maddamura » Graphic design

Design beyond Trust?

maddamura — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 10:19:28 +0000

In recent years, several calls have been made for a more critical and ethical engagement of design and designers, for rethinking their role in a fast-changing and challenging world, and contributing to a more equitable and just society. As some authors have noted, though, the road is fraught with dilemmas, as design is entangled with, and complicit in, the very systems and processes it aims to critically readdress (Scherling & De Rosa, 2020; Drucker, 2020). The issue of trust illuminates one such dilemma.

“… good design instills trust. If you go to someone’s website, and everything is slick and well-made and easy to navigate, you are instantly much more comfortable with whatever they’re selling. […] If your customer-facing assets […] look good, it tends to infer that everything behind the scenes looks good and works well, regardless of whether that is true. […] Focus on the design, and much of the trust will come.” (Korchagin, 2017)

Trust is one of the central aspects of our being human, of our being social. Every day we, individually and collectively, trust ourselves to others to fulfill essential functions of our living and to extend our agency in the world, to satisfy our needs and to pursue our interests, from work to education, from commerce to politics. Increasingly, this relationship is mediated and constructed through technologies, and design is one key factor in the process. From interactive interfaces to information graphics, design has the power to make trust easy, smooth and enjoyable. In design fields such as UX, building trust is the subject of specific recommendations, techniques and training; in others, it is assumed that good, effective design will bring/gain trust. After all – the mantra of good design goes – design is a force of progress that is aimed at improving people’s lives and making the world a better place.
The ability to instill trust, however, isn’t necessarily a good thing. Certainly, it doesn’t mean being reliable and trustworthy. By definition, trust always expose to manipulation, deception and betrayal: trust doesn’t require trustworthiness, it always implies that one accepts some level of uncertainty, of risk and vulnerability. And design, for its part, can deceive. As the quote above (in all its naivety) reminds us, design can build and engender trust regardless of trustworthiness – just as it can make things look good, regardless of whether they actually are good. Indeed, the same design techniques, strategies and solutions can efficiently serve different ends – not always the good ones.
So, should we trust design?

“As an applied discipline that combines art, science and technology, cartography inevitably involves a struggle between the opposing forces of personal, subjective artistic expression and of impersonal, objective spatial communication. […] The greatest tension, however, lies between certainty and uncertainty; between knowledge and faith. Maps need both to work. We turn to maps for certainty and knowledge, yet the world is in flux and maps show us what we cannot immediately experience or verify. Maps exercise our faith by encouraging us to believe what we cannot see. But they also exercise our faith in the cartographer’s commitment to communicate truthfully (whether or not this is achieved), which lends maps their authority.” (Kent, 2017)

In the field of visual design and specifically of information design, the issue of trust is particularly relevant – after all, seeing is believing. Throughout history mankind has designed, used and trusted visual forms to shape its understanding of and its relationship with the world, its being in the world. Cartography is probably the most typical example of this endeavor, and one in which the power of design and the risk of trusting are most evident.
Maps can expand our knowledge, but they never are fully objective, they always are interpretative and partial. As Alexander Kent notes (2017), maps always involve “a struggle between the opposing forces of personal, subjective artistic expression and of impersonal, objective spatial communication”, between “certainty and uncertainty”. In practice, while one may know, to some degree, that maps are constructed, that they can be misleading, or even lie, s/he will tend, when in need of orientation, to trust their authority.
In recent decades, people’s need for orientation has reached a new scale, and the use of visual forms of knowledge has become more widespread, and more complex. The increasing availability of information and, above all, of data offered by computational systems, and the advancement of digital technologies, have made information graphics and data visualizations flourish, their production and circulation more accessible. These visual forms have become ubiquitous modes for presenting and delivering knowledge, not only in specialized fields, such as science, research and education, but in every field of our life – just think of the rise of visual journalism. For some years, in the new millennium, the specialists of information and data visualization have been hailed as gurus capable of reducing information anxiety, of helping people trust, navigate and even enjoy the beauty of big data.
The boom and recognition of information design, though, has not improved significantly the public understanding of design and data, of their specific qualities. Particularly, the implications of their constructed and interpretive – and potentially misleading – nature have received little attention. The assumption that “what you see is what is there” has remained dominant. Practitioners, for their part, have done little to shake it, generally aligning – implicitly or explicitly – with the idea that data and design are objective and transparent, and mostly focusing, in their discussion of information design, on usability or formal issues (Hall, 2011).
In recent years, several scholars have denounced the lack of critical reflection around the constructed quality of data and design, and the empiricist and positivist views that seem to pervade the practice and discourse of design. They have called for the need to deconstruct the persisting “aura” of objectivity, certainty and neutrality with which visual artifacts and interfaces are often presented and used (see Drucker, 2009, 2014; Hall, 2011; Kent, 2017; Berger, 2020). Significantly, these authors have not just made a plea for a theoretical discussion, but have urged for a critical design practice capable of making the intrinsically contingent, situated, interpretative, ambiguous and even uncertain nature of information and design truly transparent; for a qualitative approach capable of combining the traditional task of informing with that of building a less stable and objective idea of knowledge in the eyes and mind of the beholder. A more “humanistic” approach, in the words of Johanna Drucker, a firm supporter of the centrality of the visual forms of knowledge production. Such an approach, it can be argued, would also help design go beyond the rhetorics of trust, and be more trustworthy.
Can design be trustworthy?

“The post-truth world is hard on […] information designers. An increasing number of readers are less likely to trust news articles that reference quantitative data than those that stick to qualitative anecdotes. Fake news spread further, faster than real news. Tufte’s rules of graphical excellence have been co-opted by bad actors. The way forward requires that the authors of information design admit to the uncertainty in their data, pursue new formats and platforms for telling today’s data stories, and let their humanity feature in their work, rather than ignoring or denying it.” (Berger, 2020)

A critical understanding of design and a critical approach to designing are all the more urgent in the post-truth era. The same technologies that helped advance the production, circulation and accessibility of data and of information design have had some perverse effects: not only have they broken down the boundaries between the professional and the amateurish, and overturned the traditional, hierarchical and centralized media system in favor of more distributed forms and platforms of communication – notably, social media –, they have also contributed to blur the boundaries between information and misinformation, facts and opinions, truth and fake news. Eventually they helped undermining not just the trustworthiness of information and communication but also trust, people’s intention to accept the risk of vulnerability, to form relationships with others. The post-truth world is in fact also a post-trust world. The full-blown erosion of trust we are experiencing in our societies (trust in information and media, in institutions and politics etc.), however, does not make people any less exposed to deception. On the contrary, generic distrust can only leave people more insecure and vulnerable to deliberate deception, deprived of the tools, knowledge and ability to know and to act change.
Design is certainly not the only responsible for this condition, to which, however, it contributes. Visual forms, including infographics, are ideal for being disseminated and exchanged through the new channels of communication such as social media, where the fast pace of circulation and consumption exceed the logic and time of critical reflection (Peters, 2017; Kent, 2017). One may wonder, then, if design and designers can still play a differential role or will definitively surrender to deception.
Can design re-build trust?

References
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Long live the poster? Long live graphic design

maddamura — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 02:49:23 +0000

An exhibition of contemporary posters – such as Formes de l’affiche at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa – can raise lots of questions, many of which ultimately point in the same direction: “But does this make sense?”

This text is currently available only in Italian.
The English version of this text is available from the catalogue of the exhibition Formes de l’affiche (Venice, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, 26.05-09.04.2016), edited by Eric Aubert and Giorgio Camuffo, Venice: Bruno, 2016.

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Graphic design, exhibiting, curating / 6 – Not to exhibit?

maddamura — Fri, 03 Jun 2016 14:28:31 +0000

While one might have feared in past years that exhibitions could strip design of its meaning and diminish its understanding, today we might wonder whether we are reaching a point in which it is the exhibition medium and apparatus that are being stripped of their qualities, for design’s own sake.
In 2013 oncurating – a very interesting online journal supported by the Zurich University of the Arts – devoted one issue to the theme “Design Exhibited”. One of the conversations it included was “The exhibition as a medium of production”, between Sarah Owens, communication designer and design theorist, and Urs Lehni, a Swiss graphic designer who works mainly in the art/culture framework and, among other things, is the founder of Lehni-Trueb office, Rollo Press print studio, and Corner College cultural space in Zurich. In their conversations they thoughtfully discuss the issues of exhibiting design and more precisely those of graphic design in the exhibition context. They consider different cases of graphic design displays and exhibits held in such diverse contexts as museums, study centers and specialised events, and they reflect on the kinds of experience that are offered to visitors as well as the impact these events can have and the sorts of criticism or discourses that they actually help – or do not help – generate. This conversation is certainly worth reading. Here I would like to focus on one instance that is reported therein.
At the very beginning of their conversation, Lehni says that when he was awarded the INFORM Award by the Leipzig’s Museum of Contemporary Art, he had the opportunity to make a show of his work: “There was no obligation to produce an exhibition”, he declares, “but those awarded during the last few years chose to do so, most recently Zak Kyes, who also tried to work with this problem” (see Zak Kyes Working With…). Apart from expressing his view that the “overly intellectual” and referential approach of this show corrupted the appreciation of certain graphic design qualities, Lehni recounts that while he himself considered the possibility of doing some things in the exhibition space at the Leipzig’s museum, eventually he decided that, instead of an exhibition, he could design a new website for the gallery.
Without intending to over-interpret the personal motivations of these designers, or to determine what is right or wrong, I sometimes wonder if “not” doing an exhibit – or not calling a project an “exhibit” or a “curated” show – is about to become the next expression of a critical approach to design.
Jokes apart, any communication project requires a critical consideration of the appropriate channels, media, formats and contexts according to the intended purpose. And certainly there is no obligation to choose the exhibition.

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Graphic design, exhibiting, curating / 5 – Schools of exhibition

maddamura — Sat, 28 May 2016 14:26:21 +0000

Design schools play a crucial role in sustaining ideas on and uses of the exhibition medium. Anyone who has had the opportunity to work in or to visit a design school knows well how the life therein is studded with hectic exhibitionary activities, sometimes to the point of obsession. Anything becomes an opportunity to exhibit, and even traditional creative writing courses claim the right to exhibit their installations of paper sheets. To exhibit is to exist, and vice versa. Understandably, exhibiting is part and parcel of the institutional and educational mission of design schools: during semesters and special workshops, as well as for their thesis projects, students are usually required to design and make prototypes that need, in the end, to be presented to an audience of peers, teachers, friends and relatives, and potential stakeholders.
Thesis sessions are an occasion on which the boundaries between exhibiting design and designing an exhibition can become blurred and ideas confused. The year in which I was carrying out research on graphic design and exhibiting practices at the Faculty of Design and Art of the Free University of Bolzano, Andreas Trenker, then a graduating student in visual communication – who was supervised by Giorgio Camuffo and Emanuela De Cecco, the latter an art critic –, asked me to talk about his thesis with him. In Bolzano, graduating students are required not only to present ‘documentation’ – printed documentation (usually a booklet), illustrating the thesis project and process – and a ‘leporello’ featuring pictures of the final results, but also to book and set up a space, inside or outside the university, in which to exhibit their project for the discussion in front of the faculty committee. Thus, in addition to the thesis project itself – which can be anything from a carousel for children to a kitchen prototype, from a pair of 3D printed eyeglasses to a video documentary – graduating students must always also conceive and design a book and a display or installation. It should be added that the undergraduate curriculum includes Interior and Exhibition design; while this teaching is compulsory, though, it is given less time and space (just one afternoon during the semester) than the main design and visual communication studio courses (two and a half days in dedicated ateliers).
When Andreas came to my office he was in a delicate phase: he had conducted fieldwork but was still unsure about how to translate his findings into a communication project. Urged by a personal willingness to experience and, possibly, understand what it means to live in areas of conflict and wartime turmoil, he had visited the area along the Gaza Strip just after the Gaza War of November 2012. In the town of Sderot and in the neighbouring kibbutz Nir’Am he had the opportunity to meet people of different ages, as well as conduct interviews, take pictures, and develop a project in a bunker. During his visit he had taken lots of notes: I remember him sitting next to me showing his sketchbooks and a number of small red notebooks with drawings made by school children. He did not aim to explain the conflict, but share his personal experience in relation to it and promote debate regarding the militarisation of Israeli society. He was looking, however, for a way to connect all those fragments. Certainly, he was going to make a book, in what was to be his ‘documentation’, a sort of diary of his experience. But the question of what to do for the required exhibition remained.
Given he had collected and produced several original stories using various media and formats, however, it appeared clear to me that, in his case, the exhibition could be not just the presentation of something else – the re-mediation of the book, for instance – but rather the very thesis project itself. That is what I suggested him to consider. The nuance might seem slight, but, as he confirmed later, to him this was a crucial shift of perspective which led him to fully value the exhibit as a means of multimedia communication.
His final project consisted of a light, wooden structure (portable and easy to install), made to reflect the space of a bunker and one that supported different materials – texts and images, booklets, projections, videos, sounds. The colour red was a unifying feature, a reference to the “Red Colour” (Tzeva Adom) alarm system used by the Israeli Defence forces to warn against Palestinian rocket attacks – the sound Tzeva Adom was repeatedly played.
Mastering the art of presentation is certainly an essential skill for designers. However, it is problematic and reductive if prospect designers are brought to believe that exhibition design is just a complimentary and servile field of practice and not a field to be explored in and of itself. In the end, it would be like to believe that graphic design should just be taught in order that students learn how to prepare portfolios and presentations of design works.

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Graphic design, exhibiting, curating / 4 – Designing as exhibiting?

maddamura — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 14:26:57 +0000

While some may still discuss whether the exhibition context is suitable for graphic design, in recent years graphic designers themselves have shown growing investment in exhibitionary activities. As with the interest and investment in self-publishing and editorial practices in the early 2000s, exhibitions have now become a common platform for producing and disseminating design, for collaborating and sharing interests with colleagues and friends, for self-articulation and reflection. This phenomenon may be relatively limited but still noticeable, especially among a number of progressive designers who have pursued an authorial or a so-called ‘critical’ approach to design and who work pre-eminently in the field of art and culture, and with reverberations among new generations of graduate designers who intend to follow those designers’ lead.
In the past decade, the exhibition context has been variously explored and appropriated by designers. Apart from the occasional display of their work in solo or collective shows in art and design museums and galleries, designers have engaged with producing original installations for display only, have organised exhibitions in different settings – including the cultural institutions with which they collaborate – and have turned their offices into cultural spaces for meetings, lectures, presentations, workshops and exhibits. Along with more traditional displays of commissioned as well as self-initiated works, in recent years it has been possible to see exhibitions consisting of site-specific installations; exhibitions conceived to reveal the design process behind the works on display, including those made just specifically for the show; exhibitions of editorial projects that, in turn, originate new publications or printed works, as if in an endless game of mirrors; and, vice versa, graphic design works conceived and presented as exhibition spaces. We have also witnessed exhibitions conceived as opportunities for designers to meet with each other and with like-minded people to come together in order to produce and circulate new projects, as well as graphic designers inhabiting an exhibition space and designing their projects while being on show. Texts and discourse that have spread this phenomenon reveal that graphic designers who have engaged in exhibiting activities regard them as part and parcel of their design practice, but also as an expansion of it. Among these designers, furthermore, while some of those who have organized exhibitions acknowledge, cautiously, the differences between curating and designing, others argue that curating is itself a form of designing, likened by some to the role of the editor and by others to that of the author.
The abating of negative preconceptions concerning the exhibition context and format on behalf of graphic designers is certainly to be welcomed: the exhibition is a powerful communication device. In order for this engagement to develop into an opportunity for advancing the practice and discourse of design in novel directions, however, I believe we shall begin to question certain trends and attitudes that emerge from within it. I would begin with the following.
First, while on the one hand there is the risk of too naively calling any display of graphic works, and of designers, wherever and however made, a ‘curated’ exhibit, on the other hand it is also problematic when exhibition making is too easily equated with designing graphics – manifesting a disregard for the complexities and specificities of the exhibition medium, which is more than a layout.
Second, it is reductive if graphic designers use exhibitions as mainly opportunities for individual or collective exposition, self-reflection and self-articulation, for mediating and re-mediating their work, in order to talk about themselves and among themselves, or for instigating commentary from sympathetic colleagues and friends. Designers have learnt well that organising and participating in exhibitions, with all their appendices and extensions, offer space for attracting attention, establishing relationships and producing discourse that are needed for their personal positioning as well as for advancing their community and discipline. However, designers who intend to expand the scope of their practice and field could do more by exploring ways for contributing – along with other experts and professionals – to the building of exhibits that can engage diverse audiences and communities on topics that are meaningful to them.
Finally, behind and beyond these issues, the attraction that graphic designers manifest towards the approaches and values of the art world may become a liaison dangereuse, an impediment to their vision. As mentioned above, designers who have recently experimented with exhibiting and curating usually work in the service of the art and culture systems. In the recent years, the world of contemporary art has particularly offered several graphic designers the opportunity to not just carry out work but also experiment and push the boundaries of their practice. The opening up of a space for dialogue and collaboration between art and graphic design is due to, among other things, the interest on behalf of artists and curators in all of the conceptual and material components and formats that sustain and surround the mediation of art – a consequence of the renewed wave of ‘demystification’ of the production and dissemination of art through exhibitions. Those components include that which is graphic designers’ typical bread, such as editorial design. In turn, and unsurprisingly, graphic designers have become acquainted with and have appropriated attitudes and concepts of the art world which eventually trickled down to design discourse – think of ‘relational’, ‘collaborative’, ‘performative’. The involvement and interest of graphic designers in the exhibition context can also be read in the framework of this development, evidenced by the more or less knowingly iteration and imitation of modes of art curating as well as by the reverberation, within some graphic designers’ writings and discourse, of references to the history and tradition of art exhibitions.
While it is certainly important that designers who intend to specialise in the service of art production/mediation understand this field, as well as its practices and discourse, this should not be mistaken for a comprehensive understanding of the exhibition medium and apparatus and its potential. Designers should remember that other uses and articulations of the exhibition medium and context are possible, some that may be less biased towards the establishment and sustainment of a closed system of references and relationships. In order to move in this direction, a shift of focus, could help: from the exposition of design and the generic idea of exhibiting as designing, towards the idea and practice of ‘exhibition design’ and of designing exhibits. A critical re-appraisal of the history and tradition of exhibition design – in all its interpretive, imaginative, informative, expressive and constructive manifestations, and as an art in and of itself, and not just as a device to support artworks – can provide designers with a broader toolbox and set of perspectives from which to look at and engage with the exhibition as a medium of communication.

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