COP 3: Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design.

Looking closer is a collection of critical writings on graphic design spread across many different debates within the practise. writings from people like Michael Bierut, William Drenttel, Steven Heller and DK Holland. 

I enjoyed reading through these because they are very short, to the point and talk about very specific areas and debates with in graphic design, making it easy to collect information.

Introduction 

The assumption that little has been written about graphic design worth preserving and reading is nonsense. the past ten years of graphic design publishing have been bountiful not only for uncritical annuals, how tos and monographs, but serious new analyses of design and designers. Looking closer is the first, and one hopes not the last, anthology of such critical writings. this diverse collection of articles and essays demonstrates that contemporary design writing is not a patchwork of disparate ideas but a discipline with fundamental concerns that includes ethics, social responsibility, linguistics, education and style. 

I picked and chose articles which related to my cop 3 proposal which was to do with sustainability and ethics within graphic design and how design can be used for change within society. 

Low and High:

Design in Everyday Life 

by Ellen Lupton 

This essay talks of how designers must speak from with in the culture using the analogy of high and low, can also be seen as bottom and up- from the worms eye view of everyday life rather than the birds eye view of a distanced critic. also speaks of the different interpretations of high and low in other cultures and how they represent certain things and hold judgements loaded with cultural connotations.  the essay uses the term vernacular a lot which is the language or dialect spoken by a particular country or region and how it is relative, it positions and standard language against a lesser dialect. using a vernacular style of design which is using local materials, needs and traditions. later talks of how modernism divided design from everyday life and a divide in consumer culture and avant garde. So william morris designed objects which stood against machine ethic of the  day. Morris created a conscience for design and also a consciousness- a sense of distance between philosophical minority and a commercial majority governed by the appetites of the marketplace. 

"Morris initiated the Modernist Idea of the designer as a critic, figure who stands aside from he mainstream and presents alternative visions"

....."teach them to want something better"

this "Carries with it, However the elitist attitude towards the public. The designer is a cultural expert occupying and view from above. Hovering beyond the teaming crowds, the designer hands down a master plans for reform"

Page:105

"The tendency to see styles as working on a free space encourages a romantic view of the 'commercial vernacular' as an innocent other than than a major player on the politics of everyday life"

Page:108

originally published in Eye Magazine, No.7, vol 2, July 1997.

Disposability, Graphic Design Design, Style, and Waste

by Karrie Jacobs

"designers faced with creating graphics to express social or political messages either take the safe touchy feel route or, more often, make their symbols look corporate. Maybe to make the message whatever it my be, seem more palatable to the mainstream" 

....."maybe because that what style dictates.....the recycling logo is a corporate icon representing a corporate solution to a social problem" 

Page: 184

"I think there is a undeniable relationship between style and garbage. I think if you look at the evolution of  style you will learn a tremendous amount about where garbage comes from"

Page:186

"when i was writing about package design and garbage, I would go for walks in supermarkets. Because the logic of supermarkets- once your inside the door- is so compelling, because the packages, in the crowded, visually dynamic context of the store, seem so wonderful, I would find myself thinking 'how could anything be wrong with this? this is heaven'"

Page:187

Metaphor for recycling process Mierle Ukeles: 

"A philosophical attitude that creation is not the end point, that responsibility doesn't stop with the first shape, that responsibility runs constant"

originally published in the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design, vol 7, no.4, 1990

Can Design be Socially Responsible? 

by Michael Rock

"perhaps the most significant environmental impact designers could instigate would be convincing would be to convince there clients to not produce half the useless printed materials they are being commissioned to create or to propose solutions that are significantly reduced in size and complexity....... theres not much chance of tis happening to any great extent". 

"The designers social responsibility is a responsibility for creating meaningful forms. Designers may control the conduit through which information passes yet often when s/he is unaware of the basic function of the very images being transmitted. The socially responsible designer should be responsible designer should be conscious of the cultural effect of all products that pass through the studio, not all of which have great significance"