Reading II
Introduction
Reading II, Design and Knowledge by Anna
4 Oct 2021
This weeks readings were again really challenging, but interesting. The class, as it’s supposed to, got me thinking about what is knowledge for a designer. Johanna Drucker's text was really eye opening, as it traced the long history of visual knowledge from a western point of view, and the different attempts in creating universal graphic languages. It helped me understand better why design is taught in the way it is. C. Wright Mills’s text is concerned how this language is then used by capitalism, and how it is a powerful tool in shaping how we think and act.
Aspects from Mills’s text (1958) still felt relevant. Designer remains as a kind of sales person selling their skill, and now this self branding extends to many other areas in our personal lives, partly thanks to social media. I agree with Mills that we are very much influenced by ”crowds of witnesses we have never met and shall never meet”, not by facts, and what we consider facts nowadays is something fragmented and hard to determine.
It was interesting how Drucker’s text showed how visual knowledge has been a tool in constructing reality. The architects, herbalists, astronomers, navigators and medical practitioners needed to organize and classify information visually, and those illustrations became important for scientific development. A visual language used in sciences (classifying, archiving) at the same time has the power to make our knowledge deeper and more complex, and has been used as a tool for control. ”Scientific” images have depicted real people and cultures in dehumanizing and objectifying ways.
I feel it’s humane to try and create a universal language of graphics, and having some sort of manual or rulebook to rely on is useful and comforting in a lot of actual design work. There are reasons why we follow some design rules. Still it feels liberating to know these rules were created by people in their own time and own sets of belief. Outside of design, the art history course ”Global Perspectives: Re-mapping the History of Art” really affected me by exposing me to various different ways of knowing and seeing, and making me understand how little I actually know.
I then feel that also for a designer, deconstructing knowledge instead of upholding the idea of some ”universal” language of graphics is important. To me, it relates to Nigel Cross’s idea that ”Designers have the ability both to ’read’ and ’write’ in this culture: they understand what messages objects communicate, and they can create new objects which embody new messages.” I take the ’reading’ as an ability to understand how the way we see and know is shaped by culture, time and background. Not all ways of seeing belong or are known to us, but our own perspective also carries something unique.
I think there is knowledge in ones own experience, language, the way we carry our body and interact with each other. There is knowledge in gestures and in spaces we inhabit. I accidentally went further in the slides from our class, and came across some nice quotes from Donna Haraway that sums it up better: ”knowledge can be regarded as situated, embodied, and thus in multiples (knowledges).”
Donna Haraway (1988): “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”
Introduction
Reading II, Design and Knowledge by Sofia
4 Oct 2021
I want to start by complaining a bit. I understand when a text is philosophical or academic that the ideas are somewhat more abstract and sometimes it takes longer to grasp what the author means. Nonetheless, both in “Graphesis” and “The Man in the Middle” it seemed like pretty straight forward ideas that through the use of big words and complicated sentences made the text harder to read. Leaving the complaining aside, I found the readings really interesting.
It’s crazy to think that “Politics of Truth'' was written in 1958 since many of Mills’ ideas, although a bit too dire and harsh in my opinion, apply nowadays. Back in Colombia I worked at an advertising agency for 2 and a half years, so I “connected” when Mills talked about “how consumption must be speeded up by all the techniques and frauds of marketing”. During my time at the agency, I often thought about what I was doing and what was I contributing to the world. Marketing seemed like such an “empty” profession, its sole purpose was to make people buy. On top of it, I was working with a femenine products brand which generates a bunch of waste and it's just starting to become more conscious about its footprint on the planet. Its true that nowadays companies defend certain problematics which are close to the brand (in the case of the brand I worked for they fought against bullying and tried to normalize talking about your period) but at the end of the day the goal is to manipulate the mind of consumers in order for them to buy more. I must say that even though there are some amazing advertising agencies that do inspiring and gorgeous pieces, I ended up a bit disillusioned with the medium.
Nonetheless, we have to earn a livelihood just like any other profession. During our last group meeting we discussed briefly about designers working for a client. Recently, and in some of the texts we have read, the works done by a designer for a client are somewhat less than those “self-authored” . The idea of the craftsman is very nice and how “he is free to begin his working according to his own plan” but we are part of this capitalist society and designing for clients is a way to do what we love and earn a living out of it. I realize that maybe what I just said sounds a bit contradictory but for me personally, what's important is to find a balance and find a place where you feel comfortable with what you are doing. I agree that the formula can’t be “to make people ashamed of last year’s model; to hook up self-esteem itself with the purchasing of this year’s; to create a panic for status, and hence a panic of self-evaluation, and to connect its relief with the consumption of specified commodities” (not only for the effect it has on people but on the planet) but it also can’t be to have “no ulterior motive for work other than the product being made and the processes of its creation”. I find that some of the values of the craftsman that Mills lists are very interesting and we should embed in our design practice, but others which are too detached from reality and from the fact that even though designing is our passion, and it permeates all spheres of our lives, it is also a job.
The “Graphesis” text was really interesting because even though it is what I study, what I work on, what I do, I had never really known the history and evolution of visual communication specifically. I liked the idea of how people have “expectations about images” and how those expectations have changed over time due to new technologies. Nowadays we know that even if we see a picture on the internet which seems pretty real, we cannot trust it completely (it may be a montage or taken out of context). Consumers of information need to be responsible with what they see and assume as “truth” and do a deeper exploration. But we as designers need to be responsible as well. Visual communication generates knowledge, emotions and action. Connecting with the book “Design is Storytelling”, which we are reading in our Visual Narratives class, visual communication tells stories and we can adjust those stories to generate a reaction in consumers. Just like we can use the “language of graphics” for this same purpose. Similar to any other language, the “language of graphics” is not universal, it’s spoken by designers. Consumers are affected by what they see without, generally, knowing the intention/language behind it. Therefore, we must take this power we possess and use it consciously, honestly and creatively.
Introduction
Reading II, Design and Knowledge by Pinja
4 Oct 2021
Second readings texts were interesting but also challenging. The ideas were in both texts more like rules or truth of how designing should be seen or practiced. I think it is fascinating how the elements of graphic design are presented. That there can be certain ways to obey the rules of using those elements in design practice. More or less consciously.
​
Johanna Drucker writes in her text “Graphesis” that “Systematic uses of visual images have created standards and consensus across a wide variety of disciplines that depend on visual observation and analysis.” I am fascinated about how the elements that are familiar to audience are also probably more readable for them. Familiarity comes from using certain ways of designing and combining elements and we, as designers, tend to choose those same kinds of combinations to be clear and understandable. “Not only did these works present a set of terms and references, but, more significantly for our discussion, they put firmly in place the concept that a visual system might be structured like a language. Style, motif, texture, color, and materials all aligned with semantic elements while relations, composition, sequence, narrative were considered parts of a syntactic function.” Drucker suggests that the visual forms and rules creates a new language that we as a designers use to communicate with an audience. I think this is useful idea in a sense that with this information we can work with our tools more conscious and understand the affect that our designing work have on people. We have a structure behind all our choices that we make. Or is it that useful after all to lean on those rules?
​
C. Wright Mills describes very straight forward the struggles of a designer in a capitalist world. The description is quite fitting even today. We need to produce more and faster and the designer is making the products seem fabulous and wanted, or even needed. Mills writes that a designer “designs the product itself as if it were an advertisement, for his aim and his task—acknowledged by the more forthright—is less to make better products than to make products sell better.” I think this is well said, the designers’ task in mass production is to make people desire consuming. But on the other hand, it is a lot more than that.
​
When the world around us is made to be consumed and it is in the clutches of capitalism, we also need empathic designing. A designer can make a huge difference in an environment where some people are ignored. This can be possible by making designs and information accessible. We also need designing in fields that are not necessarily profiting or marketing, like what happens for example in fast fashion. This is not always possible to do, but in my opinion, it is important so different voices of people can be heard.
Introduction
Reading II, Design and Knowledge by Anjori
4 Oct 2021
Is visual language worthy of being codified only if we introduce an aspect of geometry or mathematics into it? For something so abstract and subjective, can we not use non-objective categories to do so? I started to question this when the reading mentioned how ‘language’ of visuals is more rhetorical than analytical. Later on in the text Thom excludes graphical representation as a legitimate or reliable method of showcasing any data. I always find this debate quite intriguing. How people are suspicious of any humanistic knowledge in general because it isn’t quantifiable and it reflects in the general attitude of people towards design. A more ‘new age’ approach to this is integrating the subject of design with other subjects like economics or science once the importance of it was realised. However, this idea was also only legitimised once the design became an inter-disciplinary mix with subjects based on empirical methods. The intense need for us to quantify everything abstract because otherwise it threatens our ability to accept it as the ‘truth’ or ‘trustworthy’ is very intriguing indeed.
“The world we see is made by our cognitive ability.”
It’s interesting to note how every visual image carries with them information regarding the means of its production and the time it was created and how we only recognise this as people who create the image but from the point of view of a consumer-they may or may not ever question or recognise it because they care about what’s in the image and how it relates to them.
The profession of a ‘designer’ itself got more recognisable and legitimised once more empirical systems (like Jan Tschichold’s Typography Manual) were established around it. The more systems started being established , the more the practice of ‘design’ started being separated from ‘fine art’. I think that’s the only issue I have with quantifying the design practice. While it can serve as a great tool, it creates limitations by claiming an ‘absolute truth’ or the ‘correct’ way to approach things. I think it’s very apparent even today with designers either hating the ‘rules’ or basing their entire practice around this algorithmic sensibility. I guess I’m not entirely sure where I would stand.
I quite enjoyed reading the part where the author talks about web environments and how it follows the basic principles of design even though the environment is dynamic, new and different from anything we’ve ever known before. It only attempts to touch on upcoming debates of man versus machine in the field of design, and what would be the cultural, economical and social impact if design could be thought by machines too, instead of just following instructions. Could this dynamic media ever add a humane element to it too?
While I do agree with the broader ideas that Mills represents regarding our capitalistic society, overconsumption & overproduction that has created a need for carving out distinctive identities to be recognisable (it’s entirely true and I can relate it to my time working in the industry back in India) , I do think he puts out his views rather aggressively.
Summary
Reading II, Design and Knowledge by Anna
4 Oct 2021
This week's discussion started with a bit of complaining. Some of us were saying the two texts expressed fairly straightforward ideas in a very complicated manner, using big words. It is hard to criticize academic texts when I don’t know the rules of academic english, but it was something I was wondering as well. From there we shifted to talk about if also graphic language needed to be codified with mathematics or geometry to be taken seriously. Sometimes trying to determine rules for graphic design felt a bit forced, though we all agreed that as human beings we also naturally tend to organize information. But even then, as pointed out in the class, for example the calendars we visualize in our heads look vastly different. What other organization systems for graphics could there be? I wonder could the language be based or combined with something different, like the ideas related to postmodernism, such as humour, underrepresented narratives, popular and underground culture? Or could it even be something as hazy as personal memories? Then again we also talked about that we weren’t sure what these modernist graphic design rules exactly were. What is the rule book?
The modernist graphical language got us thinking if artificial intelligence could do a designers job in the future. Most probably, but it still seemed distant, and we thought that with new technology has always come new opportunities and new jobs. To quote a group member: ”I’m not gonna worry if a robot can do a poster in 50 years!”. What does cause worry is who designs the ai, is it going to be mainly white cis-het men from middle class backgrounds, or is there going to be more diversity?
Somehow we ended up talking about instagram and social media, how as a designer it is very hard to leave those platforms, because in there you can promote your work and have important contacts (I admit I was a tiny bit relieved when instagram crashed on monday night). The obsolescence Mills talked about is very much present on there, because things go viral and then die extremely fast.
Talking about Mills’s feelings about the designers position in general felt a bit strong or exaggerated, but then we talked about work experiences. Actually working every day to make a product sell felt really empty. Designer’s skill can be used to get certain reactions out of people and can be manipulative, so that skill should be used responsibly. We all would like to form a responsible practice, but agreed that it might require some financial backbone. For a young designer it is hard to say no. We then talked about that maybe working in a small studio instead of an agency might bring more meaning to the work and more responsibility. We also thought about design work that could be really helpful: accessible design was brought up as an interesting example.
Summary
Reading II, Design and Knowledge by Sofia
4 Oct 2021
Just like last time, we started with what we had in common, and this time it was complaining (most of our introductions started this way). We felt the texts were more complicated than they had to be since they talked about pretty concise and structured ideas in a complex manner. Also, I felt related when one of our group members said they were texts hard to question since they were more like statements rather than a reflection or an opinion; you just wanted to learn more. Nonetheless, we managed to have a pretty interesting discussion.
One of the big questions was why compare graphic design to mathematics? Why the need to structure something so abstract as design? Doesn’t that make it more rigid? One of the answers we came up with, connecting with Arja’s past lecture, was the need for us to organize things in our brain. We then did the exercise of explaining how each of us visualized the months in our brain. The results were very different, but nonetheless we each had a specific way of organizing something so abstract as months. It’s easier for our brain to process organized information. Be that as it may, it’s funny that graphic design only became graphic design when it was structured, mathematically organized, and methodic. Before it was seen as an adherence to something else but not a career or profession on its own.
​
Branching out from this we started wondering about the effects of such established rules. Taking it to a more drastic side, we wondered if the rules are so set then where is the creativity, the contribution of the designer? Can they be taught to a computer? We then diverged a bit but discussed some pretty interesting ideas. We questioned whether computers could ever do the job of designers and replace us? We came to the conclusion that there is no point in worrying about that now but it is still important to keep yourself up to date on what is going on in your context. Also, it may be that computers never replace us, we will just do more specialized jobs that require other human abilities and develop different skills. Continuing with the computer subject a very interesting idea was said which I had never thought of before. Computers are still very binary and it’s still a very specific group of people who design these technologies (basically white males), so how is the existing diversity translated into new technologies? What can we expect of it? One example is Alexa, and her eager to please female voice.
​
We then got back on track and talked about the power and responsibility we have as designers. In many creative fields, but even more so in visual communication as we read in the “Graphesis” text, we can manipulate the consumer. We know that by doing this or that we can elicit a response, but the consumer doesn’t necessarily know that he is being manipulated or how. Therefore, we must make it our “mission” to use this power wisely. We connected this with the donut economy and how we must put the environment and society at the core/center of our thoughts or ways of designing. Nevertheless, as romantic and ideal as this sounds, we also faced the reality that sometimes we just don’t have the luxury to say no. We live in this constant struggle with capitalism where we hate it but we also want to make a part of it. I believe it’s also a matter of growing, learning and having discussions like these that make you question your own practice and help you structure it in a way that is in accordance with your values and goals.
​
We then, inevitably, entered the eternal dilemma of social media. Nowadays it seems like an essential tool for a designer to broadcast their work and do some self branding (I must accept that since I arrived to Finland I’ve felt more pressure in this sense since my Instagram is basically me and nice views) but I the same time we feel consumed by social media and wish we could detach ourselves from it.
​
To finalize our discussion we went back to the rules and realized we weren’t really specifically taught these languages or the list of specific rules in our bachelor. Therefore, we ended with the question, what are the rules?
Summary
Reading II, Design and Knowledge by Pinja
4 Oct 2021
Our third readings discussion was a fruitful one. We had a great time at Sofia’s place in Kallio. We ate cinnamon rolls, biscuits and spent the whole day doing schoolwork together. We had some similar takes regarding the texts but also many different points. Mostly we agreed that it is sometimes frustrating to figure out how to balance our work between manipulative advertising and empathic design that is made to ease people’s everyday life.
​
A fascinating point that Arja brought up last session was the way people tend to organise and visualize concepts in their minds. We discussed about the ways that we visualize months in a year in our head and how differently all of us did so. That lead us to think about the very narrow way most of the design work that is in a leading position is done. The designing work that might end up forming the rules and guidelines for us is usually dictated by these very few designers in a homogeneous group. The visual elements we see affect the way we organise information in our minds, but the way it ends up varies a lot. The different types of variations and ways of interpreting visuals affect our designing too, making our work more diverse and creative.
​
The other topic we discussed was about graphic design as a type of interpretive language. We as graphic designers design for groups of people that do not really know how the process behind design have been formed. Mostly only designers know how to speak that language and how to read it. This is interesting, because the audience is just getting the information from the design without being able to understand the language designers use. Although design works also have a message in the style and genre that the audience can read, the language that we use to combine the visual forms can be strange.
We also thought about the rules and how they affect creativity. Do we need to obey rules about designing and how do we find new ways to design? Sometimes the guidelines can be a helpful tool, but we also need freedom and a chance to explore, but rules are also sometimes meant to be broken. An idea we explored was how much can one step outside these rules and still get the message through. Do we always have to get the message through?
​
The balance of working in a capitalist world by manipulating people to consume and between working to ease people’s lives from our own interests were a topic with many feelings. Like we discussed in the previous meeting the designer cannot always decide what kinds of work they do, but we all agreed that the advertising work made us feel a bit empty. None of us wanted to fool people with our design but help them. We discussed how a designer can make a difference in a capitalist surrounding and still get paid. We may do not get to pick our projects, but we can make an effect with small acts. For example, by making designs more accessible or being responsible and aware of our surrounding.
​
Lastly, we discussed about the forever in trend topic that is social media. We shared our feelings about using it as a designer. It is quite exhausting to be constantly branding yourself, even during your personal life. And many times, our design work is connected to our social media. Our profiles can be our portfolios at the same time, and we are also constantly present with our personal side as well. Working tends to be work with self-branding all the time. Social media and trends are also changing very fast and so are visual trends and designs. The information overload is constant and maybe designers tend to be more aware of the ongoing trends to be able to pick them up. This can be hard to balance.
Summary
Reading II, Design and Knowledge by Anjori
4 Oct 2021
We started our discussion by questioning the very nature of the texts that we were reading. The language of the texts seemed unnecessarily academic where simple straight forward concepts seemed to have been explained in a lengthy complex manner. This in turn raised questions about why and how we feel the need to legitimise visual culture by explaining or organising it using quantifiable subjects like mathematics in order to make it more reliable. We all realised that personally each of us has interesting ways of organising things in our minds (for example., Sofia organises the months in her head in terms of seasons in two blocks, Pinja and Anna view it as a more circular visual, for me each year is a vertical bar next to each other). We agreed that it’s both important and useful to organise seemingly abstract things but at the same time questioned if it is so bad to have abstract meanings. The trouble with established rules especially in a creative field is that it can feel algorithmic and less fresh.
​
Then we went on to discuss what if machines become more creative than humans? Is that even possible? We may not be able to answer that, but the possibility of machines becoming smarter didn’t particularly scare us. If machines do a great job at something, we humans will find more innovative ways to be useful in the process of creation.
​
We touched upon the social responsibility that lies on our shoulders as designers. The ‘language of graphics’ is afterall, quite manipulative and capable of making both direct and subliminal impacts. Marketing, advertising, greenwashing and serving purely capitalist interests leaves us feeling very empty in our practice even if there’s money coming in. We would like to find a deeper meaning and purpose but are we really against capitalism? We don’t think so. Designers can make people heard, we can make a real difference out there but we can still choose to be compensated for it. This brought us back to the doughnut economics model (that we had heard about in the Ted Talk that Arja presented in class the other day). There can be flow of goods and services in the economy but with social welfare and environmental impact as the central guiding concern. Even though it’s not the easiest thing to establish in our practice especially as we start, we can always choose to say ‘no’ to projects that don’t align with our larger values.
We noted how interesting it was to read that people have expectations about images and how images carry meanings and information regarding the time, circumstances and processes that were used to make them.
​
We then talked about self-branding especially via social media and how stress inducing it may be, but at the same time very useful. However, it makes our working life leak into our personal life and relationships especially because design circles are small. There may even come a time where not having to use social media will become a privilege. Maybe that time has already come?