COP text reading and Analysis

Structure 

intro

theoretical framework 

case studies/ examples

Graphic Design for the Real World?

Katrin Bichler and Sofie Beier 

Design activism and critical design come from three areas of industrial design, product design and architecture (Design for the real world [1997] Victor Papanek) 

Graphic Design is included in this but plays a much less central role than the aforementioned areas. 

Papanek places emphasis on design being used for good rather than riches or prestige. 

As graphic design is inherently linked with market media and production in line with the target audience or customer, it is difficult to altar the perception that it isn't "an instrument" in accelerating consumerism.  

There is, however, contemporary design activism which subverts this notion through the outputs focussed on issues such as environmental or social. Researcher Tatu Marttila asserts this design direction could help change the consumer pattern into a more sustainable one. 

Jorge Frascara: Visual communications should change behaviour and perceptions in the audience targeted (2006, p 31) 

Graphic Design should be used to implement change and communicate a message, and therefore, as Frascara points out, the quality of graphic design outputs can be quantified by the extent to which it impacts the audience. 

1. presenting information to the audience as a way of allowing them to create change through themselves and their own actions 

2. subverting/hijacking already existing adverts and brand outputs to present to the original target audience important information that the brand may not present (eg. alcohol consumption health effects) 

3. pro-bono creative work that is used to create a sense of social engagement from the company, which realistically is hardly shown outside the scope of the main chosen adverts of that time, and are used to receive awards and therefore publicity 

Florian Pfeffer comments on the ineffectiveness of persuasive design, suggesting that for the audience to change their attitude or behaviour new methods of design should be adopted, ones that encourages the audience to feel empowered to make self change. 

In order for graphic design to serve the genuine purpose of social change/impact, Katrin Bichler and Sofie Beier suggest that the best direction is for the designer to present information and enable the viewer the ability to understand and change. 

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 

Informative approaches versus persuasive approaches 

Users need to be brought into interaction within design, not told what to do or how to feel 

 

Decolonisation Design in Practice: Designing Meaningful and Transformative Science Communications for Navakavu, Fiji 

Manuela B. Taboada, Sol Rojas-Lizana, Leo X.C. Dutra & Adi VasuLevu M.

Levu

- With graphic design inherently linked to Western consumerism and a Western "market based perspective" (author, p. 142), (originating in colonialism), the act of graphic design can direct itself towards exacerbating this Western perspective 

- This can oppress aesthetics, ideas, and other values of non-Western design, crafts and art traditions 

- DT Decolonial Thought: 

1. originates in countries colonised by Western societies. It asserts that Modernity is a notion based around social and cultural factors that "normalises and perpetuates the subordination and interiorization of the other" (author p. 144)

2. is from an outsider's perspective, from the scope of being on the periphery of the world power

- Ecology of Knowledges: multiple perspectives and scopes co-exist simultaneously, and all are equal in value

- Not all are desired however, and a bridge of information between the two is necessary to enable these different value systems to interact 

- Design is separated from arts and crafts

- Design is born and thrives on the

European-centred pool of knowledge (Margolin 2005, Holland

1997, Flusser 1999).

- Design could become another form of imperialism: 'helping' communities can de done with no understanding of the community itself and instead be directed with biases: imbalance between helper and helped in power 

- Principle 1: Recognise Western epistemologies in design process and unlearn it 

Principle 2: Practice Extropy 

Principle 3: Integrate local knowledges and systems 

Principle 4: Have no set agenda 

- Decolonial Design in practice opens a possibility of re-imagining and

re-designing futures together through deep listening and deep critic-

ality. It invites designers and researchers to re-design design and ask

not only how to change through design, but why change and what

change means in each specific context.

The Graphic Thing 

Phil Jones

- What is the difference between "thing" and "object"? 

- Brown (2001) comments that individuals tend to look through objects, to distinguish what are they are in relation to various contexts of history, nature, culture, society and so on

- If "things" are the opposite of "objects", then they are something that cannot be understood to a specific level, and "can only be glimpsed" (author, p 210)

- Once the function of an object becomes obsolete, it becomes a thing eg. Double Bind by Olson is a book where both sides are bound so that the reader cannot access the interior. 

- George Lakoff and Mark Johnson assert the central role of the individual in placing meaning upon a visual, object or thing "our bodies as a mediating factor in the production and meaning" 

- As the brain and body work together consciously and subconsciously to implement understanding around something, uncertainty within this process will direct the decision making of the output as a "thing" 

- A person associates an experience with a "schematic image", if the image does not fall within the scope of expectations, it may be conceived within the levels of "thingness" eg. poster has front and back, but what if the paper is more thick, almost like a cuboid

- In branding terms, removing the branding of objects allows the products to take a step towards becoming "things", as the brand forces the individual to look at it like an entity rather than through the scope of the brand name and associations eg. Muji

- "In graphic design the experience of thingness can be detrimental

to user experience – for example, in cases in which the reader’s

concentration is broken by some badly set type. But designers can

also use this experience of thingness to call attention to the designed

object, to create impact, to suggest emotional and affective states,

and to foreground certain attributes and qualities so that new mean-

ing may emerge."

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