#more like craphic design

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capybara shirt design (graphic design is my passion)

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Reading II Intro by Aliisa

Reading II (Design and Knowledge) Introduction by Aliisa 10/10/2019

In this introduction to Reading 2 I will reflect every essay separately because of their scales and make a brief connection between them.

System of visual language  Image, Interpretation, and Interface was really fascinating: how for example we see and read visuals and how symbolism and meanings are founded. Also the very important aspect how different cultures and eras understand and read visuals and have we established universal visual language or do we even need clear systematic system to understand visual communication. 

One of the most biggest question that kept running through my mind was how humans have five common senses but how easily we rely on our sight and how it has became our most important sense and how we started connecting with each other first with representative pictures not written text. “Don’t believe until I see with my own eyes” is common but problematic idea of trusting almost completely to our sight and how this causes misunderstanding and misinformation. 

Even if Drucker represent visual language as a combination of senses to me it seems like we cannot understand our other senses when using sight as good as on the other combinations. For example hearing: if we understand the other human, what words they say, we do not only think the words and their meaning: we also hear their tone, pronunciation and also the definitions of the words and how they are tied to the context. We are very aware what we hear but I see that kind of critical thinking does not happen so easily with visuals even if, like Drucker says: ‘Images have a history but so do concepts of vision and these are embedded in the attitudes of their times and cultures’. This also made me think about how similar visual language is with manners and other social ways of communication .

Drucker words ‘all images are encoded by their technologies of production and embody the qualities of the media in which they exist. These qualities are part of an image’s information’ were very important reminder how easily we forget a context of visual and this way delete one part of visual’s information. This is strongly connected to infographics and information design and how these are used in both scientifically and professional studies and essays but also in common knowledge, teaching and news. At least to me, interesting example is cave paintings of Lascaux: the original cave is closed from the tourism because of the dangerous effect of the light for the paintings, so France has built the replica of the whole cave to show the painting to tourists. When people go to see the paintings they want the whole visual which means in this context environment. 

Especially when science, which is seen (but is not) neutral and universal, decides to use visuals there should be more responsibility of a message: how people most likely reads graphs if they have no visual literacy. These misunderstanding are used as weapons in politics to mislead people to create their own kind of truth. The very good point from Drucker is that visual language cannot be separated from verbal language, also because letters are also visuals.

For example in the science visuals are used to show an unseen, to make visible abstract things. It was interesting when the first pictures of a black hole was published: to this point black holes were only visible by code language but now the code was able to turn to a visual and this way make it more real. However, to me this is especially related to comics and their visual narrative. I see there is especially vide and structured visual language to show abstract and invisible things like emotions and thoughts. This also leads to the first reading about authors and their death: in the text there was discussion around a power of a reader and how the reader decides how the story is made up. 

I saw the point but I did not identify to it strongly. However, in comics this, leaving the power to the reader, is the whole point of comics: comics are not series of pictures but what happens in between the pictures. That is the point where the reader has to take meanings of two pictures and combine them together with their imagination to have a story. After I read Scott McCloud’s Understanding comics my relationship with comics has never been the same. 

At last I want to mention Drucker’s idea ‘how language of graphics became a language for and of industry’ and how this leads to the next text, The Man in the Middle. 

Capitalism, designer and craftsmanship While reading C. Wrights Mills’ The Man in the Middle was not so fascinated. Mills has some good summaries of the topic for example: ‘in our everyday life we experience not solid and immediate facts but stereotypes of meaning’ and ‘the only thrusts are the thrusts defined by the cultural apparatus’. However, these were no new thought for me while living in this over hundred years old capitalised society. Maybe the most frustrating part was realise how little the capitalistic system has changed and also just kept growing: how visual language is more important than ever, how consuming is still based on the same rules (three kinds of obsolescence: technological, artificial and status) and how society is ‘great sales room’ and how this has expanded to social media. Also an ongoing, unrealistic growth (nothing can grow forever) and how only human can try something this absurd. 

The other part, craftsmanship however was frustrating in very different kind of way: Mills’ naive and romanticised idea of craftsmanship showed the unrealistic and ideal side of capitalism. The text reminded me a lot about The Arts and Craft Movement that represented in the beginning of The Second Industrial Revolution and how artists and craftsmen wanted to keep the quality and dignity of arts and crafts instead of mass production but how the movement ended up changing to Art Nouveau which actually exploited mass production and new technologies: the opposite that The Arts and Crafts wanted to achieve in the first place. 

This also lead me to think about mass production especially in sweat shops and how almost every piece of clothing is made by humans: I see these people more as modern craftsmen than Mills’ unrealistic craftsman who design for fun, passion and own will. I also saw Mills’ definitions of the modern craftsmanship very offensive to for example these sweat shop workers: the appreciation from privileged people for the work they do for us is nil and how Mills’ cannot see these modern but invisible craftsmen.

The last problematic thought of Mills was seeing design something that can be separated from technology. Every human is tied to the technology, especially designers. Also the idea of freedom, independent actions and plans and own nature are not real but ideal thoughts of our creative work: like Mills said himself, everything  is second-hand and we are just mimicking each others. In this world filled with memes there is no independency and this leads me to the last theme.

Memes in culture, language and thinking  Have to admit: every time I hear a word meme I first think about chubby seal with black bordered, white Impact font. However, Into the meme pool changed my point of view and helped to understand the original definition of the word. 

To me, meme shows as an idea which have been given a form: visual or verbal. Meme is never object but its abstraction continues even if it has got its “physical form”: catchphrases and images: this means the printed paper with a visual meme on it is not meme: it is paper. Meme is the message what is visualised to the paper. All in all, memes are messages: taking a space in our brain and in our culture. 

The other essence of meme is replicating: meme is never original but copied and communicable. The whole life is based on replication and replicators. Memes are not simple thoughts, like Gleick sais: ‘memes may be stories, recipes, skills, legends, and fashions. We copy them, one person at a time’ and ’the human world is made of stories, not people’.

After the essay it seems to me we live trough and with memes: they are the essence of communication and this way society and culture. However, this also brought some darker themes to my mind as Gleick used suicide bombers as an example. This lead me to the thoughts of our mental health and how easily we let these memes affect our brains, in good and bad. Like Dennet said: ‘i am not initially attracted by the idea of my brain as a short dung heap in which the larvae of other people’s ideas renew themselves, before sending put copies of themselves in an informational diaspora... Who’s in charge, according to this vision -- we or our memes?’ 

I have had mental health problems my whole life. The problem was I could not stop other people’s memes affect me. The memes that had been in my family for decades: my great grandparents giving these memes to my grandparents, and they giving to my parents and finally to me. This makes me to think how fragile and unarmed we are in the affect of the other people and there is no escape for being affected by these memes. 

Because suicide came up in the text, the most scariest meme is the affect of suicide: most likely someone from that person’s circle of acquaintances who commits or try to commit a suicide will also commit or try to commit a suicide. This makes me think the responsibility of our actions and their affection. Maybe I will keep thinking memes as chubby seals with Impact font.