I thought I was an activist before, but this has turned me into a revolutionary. I’m not letting it happen here. Instead of crying and being sad and sitting on a couch, I am going to write to politicians. I am going to call. I am going to write to newspapers. I am going to get on the radio. I will not be quiet. No more passive behaviour. Hear me roar."

Mem Fox on being detained by US immigration: 'In that moment I loathed America'

GRAP 2022 // Week 1 // Reading // Fry

Design as politics // Preface
Tony Fry

"Whatever we write is always... from a perspective." p. vii
—substitute "write" with "design" "draw" "illustrate" "paint"

"... the reader is faced with the challenge of judging what is said and discovering what is not." p. vii
—critical thinking and analysis is based on this concept. Just think about the state of American politics at the moment and try to understand why so many people refuse to read the underlying principles on which the words Trump says are founded.

"... the entire project of the book can be summed up as the transformation of design and of politics combining, for all agents of change, to become the means by which the moment and process of Sustainment (the overcoming of the unsustainable) is attained." p. viii
—sometimes I think academics like to write sentences and look back and go, "whoa, that was a good one. Look what I just did there."

"We simply do not see, feel or think about what has become embedded in our mode of being. For instance, we make judgement about so many things every day, and while we are aware of those that are obvious, mostly we do not even notice." p. ix
—we form habits from previous decisions that we begin to engage in through routine and subconscious autopilot which prevents us from understanding that these habits can be altered when conscious thought is attributed to them.

"What is harder to recognise and work with is the reality of our world-making as culturally directed. Essentially, we see and make a world through the prism of our culture, but mostly it exists as an unconsidered condition of normality."
—he's doing that double-talk thing again. Saying the same thing twice but in a different way. Fry loves to waste words. However, he does have a point. It's a repeat of the above statement re: habits but in the context of culture. Normality is just the way we view the world.

"'We' simply cannot continue to be and be as we are: we are literally taking 'our' future away. What this means is that a commonality of human being has to be created rather than appealed to tokenistically (and often ethnocentrically)."
—change behaviour, affect the future. etc.

Question
Fry argues that 'what all agents of change need to do is to learn how to move design out of its economic function and into a political frame'. As a student designer, do you see yourself as an 'agent of change?'

GRAP 2022 // Week 1 // Reading // Poynor

The Time For Being Against
Rick Poynor

From Dutch design student, " I do not want to separate. I have no interest in being against. I want to include. The time for being against is over."
"You can't be against everything all the time."

"To be against things was to be negative, and what's the point of that?" p. 121
—negates positive criticism. It is important to take a stand and have a belief system in place, whether it's how you think design should be, whether you ascribe to an aesthetic school, whether you believe in function over form, what role decoration plays in design (see Marian Bantjes) if any, whether a typeface should be an emotionless conduit for information (Swiss design) or the typeface itself can give emphasis to the content (see David Carson). You need to make a stand in order to define yourself—and often times you can describe what you are by having strong opinions on what you aren't. As Poynor continues, "But this process of supportive elucidation will always imply its opposite: that there are objects and projects that are not worthy of our attention." p. 122

"To be critical involves not taking things for granted, being skeptical, questioning what's there, exposing limitations, taking issue, advancing a contrary view, puncturing myths. On occasion, of course, the critic will take the role of supporter and advocate. He or she will seek to persuade us that some idea or thing is deserving of our full attention and merits a closer look." p. 122

Critical Journalism

"... an attempt to combine journalism's engagement with the moment and its communicative techniques with criticism's fundamental requirement for a worked-out, coherent, fully conscious critical position: a way of looking at, and understanding, the world, or some aspects of it." p. 123

Poynor notes that all of his interests, in "literature, music, social history, film, photography, fine art" engage him and that every piece of intelligent writing and criticism on every thing informs his subjective opinion and ability to critique design as it occurs in a much broader cultural sense. A "public intellectual", as he describes.

He has heard that designers are a type of person who doesn't read anything at all. No critical engagement with the world around them. Nothing that could be absorbed through written language. This is rubbish—there are plenty of designers who DO read and engage with the world around them. Designers who read about politics, design, photography, fine art, music, film, etc. However, I do find that an overwhelming majority of my students do not read broadly and deeply into subjects, and even if they do, that they are unable to immediately grasp the need to read critically and actively question the information being portrayed and the medium used to say it. So Poynor argues, there are plenty of designers who read—just not that many who read critically in such a way that informs their practice and understanding of how their practice connects with the greater world, and are then able to write about these issues in such a way that the general public can understand.

Poynor's biggest issue, really, is that not enough people critically discuss design openly in a public forum in such a way that design can be understood by a general audience. He says as a community we're insular, guarded, misrepresented because we don't engage in the writing of design criticism and journalism openly enough. He says people understand the principles of film and television and its creation (actually, I don't think they do. I believe most people are completely illiterate when it comes to the development of fantastic content unless they're directly involved in one of the industries that surrounds it—being a photographer, like journalists, I'm lucky enough to be invited into the worlds of other people to ask them questions, explore and learn more broadly about a range of things I wouldn't have experienced otherwise).

"It leaves us in a distinctly paradoxical position, with a subject matter that we all agree plays an essential role in everyday life and culture, yet which lacks regular, direct outlets for critical public discussion." p. 126

Oh, if anyone ever tries to barter your price down please walk them through the process of design, step by step, and the time it takes to achieve these things before walking away. Education is our best tool in getting clients to understand what it is we do.

Questions:

What is it that Poynor says he has heard about designers (but doesn't believe)?
According to Poynor, what is the role that a real critic takes? (You may select more than one).

GRAP 2022// Week 1 // Class Prep

Readings

• Poynor, R. (2002) The time for being against. In M. Bierut, W. Drenttel & S. Heller (Eds.), Looking Closer 4: Critical Writings on Graphic Design (pp. 121-130). New York: Allworth Press.

• Fry. T. (2011) Preface to Design as Politics. (vii-xi). Berg: UK.

Theory helps explain why some designs are more successful than othersTheory well understood should translate into a guiding strategy
Design influences social construct of reality — we design reality to some degree.

"The realm of the symbolic is the realm of human understanding, self-identity, and social formation." (Drucker, 2013).

"Design is fundamentally a social activity, centering on 'human interactions with artefacts and situations' (Swann, 2002).— designers have the ability to alter the way humans interact with the world around them, influencing behaviour and influencing thought. Often, we're trying to convey information. Sometimes this is which direction to walk, a narrative, a products benefits, and what we think of the world and its people. Sometimes we're just making cool things.

'Design is, of course, in its essence, about relations. What design designs are the relations between things and persons and things and nature' (Dilnot, 2009).

Critical Practice

Exercising critical judgement is an act of understanding something in its entirety then responding to it in a way that is both intelligent and helpful, drawing on both the positive and negative aspects of a thing.

A critical practice is one in which you apply this skill to your own work so that you may always push the boundaries and improve your own communication techniques.

"Reflecting on the way that 'any discourse makes positions available for subjects to select' (Holloway 1998, p. 236)."—a great point that notes you can use critical analysis to position yourself for or against a particular subject by developing strong arguments. A debate between competing ideas (you could say between the designer and the reader).