Rigid Answers Don’t Retain the Same Fluidity as Considered Questions.

Graphic design exists in relation to different subjects, but has become somewhat superficially known with increasingly broad groups of people through the objects produced by it: business cards, letterheads, logos &c. This superficial impression of the subject then returns to graphic design in the form of clients who ask for yet more business cards, letterheads and logos in a cycle which perpetuates; incrementally transforming graphic design from an arts discipline into pure commerce which serves only to severely limit its potential.

I believe in appropriate, efficient and sustainable action, and in order to maintain this ethic, I must continually question parameters which are continually changing. Yesterday’s answers may not hold true for today’s problems and to continue to use convention is to betray progress. Each situation possesses a unique set of criteria which must be addressed in its logical outcome. Parameters should be challenged and experimentation encouraged. Limitations in this field are generally self-imposed and highly subjective. Creative ways can always be found to get around convention and precedent if we only allow ourselves the moxy to do so. Aesthetics are not dictated by sales potential.

Let’s dissect our problems to better understand its component parts and answer them in kind. This way we can understand our fundamental goals in order to craft thoughtful retort instead of stamping them out of the current assembly line before applying a thin veneer. We need to remove the familiar modes of working, but retain the ethic behind the idea, and that’s the nut as a practitioner of graphic design – a non-repetitive agent for considered visual statements and reasoned change.

Displacing Complacency and Promoting Unacceptability

Design is a mediator between an idea and its representation and the designer is the conduit through which that representation works. There are endless variations and iterations, yet new ideas are often slapped with old notions of taste and acceptability. Hypocritically, the homogenous are celebrated as being truly unique simply because the latest model has appeared in red rather than the standard black. Careful analysis and understanding is needed in order to create informed and appropriate ideas, not the knee-jerk reactions which cause us to apply the same solution to different problems. Life becomes a series of repetitive similar moments bereft of any aesthetic or spiritual value; routine must be replaced with appropriate measure.

I do not want to be a graphic designer in the sense that I do not want to create work to someone else’s preconceived expectations. I feel I have much more to offer than that. (Recently, I told a client that I did not want to work FOR him, but rather WITH him; I had challenged the parameters of the job and the client’s fixed expectations of my role. The project was then given to someone else, which was probably best for all parties involved – he didn’t want to have his ideas challenged and I didn’t want to simply execute his direction.) Using the term graphic design in this context defines its user with pre-existing and inaccurate data, prematurely limiting one’s abilities and effectively drawing a box around [the graphic designer]. Conventions must be challenged if any sort of reasoned thought is to come about; a poster need not be a sheet of paper with ink on it as long as its message is appropriate. And this is what I mean when I make references to the repetitive nature of graphic design as an aspect of human thought. We’ve allowed our minds to stop questioning because we’ve already defined answers in our minds before the question can be asked. Actions should be considered rather than assumed and results crafted rather than produced.

Getting Back to Zero

The underlying intention here is to foster true a understanding of the world we are building ((and even more fundamentally, to recognize the fact that we ARE building the world through nothing more than our daily activities)) and to effect positive change within it. There are worlds to be built and questions within them which require questioning before we can commence with construction.