II
Toward
Toward
- And while the wheels of neoliberal capitalism continue to turn with us at the cranks, it’s left me thinking about what’s next. What is design when it's not only a utility, or an influencer of perception, or tied to a sale? When its power of communication is used to create belonging, or excitement, or inspiration, or doubt, not in service of a brand or product, but something else? What is it that we’re really doing here?
- These questions have been asked, or at least alluded to, by many contemporary critical designer-writers—part of an emerging wave of design criticism that interrogates the discipline's complicity, limitations and contradictions in capitalist structures. This growing body of critical design theory has produced several influential texts in recent years, such as What Design Can't Do: Essays on Design and Disillusion by Silvio Lorusso and Caps Lock by Ruben Pater.
- Lorusso argues that design — despite being sold as a world-changing discipline — is constrained by economic, political, and cultural structures; and pretending otherwise only sets designers up for burnout and disappointment. Pater, on the other hand, offers a historical perspective on design’s entanglement with capital, power, and commerce, while suggesting ways this relationship might be redefined — or even broken. Although each explores various facets of the larger system, both Pater and Lorusso seem to agree on the inescapable truth that design has become so tightly ensnared by capitalist ends that we can no longer comprehend who we are, and what we do outside the system.
- Even when we do attempt to step outside, we rely, as Pater does, on some qualifier to help us clarify our identity: Designer as Poet, Designer as Activist, Designer as Journalist, Designer as Filmmaker. While these titles certainly help us to anchor our work outside the traditional framework, in a way, they also shortcut the wider suggestion: if we don’t have capitalism (or at least the capitalist ends set forth by a brief), we don’t have design.
- Nowhere has this truth felt more apparent than in the halls of RISD’s MFA graphic design department, where a version of design unhitched from the motivation and guidance of the client brief is playing out. Spend an hour or two with us in a studio crit or seminar, and you’ll encounter recurring questions: What is or isn’t design? When does a work cross into ‘Art’? and whether each of us is really more of an artist or designer, are likely to bubble up. With some consideration, it's really no surprise. MFA design programs (at least at RISD, I can’t speak for other schools) represent a perfect case study of the state of graphic design outside capitalism. We’re asked to find a topic of interest, define our audience, author our content, and produce a work in response — all but the last of which are typically handed to the designer in the “real world.”. And for a while, a large majority of us floundered in these conditions.
- In contrast, a trip across the building will reveal painters, photographers, and sculptors (read: traditional fine artists), deep in the process of answering these questions with markedly less uncertainty. Even when asked to describe our works, it’s not difficult to feel the distance both in mode and meaning, between the artist and designer. The distance in certainty between containing oneself in the work, and the discomfort — or perhaps inexperience — with trying to do so. As designers, we’ve allowed design to define our identity, rather than using design to tell the world who we are, and what we believe in.
- At the end of the day, it’s not really the designer’s fault. We’re products of an industry that defines our value on metrics of profit — be it sales, clicks, interactions or votes. And despite countless efforts to separate ourselves from the motivations of profit, our work nearly always continues to exist in relation to the system.
- So how do we create the space to imagine our field beyond that which it’s always been defined? In Ed Whitfield’s essay, What must we do to be free?, Whitfield argues for the creation of “liberated zones”, spaces where we “build freedom.”. Spaces where we can dream of a future free from the constraints of existing structures. Referencing the famous Audrey Lorde quote, “...the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” He suggests that while the tools you have, and how you use them, matter, “...the real problem is that it is difficult to tear down the master’s house while you live in it.”
- As designers, we’re still in the master’s house. We rely on it to hold our work, and defend its meaning. I’m not sure we’re meant to, or even able to dismantle the system, but I’d like us to define graphic design beyond the terms of capitalism. To bring the same critical eye and knowledge of trend, the ability to communicate, or excite, or question. To bring the sensitivity to people and cultures, the sensitivity to the way we interact with one another. To apply the same skills we honed within the master’s house — free from the constraints of what is or isn't, what’s profitable or popular — to engage freely with our passion and voice as people, and share that with the world.
- It’s an admittedly lofty, and perhaps unrealistic hope for design. After all, the reality of our market dominated world is that to exist you must play, and relatively few of us have the privileged position to step away from the game to explore a future without it
Selected commercial works done before coming to RISD, collaged with images of Edward Said and Antonio Gramsci.