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The Distrust of Design Language

At its core, Graphic Design is a service industry, a transactional process between client and designer whereby the designer is contracted to create the visual gestures and identity that the client wishes to put out into the world. It sounds so straightforward doesn’t it? A job just like any other in the service industry, with an objective start and finish point and a tangible outcome. Electricians are paid to string wires from A to B in order to power the light in room C, every decision and step of the process takes place as it happens, the client can see the work in real time, and they can flick the switch after to see if it has been wired correctly. Graphic designers on the other hand are not afforded this same level of objectivity in their work, and as a result, rely on client trust that the job has been completed, and will meet the needs of the brief. So what erodes this trust? And why can a working relationship with a client turn so sour, so quickly? The root cause of most issues stems from relying solely on using design language to justify design decisions.

In my short career as a full time graphic designer, I’ve worked with many clients with absolutely zero practical or technical understanding of art and design. These kinds of clients can be difficult and frustrating to work with, but the financial reward outweighs the endless revisions and muddy feedback. It is extremely easy and convenient to place blame solely on the client when they reject your design proposals — citing their lack of taste, inattention or just plain old bad decision making when they don’t like what you show them. You get steam rolled by superiors, asked to design and modifying your work beyond recognition, yet you can describe how and why your initial solution was the perfect fit for the brief down to the most minor detail. I’m guilty of it, and so many of my peers are too. Absolving yourself of personal responsibility when a project goes in a different visual direction what you intended.

Through experience, I’ve come to find that the catalyst for this breakdown between designer wants vs client needs boils down to the use of design language. The nuanced and sometimes technical way in which designers try justify certain decisions that may seem insignificant to the untrained ear. This isn’t to say clients are stupid, and designers are the big brained intellectuals, rather that designers need to rethink the feedback process. The client and the designer speak a different language, thats why the focus should always be on the bigger picture, clarifying the objective of the project. The responsibility of the designer is to make it clear how their decisions help to get to their common objective.

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Entering The Conversation

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-09-07/welcome-to-your-bland-new-world-of-consumer-capitalism

Brilliant article, an excellent summary and analysis on the cookie-cutter approach to product design and branding in this new world of direct to consumer consumption. This is one of those articles that really puts into perspective at how unimaginative some industries are when viewed at a macro level, despite the thousands of hours poured into brands to build the product, fund it, market it, brand it, and so on. It was actually quite funny at times to see it all laid out life this, seeing how much overlap between products that are marketed to be disruptive and contrarian, while still using the same visual language as the competitor.

The section around “affordable luxuries” resonated with me quite heavily, I could never really pinpoint why some of these products felt like they market themselves as an affordable treat. I was not aware that many of these brands are professionally strategised to appeal to the millennial psyche that it is ok to occasionally splash out on some goods, while providing a mediocre product that does not truly reflect the price tag. Overall, this article was incredibly illuminating and enjoyable, a perfect dissection of the current postmodernist landscape of consumer goods, wrapped up in a new and unfamiliar bow.

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Creating Generative Value

https://mcmansionhell.com/post/618938984050147328/coronagrifting-a-design-phenomenon

Across the course of this very unsettling and tumultuous year to be alive, I have spent a fair share of time reading and absorbing content across social media that revolves around the effects of Covid-19, or responses to the pandemic. One particular article published in May 2020 on McMansion Hell, the architecture and design blog by Kate Wagner, resonated with me in a way that triggered a notable change in my psyche in how I process and unpack pandemic related content.

“Coronagrifting” is the term coined by Wagner to describe the glut of conceptual, mockup based design solutions by architects and industrial designers that are regularly published on reputable art and design websites. These design solutions are nothing more than hastily rendered products or interior fit outs that seek to stem the flow of Covid-19 in theory, but in practice they are merely PR stunts which the designer has no intention of producing, and as a result serve no benefit to the lives of consumers or front line workers. Think giant UV light emitting shields worn over the body, hats with a 1.5m radius to enforce social distancing, and photoshop mock ups of public spaces turned into Covid-19 mega-hospitals.

Prior to reading the article, I always noticed something off about conceptual design, this was only amplified once the pandemic set in. With every scroll of the Instagram Explore page, my design centred content algorithm fed me a stream of concept art that fit into the mould of “Coronagrifting”. But as a whole, what does this kind content say about the creator, and what insight does being wary of insidious design solutions afford me?

To me, the covert and disingenuous solutions can be linked to performative activism, activism done to merely increase ones social standing, rather than in support of the genuine cause. In addition to this, it can even be taken a step further and be attached to virtue signalling as well, the act of expressing a sentiment to show off one’s good character to express a higher moral standing. Performative activism and virtue signalling are contemporary sayings that are thrown around a lot on the internet these days, and I think Coronagrifting absolutely falls under the definition of both of these terms. The article changed how I process what I see online, giving me an insight into how innocuous design content can actually be doing more harm than good.

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I think all artists, across all visual practices, want to be known as original in some form. I don’t think it boils down to narcissism or a desire for ownership or control, rather I think it boils down to wanting to create some form of visual legacy that can succeed you. Personally, I would describe this as having a particular style and visual identity, a way your work can be attributed to you without your name ever having to accompany the piece of art. It’s the mechanism in how people can point out a Caravaggio just by seeing how the artist used light, and also how the internet goes into overdrive every time a new witty sociopolitical piece of street art can be accredited to the ever elusive artist, Banksy. This distinct and individual flare is what many artists cultivate for themselves over their lifetime, but how could a graphic designer go about achieving this same feat?

The amount overlap between the practices of art and graphic design are in abundance, but the stark differences between the two set them apart entirely. To put it in simple terms, graphic design is the practice of crafting visual content that conveys meaning, usually through typography paired with imagery, while applying principles of hierarchy and order to ensure effective communication. Graphic design is inherently linked with commerce, creating for a client, while art as a whole is not always tied to this transactional fundamental of graphic design as a service. So this begs the question of how can you find your voice and identity as a designer, if you want to contribute to the visual culture of the world in a meaningful way? The answer lies in the power of the proper noun.

Proper nouns are everywhere, your name is a proper noun, they are the words that reference specific people, places, ideas and things. The power afforded to graphic designers when working for a client is the ability to create the visual, succinct mental image assigned to a certain proper noun, let me explain. If you were to ask 10 people to think of a table in their mind, you would more than liking have 10 completely different mental images of a table. The visual attached to a proper noun of something as ubiquitous as something like table is clear. But if you were to ask 10 people what the first thing is that pops into their mind when you say Unknown Pleasures, it is fair to assume that all 10 people would be thinking of the same icon piece of design from British designer, Peter Saville. This distinct visual image is forever assigned to the proper noun of Unknown Pleasures, it cannot be replaced or removed, the association is there for good.

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Speaking Without Words

The memory of my 14th birthday is still vividly imprinted in my mind, it was the day my parents bought me my own laptop. There I was, an awkward looking teenager in the middle of his formative years, stoked beyond belief that I had a computer to call my own — freeing me from the struggle of having to fight with my older brother over who’s turn it was on the family computer. I’d always had some surface level interest in art, it was the only subject at school which felt liberating and natural to me. Numbers were definitely not my thing, nor was the periodic table, and being forced to read Shakespeare soured my attitude toward English class.

I wasn’t exceptional at art by any means though. There were kids in my class with God-given abilities in drawing and painting, rendering light and shadows in ink and pigment in ways that made me look and feel like a fool, but I finally found my own medium on that June morning when I opened up my new laptop for the first time.

It’s hard to look back on those early days of being on the internet without rose coloured glasses on. I think it comes down to nostalgia more than anything. I’d stay up all night on Tumblr, reblogging and saving all different kinds of content. Classic art, screen captures from old movies, street art murals, calligraphy, fashion editorials, you name it. I really wasn’t all too aware of what I was doing, but I know now that I was developing my own individual sense of taste, sifting through the noise to find out what resonated with me, curating an aesthetic world that felt like my own. It felt like I was creating and learning, though in a very shallow form, but this was just the beginning as I have come to learn that your artistic and creative output is largely just a summation of what visual content you consume. To put it simply, in a design sense — you are what you eat.

It took me a few months to realise that I could create artwork and graphic design that signified and referenced back to what I was interested in, without being overly explicit or obvious. I had the ability to create works that on the surface were beautiful in their own right, but to the informed viewer, would be a much deeper insight into my highly referential practice.

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The image that I have chosen for my avatar is one of my own black and white illustrations from a few years ago. The drawing is based off of an image I found during a deep dive into Wikimedia Commons, a website with millions of free-use images of just about everything. I’ve found it quite hard to pin down exactly why the image resonated with me when I first saw it, and why I continue to use it today across some of my other platforms. However for whatever reason, it has just felt right to use. I think it may come down to the simplicity of the composition, and the anonymity it provides me.

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My name is Rory, and I’m a couple of years deep into a Creative Advertising and Graphic Design degree at Curtin. I currently work full-time as a graphic designer, a field and profession that I absolutely love. When I’m not at my computer, I am usually at the beach or out eating and drinking with my mates on the weekend. My practice as a graphic designer is informed through years of being on the internet, where my taste in design and culture has been  carved and shaped since I first started scrolling as a pre-teen.