Monday, 5 May 2008
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
Designing Critical Graphic Design
How Can Critical Design be Interpreted into graphic design?
Introduction
The concept critical design first occurred in Anthony Dunne’s[1] book Hertzian Tales in year 1999 and later was popularized in Design Noir in 2001. Since then many other artists began to develop their own variations on critical design. Anthony Dunne investigated the value of electronic products/objects, technology, and the relationship between industrial products and consumer culture in his books. He mentioned that a parallel design activity (critical design) that questions and challenges industrial agendas need to be developed.[2]
It is understandable that why Anthony Dunne targets his exploration on the basis of electronic products, because his background is industrial design. However, except for Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby[3], teachers, researchers and graduate students from the Royal College of Art such as James Auger, Crispin Jones and Noam Toran are practicing critical design as well. Besides, there are other product designers working in an analogous way which could be portrayed as critical design, such as Jurgen Bey, Marti Guixe and Elio Caccavale.
To take a panoramic view of their works, product design obviously became to the mainstream of this area of design. But from the perspective of the overall design discipline, the question - is critical design can only be expressed by a product or an object is essential to be asked. Not only can product design be utilized as tools for awareness and reflection upon issues, which largely surround the implications of existing and future technologies, but also other forms of design.
Take an example of Krzysztof Wodiczko’s work. His projections onto buildings of hands or faces of people who speak about personal experiences or crimes they have suffered, allowing the public airing of issues usually kept private, his projection works also gave people an opportunity to speak about their harrowing experiences. Through the animation of historic public buildings and monuments in many cities around the world, his video projections create social conscious and initiate a critical dialogue both within a specific marginalized culture, as well as with the greater community. Although he has labeled his style as interrogative design, obviously such kind of art rendered with equal values of critical design. His work contains architecture design, digital communication, lighting design, and enviornment design, and his style is newly expressed critical design in a novel way which different from the traditional methods (although such area of design still fresh in the design field).
Figure 1. Krzysztof Wodiczko’s projections, Tijuana, Mexico
So it is manifest that, critical design can be interpreted into other design forms, such as graphic design, interior and enviornmental design, architecture design, fashion and textile design, photography and fine art, etc. Although different methods and expressions explore different values, the common purpose of different forms of critical designs is making people think, raising awareness, exposing assumptions, provoking action, and sparking debate.
From this perspective, this paper targets at one of the design disciplines – graphic design, to explore how can critical design be interpreted into graphic design. Besides, the concept critical graphic design is also investigated in this paper.
Rationales
Two key design disciplines - graphic design and critical design are involved and studied in this paper, so, to well-understand the rationales of the two disciplines is vital for developing deeper analysis.
Critical Design
Design as critique has existed before under several guises. Italian radical design of the 1970s was highly critical of prevailing social values and design ideologies, critical design builds on this attitude and extends it into today’s world.
During the 1990s, there was a general move towards conceptual design which made it easier for noncommercial forms of design like critical design to exist, this happened mainly in the furniture world, product design is still conservative and closely linked to the mass market.
The term critical design was first used in Anthony Dunne’s book Hertzian Tales (1999) and later in Design Noir (2001). Critical design is a design which uses speculative design proposals to challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions and givens about the role products play in everyday life, especially the electronic products.
From Anthony Dunne’s point of view, the current product design has pushed human relationship with the medium of electronic technology to the limit. He believes that there is a contrast between the banal design of many electronic products and the extreme misuses they are subjeced to, so that human experience of everyday day life lived through conventional electronic products is aesthetically impoverished.[4]
Indeed, almost any newspaper reveals a very different view of everyday life, where complex emotions, desires and needs are played out through the misuse and abuse of electronic products and systems. A mother shoots her son after an argument over which television channel to watch; a parent is outraged by a speaking doll which sounds like it swears; the police set a trap for scanner snoopers – people who listen in to emergency radio frequencies illegally – by broadcasting a message that a UFO has landed in a local forest, within minutes several cars arrive and their scanners are confiscated.[5] It proves that electronic products are negatively influencing people’s life.
It has also mentioned in Anothony Dunne’s book Design Noir, that people are living within the electromagnetic spectrum which is created by electronic objects, by influence from the electromagnetic pollution, people suffering from electrical sensitivity, electro-illnesses, and short life-span. Some people even used electromagnetic technology to commit crimes.
Anthony Dunne mentioned that, designers need to explore issues which caused by electronic products, “not just by finding new ways of exploiting the electromagnetic spectrum as a medium, but by defining and giving tangible expression to new thresholds between inside and outside, public and private, mine and yours, within a cultural context.”[6]
Therefore, critical design emerged to question and challenge industrial agendas. Such design is opposite to affirmative design: design reinforces the status quo. Critical design rejects how things are now as being the only possibility, it provides a critique of the prevailing situation through designs that embody alternative social, cultural, technical or economic values.
Critical design asks carfully crafted questions and makes people think by developing new products – smaller, faster, different, and better. More specifically, critical design is purpose to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the aesthetic quality of our electronically mediated existence. It is more of an attitude than anything else, a position rather than a method.
Graphic Design
During WWII and the post-war period, graphic design in Europe and the US, had a clear and purposeful role: to provide propaganda, camouflage, and information design on behalf of governments for the armed forces and civilians. Many designers were involved with the nation’s various efforts to reconstruct public services and to improve the quality of life, such as Tom Eckersley,[7] F.H.K.Henrion,[8] and Abram Games.[9] The close relationship between graphic design and the socially progressive policies of governments, public services, and even the major corporations of the day continued well after the war had ended.
In today’s society, the responsibility for social change and progress has fallen to individuals and small groups, non-profits, and publications. Consequently the messages are more numerous and more complex. Designers, of course, are working for a host of social causes, but as design critic Rick Poynor has remarked, “Designers inevitably express the values of their day. And today’s values are not primarily about social responsibility.”[10] Graphic design, as one of the most broad and powerful design disciplines, has been expanded its values beyond the social reponsibility.
Graphic design is for selling things and ideas to make money or to further political agendas, but meanwhile, it is also for critiquing such behaviors. It is for making things clear – saving lives even – but it’s also for enriching people’s everyday lives through the addition of layers of complexity, nuance, and subtlety. It is for helping people find their way and to comprehend data, but it is also for helping them to get lost in new ideas, fantastical narratives, or landscapes, and to question and contest what information is presented. Therefore, graphic design is enmeshed within all aspects of social life.
Graphic design communicating with people: audiences, viewers, readers, users, receivers, visitors, participants, interacters, players, passers-by, experiencers, members of the public, communities, inhabitants, consumers, customers, subscribers, and clients. That means, graphic design is working for its focus groups, usually are clients and target audiences.
Graphic design is also a cross-disciplinary design and collaboration. It is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, geographically disributed, and collaborative. Complex problems require sophisticated responses that draw from expertise in multiple fields, therefore graphic designers need to be fluent in many fields of specialized practice, which underneath the graphic design discipline, such as advertising, experimental typography, package design, editorial design, book design, information design, web design, interactive design, identity design, movie titles, visualizing music, broadcast design, sound design, signage, type design, writing, software design, mise-en-scene, and games design, etc.
Critical Graphic Design
Why
Why doing critical graphic design? Nowadays, there are growing numbers of designers who embrace the idea of design being something that changes, mutates – even decays – over time, and the loss of control on their part that this implies. A new generation of designers is experimenting not only with what culturally connected sustainable design could look like, but also with what it doesn’t look like, because truly sustainable design allows for the contributions of mutiple authors in unexpected ways over time – the kinds of change that haven’t even been imagined yet.
Critical design emerged under such background to explore sustainabilities. However, to be considered successful in the marketplace, design has to sell in large numbers, therefore it has to be popular. Critical design can never be truly popular, and that is its fundamental problem. Objects that are critical of industry’s agenda are unlikely to be funded by industry. As a result, they will tend to remain one-offs. [11] So it is necessary to explore a new category which can be popular and sustainable to refine the avant-garde: critical graphic design.
What
What is critical graphic design? Critical graphic design integrates the purpose of critical design and graphic design together, and shapes a new and more specific purpose for its own. As has mentioned above, the purpose of critical design is making people think, raising awareness, exposing assumptions, provoking action, and sparking debate, and the purpose of graphic design is to sell or explain, to express, communicate, inform, and influence the thoughts and actions of its audience, so by absorb the two design purposes, critical graphic design comes up its own definition: critical graphic design, with the intention of business and marketing development, aims to stimulate debates or discussions by challenging the narrow social, cultural, technical or economic values within a group of people. To explain, the debate or discussion which the critical graphic design stimulates, target at a focus group of audience, usually is the audience that the clients tend to communicate with, and the debate or discussion may reveals the relationship between clients and its audience.
There are similarities between critical design and graphic design, but obviously there are also some differences between the two designs. The main difference is graphic design usually service for a client, and focus on different audiences which different clients target at, but critical design, with its specific destination, just focuses on its steady audiences which the design aims to inspire and communicate with. Such difference is not a problem in doing critical graphic design, but it indicates that not all the graphic designs can involve critical design elements in, by choosing appropriate graphic design forms to develop critical graphic design is a vital factor for making a successful critical graphic design.
How
How to do critical graphic design? The key point in doing critical graphic design is the marketing intention of the client. Whether the critical graphic design methods can be taken, all depend on values and/or audiences, which the client tends to be challenge and/or communicate. In a case where critical graphic design can be done, the role of graphic designers is in making suggestions on critical graphic design and offering experimental solutions to their clients.
Take advertising campaign as an example. As advertising campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated marketing communication, so the target audience of an advertising campaign is very specific, and advertising campaigns can appear in different media across a specific idea, so there are host of opportunities to develop critical graphic design in an advertising campaign.
Destinations of advertising campaigns usually around: social awareness improvement, product marketing development, brands promotion, and political intervention; there are some narrow values exist in almost all the aspects which advertising campaign deals with.
An example of advertising campaign with critical design ideas – ‘Bed’, has done by DDB Hong Kong for its client McDonald’s. Working hours in Hong Kong are long, with many people working a 55-hour week. This means that most professionals get less than the recommended eight hours of sleep, which in turn leads to trouble in getting out of bed in the morning, and no breakfast became to a great health problem among Hong Kong professionals. This campaign featured a young office worker slumbering peacefully in a bed placed in a busy metro station. Beside the sleeping woman was a picture of a McDonald’s breakfast meal, with the copy: ‘Having trouble getting going in the morning? Start your day right with a McDonald’s breakfast.’
Breakfast is the meal that really defines how much energy people will have to start their day off right, but the agency’s target demographic tends to skip it, or grab a very light meal on the go. The task of this advertising was to shatter complacency and get people to ‘wake up’ to the value of a great breakfast. On the other hand, this advertising tried to lead discussions among Hong Kong professionals about their health problems which caused by the stressful working routines and long time working hours; also it tended to increase awareness of healthy working in both of employers and employees.
Figure 2. Advertising campaign - ‘Bed’, Client: McDonald’s, Agency: DDB Hong Kong
Clearly, the critical part of making a critical advertising campaign is determining a theme, as it sets the critical tone for the individual advertisements and other forms of marketing communications that will be employed. The campaign theme is the central message that will be communicated and discussed in the promotional activities, and themes are usually developed with the intention of being debated, in order to attract attentions and promote the products or ideas at the same time, discussion or debate is employed for a substantial period promotion and development.
Conclusion
Critical graphic design is a post-critical, post-disciplinary deconstruction of the all-too-serious solidity of design culture itself. Graphic designers inspired by this paper, should think about for what kind of ways the critical graphic design presents graphic design and graphic design knowledge and skills as a lively medium for use, appropriation and reinvention? Further more, to what extent does the critical graphic design breaks down contemporary graphic designers’ relative reluctance to critically inquire into the relationship between their distinctively paper- and digital-based design realms (from the making of book pages to the design of graphic identities, billboards, signage and other forms of communication) and the ways in which these creep into and through the exploration of juxtaposing parallel disciplines, critical design for instance?
References
Introduction
The concept critical design first occurred in Anthony Dunne’s[1] book Hertzian Tales in year 1999 and later was popularized in Design Noir in 2001. Since then many other artists began to develop their own variations on critical design. Anthony Dunne investigated the value of electronic products/objects, technology, and the relationship between industrial products and consumer culture in his books. He mentioned that a parallel design activity (critical design) that questions and challenges industrial agendas need to be developed.[2]
It is understandable that why Anthony Dunne targets his exploration on the basis of electronic products, because his background is industrial design. However, except for Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby[3], teachers, researchers and graduate students from the Royal College of Art such as James Auger, Crispin Jones and Noam Toran are practicing critical design as well. Besides, there are other product designers working in an analogous way which could be portrayed as critical design, such as Jurgen Bey, Marti Guixe and Elio Caccavale.
To take a panoramic view of their works, product design obviously became to the mainstream of this area of design. But from the perspective of the overall design discipline, the question - is critical design can only be expressed by a product or an object is essential to be asked. Not only can product design be utilized as tools for awareness and reflection upon issues, which largely surround the implications of existing and future technologies, but also other forms of design.
Take an example of Krzysztof Wodiczko’s work. His projections onto buildings of hands or faces of people who speak about personal experiences or crimes they have suffered, allowing the public airing of issues usually kept private, his projection works also gave people an opportunity to speak about their harrowing experiences. Through the animation of historic public buildings and monuments in many cities around the world, his video projections create social conscious and initiate a critical dialogue both within a specific marginalized culture, as well as with the greater community. Although he has labeled his style as interrogative design, obviously such kind of art rendered with equal values of critical design. His work contains architecture design, digital communication, lighting design, and enviornment design, and his style is newly expressed critical design in a novel way which different from the traditional methods (although such area of design still fresh in the design field).
Figure 1. Krzysztof Wodiczko’s projections, Tijuana, Mexico
So it is manifest that, critical design can be interpreted into other design forms, such as graphic design, interior and enviornmental design, architecture design, fashion and textile design, photography and fine art, etc. Although different methods and expressions explore different values, the common purpose of different forms of critical designs is making people think, raising awareness, exposing assumptions, provoking action, and sparking debate.
From this perspective, this paper targets at one of the design disciplines – graphic design, to explore how can critical design be interpreted into graphic design. Besides, the concept critical graphic design is also investigated in this paper.
Rationales
Two key design disciplines - graphic design and critical design are involved and studied in this paper, so, to well-understand the rationales of the two disciplines is vital for developing deeper analysis.
Critical Design
Design as critique has existed before under several guises. Italian radical design of the 1970s was highly critical of prevailing social values and design ideologies, critical design builds on this attitude and extends it into today’s world.
During the 1990s, there was a general move towards conceptual design which made it easier for noncommercial forms of design like critical design to exist, this happened mainly in the furniture world, product design is still conservative and closely linked to the mass market.
The term critical design was first used in Anthony Dunne’s book Hertzian Tales (1999) and later in Design Noir (2001). Critical design is a design which uses speculative design proposals to challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions and givens about the role products play in everyday life, especially the electronic products.
From Anthony Dunne’s point of view, the current product design has pushed human relationship with the medium of electronic technology to the limit. He believes that there is a contrast between the banal design of many electronic products and the extreme misuses they are subjeced to, so that human experience of everyday day life lived through conventional electronic products is aesthetically impoverished.[4]
Indeed, almost any newspaper reveals a very different view of everyday life, where complex emotions, desires and needs are played out through the misuse and abuse of electronic products and systems. A mother shoots her son after an argument over which television channel to watch; a parent is outraged by a speaking doll which sounds like it swears; the police set a trap for scanner snoopers – people who listen in to emergency radio frequencies illegally – by broadcasting a message that a UFO has landed in a local forest, within minutes several cars arrive and their scanners are confiscated.[5] It proves that electronic products are negatively influencing people’s life.
It has also mentioned in Anothony Dunne’s book Design Noir, that people are living within the electromagnetic spectrum which is created by electronic objects, by influence from the electromagnetic pollution, people suffering from electrical sensitivity, electro-illnesses, and short life-span. Some people even used electromagnetic technology to commit crimes.
Anthony Dunne mentioned that, designers need to explore issues which caused by electronic products, “not just by finding new ways of exploiting the electromagnetic spectrum as a medium, but by defining and giving tangible expression to new thresholds between inside and outside, public and private, mine and yours, within a cultural context.”[6]
Therefore, critical design emerged to question and challenge industrial agendas. Such design is opposite to affirmative design: design reinforces the status quo. Critical design rejects how things are now as being the only possibility, it provides a critique of the prevailing situation through designs that embody alternative social, cultural, technical or economic values.
Critical design asks carfully crafted questions and makes people think by developing new products – smaller, faster, different, and better. More specifically, critical design is purpose to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the aesthetic quality of our electronically mediated existence. It is more of an attitude than anything else, a position rather than a method.
Graphic Design
During WWII and the post-war period, graphic design in Europe and the US, had a clear and purposeful role: to provide propaganda, camouflage, and information design on behalf of governments for the armed forces and civilians. Many designers were involved with the nation’s various efforts to reconstruct public services and to improve the quality of life, such as Tom Eckersley,[7] F.H.K.Henrion,[8] and Abram Games.[9] The close relationship between graphic design and the socially progressive policies of governments, public services, and even the major corporations of the day continued well after the war had ended.
In today’s society, the responsibility for social change and progress has fallen to individuals and small groups, non-profits, and publications. Consequently the messages are more numerous and more complex. Designers, of course, are working for a host of social causes, but as design critic Rick Poynor has remarked, “Designers inevitably express the values of their day. And today’s values are not primarily about social responsibility.”[10] Graphic design, as one of the most broad and powerful design disciplines, has been expanded its values beyond the social reponsibility.
Graphic design is for selling things and ideas to make money or to further political agendas, but meanwhile, it is also for critiquing such behaviors. It is for making things clear – saving lives even – but it’s also for enriching people’s everyday lives through the addition of layers of complexity, nuance, and subtlety. It is for helping people find their way and to comprehend data, but it is also for helping them to get lost in new ideas, fantastical narratives, or landscapes, and to question and contest what information is presented. Therefore, graphic design is enmeshed within all aspects of social life.
Graphic design communicating with people: audiences, viewers, readers, users, receivers, visitors, participants, interacters, players, passers-by, experiencers, members of the public, communities, inhabitants, consumers, customers, subscribers, and clients. That means, graphic design is working for its focus groups, usually are clients and target audiences.
Graphic design is also a cross-disciplinary design and collaboration. It is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, geographically disributed, and collaborative. Complex problems require sophisticated responses that draw from expertise in multiple fields, therefore graphic designers need to be fluent in many fields of specialized practice, which underneath the graphic design discipline, such as advertising, experimental typography, package design, editorial design, book design, information design, web design, interactive design, identity design, movie titles, visualizing music, broadcast design, sound design, signage, type design, writing, software design, mise-en-scene, and games design, etc.
Critical Graphic Design
Why
Why doing critical graphic design? Nowadays, there are growing numbers of designers who embrace the idea of design being something that changes, mutates – even decays – over time, and the loss of control on their part that this implies. A new generation of designers is experimenting not only with what culturally connected sustainable design could look like, but also with what it doesn’t look like, because truly sustainable design allows for the contributions of mutiple authors in unexpected ways over time – the kinds of change that haven’t even been imagined yet.
Critical design emerged under such background to explore sustainabilities. However, to be considered successful in the marketplace, design has to sell in large numbers, therefore it has to be popular. Critical design can never be truly popular, and that is its fundamental problem. Objects that are critical of industry’s agenda are unlikely to be funded by industry. As a result, they will tend to remain one-offs. [11] So it is necessary to explore a new category which can be popular and sustainable to refine the avant-garde: critical graphic design.
What
What is critical graphic design? Critical graphic design integrates the purpose of critical design and graphic design together, and shapes a new and more specific purpose for its own. As has mentioned above, the purpose of critical design is making people think, raising awareness, exposing assumptions, provoking action, and sparking debate, and the purpose of graphic design is to sell or explain, to express, communicate, inform, and influence the thoughts and actions of its audience, so by absorb the two design purposes, critical graphic design comes up its own definition: critical graphic design, with the intention of business and marketing development, aims to stimulate debates or discussions by challenging the narrow social, cultural, technical or economic values within a group of people. To explain, the debate or discussion which the critical graphic design stimulates, target at a focus group of audience, usually is the audience that the clients tend to communicate with, and the debate or discussion may reveals the relationship between clients and its audience.
There are similarities between critical design and graphic design, but obviously there are also some differences between the two designs. The main difference is graphic design usually service for a client, and focus on different audiences which different clients target at, but critical design, with its specific destination, just focuses on its steady audiences which the design aims to inspire and communicate with. Such difference is not a problem in doing critical graphic design, but it indicates that not all the graphic designs can involve critical design elements in, by choosing appropriate graphic design forms to develop critical graphic design is a vital factor for making a successful critical graphic design.
How
How to do critical graphic design? The key point in doing critical graphic design is the marketing intention of the client. Whether the critical graphic design methods can be taken, all depend on values and/or audiences, which the client tends to be challenge and/or communicate. In a case where critical graphic design can be done, the role of graphic designers is in making suggestions on critical graphic design and offering experimental solutions to their clients.
Take advertising campaign as an example. As advertising campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated marketing communication, so the target audience of an advertising campaign is very specific, and advertising campaigns can appear in different media across a specific idea, so there are host of opportunities to develop critical graphic design in an advertising campaign.
Destinations of advertising campaigns usually around: social awareness improvement, product marketing development, brands promotion, and political intervention; there are some narrow values exist in almost all the aspects which advertising campaign deals with.
An example of advertising campaign with critical design ideas – ‘Bed’, has done by DDB Hong Kong for its client McDonald’s. Working hours in Hong Kong are long, with many people working a 55-hour week. This means that most professionals get less than the recommended eight hours of sleep, which in turn leads to trouble in getting out of bed in the morning, and no breakfast became to a great health problem among Hong Kong professionals. This campaign featured a young office worker slumbering peacefully in a bed placed in a busy metro station. Beside the sleeping woman was a picture of a McDonald’s breakfast meal, with the copy: ‘Having trouble getting going in the morning? Start your day right with a McDonald’s breakfast.’
Breakfast is the meal that really defines how much energy people will have to start their day off right, but the agency’s target demographic tends to skip it, or grab a very light meal on the go. The task of this advertising was to shatter complacency and get people to ‘wake up’ to the value of a great breakfast. On the other hand, this advertising tried to lead discussions among Hong Kong professionals about their health problems which caused by the stressful working routines and long time working hours; also it tended to increase awareness of healthy working in both of employers and employees.
Figure 2. Advertising campaign - ‘Bed’, Client: McDonald’s, Agency: DDB Hong Kong
Clearly, the critical part of making a critical advertising campaign is determining a theme, as it sets the critical tone for the individual advertisements and other forms of marketing communications that will be employed. The campaign theme is the central message that will be communicated and discussed in the promotional activities, and themes are usually developed with the intention of being debated, in order to attract attentions and promote the products or ideas at the same time, discussion or debate is employed for a substantial period promotion and development.
Conclusion
Critical graphic design is a post-critical, post-disciplinary deconstruction of the all-too-serious solidity of design culture itself. Graphic designers inspired by this paper, should think about for what kind of ways the critical graphic design presents graphic design and graphic design knowledge and skills as a lively medium for use, appropriation and reinvention? Further more, to what extent does the critical graphic design breaks down contemporary graphic designers’ relative reluctance to critically inquire into the relationship between their distinctively paper- and digital-based design realms (from the making of book pages to the design of graphic identities, billboards, signage and other forms of communication) and the ways in which these creep into and through the exploration of juxtaposing parallel disciplines, critical design for instance?
References
[1] Anthony Dunne is Professor and Head of Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art in London. He is also a partner in the design practice Dunne & Raby, London. [2] Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, 2001, p.58 [3] Fiona Raby is a faculty member in the Design Interactions department at London's Royal College of Art. She is also a partner in the design practice Dunne & Raby, London. [4] Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, 2001, p.8 [5] Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, 2001, p.6 [6] Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, 2001, p.26 [7] Tom Eckersley is a British poster designer who drew maps for the RAF during WWII, produced posters to promote worker welfare and safety. [8] F.H.K.Henrion is a German designer who immigrated to Britain in 1939, designed campaigns about health and rationing for Britain’s Ministry of Information. [9] Abram Games is an Official War Artist during World War II; he designed over a hundred posters and later created the symbols of the BBC and the Festival of Britain. [10] Alice Twemlow, 2006, p.8 [11] Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, 2001, p.59
Bibliography
Dunne, A. and Raby, F. (2001) Design Noir. August/Birkhauser, London/Basel
Dunne and Raby About us (online), available from http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/ [accessed 12 April 2008]
Core77 Design Blog Broadcasts: Anthony Dunne + Fiona Raby, interviewed by Bruce Tharp (online), available from http://www.core77.com/blog/broadcasts/core77_broadcasts_anthony_dunne_fiona_raby_interviewed_by_bruce_tharp_8433.asp [accessed 12 April 2008]
Pbs.org Krzysztof Wodiczko (online), available from http://www.pbs.org/art21/slideshow/?slide=717&artindex=159
http://www.pbs.org/art21/slideshow/?slide=709&artindex=159 [accessed 12 April 2008]
Dunne, A. (2005) Hertzian Tales. The MIT Press, Cambridge
Royal Ontario Museum Italian Arts & Design: The 20th Century opens at the ROM on October 28 (online), available from http://www.rom.on.ca/news/releases/public.php?mediakey=fnp3lmzyt0 [accessed 14 April 2008]
Dexigner Italian Arts & Design: the 20th Century (online), available from http://www.dexigner.com/design_competitions/7356.html [accessed 14 April 2008]
Williams, G. (2006) The Furniture Machine: Furniture since 1990. V&A, London
Eskilson, Stephen J. (2007) Graphic Design: A New History. Laurence King Publishing, London
Twemlow, A. (2006) What is Graphic Design for? RotoVision SA, Switzerland
Noble, I. and Bestley, R. (2005) Visual Research. AVA Publishing SA, Switzerland
Picasa Guerrilla Ads (online), available from http://picasaweb.google.com/odirectorcriativo/GuerrillaAds/photo#5031909561894144002 [accessed 14 April 2008]
Lucas, G. and Dorrian, M. (2006) Guerrilla Advertising. Laurence King Publishing Ltd, London
Kyes, Z. and Owens, M. (2007) Forms of Inquiry: The Architecture of Critical Graphic Design. Architectural Association Publications, London
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
Magazine Pagelayout Design - Other Designers' Work
Su Min
James & Jen
Grace Zhang
Divya
Nevada
James & Jen
p.s. My sweet classmates:
Grace, Didem, Me, Su Min
Eman, Nevada, Hanna, Stella
James, Hanna, Divya, Jen
Didem, Jo
Nevada, Red
Huanhuan, Jen
Monday, 21 April 2008
Friday, 4 April 2008
Tuesday, 25 March 2008
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
Tuesday, 18 March 2008
Tuesday, 11 March 2008
A Design Problem: The Influence of Student Accommodation on Suicide among University Students
Suicide on university campuses is shooting up, and this phenomenon has led to conversations and discussions among people, but all the talks of numbers and patterns still leave us with the ques-tion: "Why do the students take their own lives?" The most common factor is mental illness, in particular, "mood disorders", such as phobia, paranoia, hypochondria, clinical depression and manic-depressive illness, also known as bi-polar disorder.
Mental problems have drawn attention from the government, society and universities as the number of suicide cases on campuses have grown alarmingly. National support system towards suicide on campus has been established in many countries. Besides, the counseling and mental health centre, most of the universities have set up a warning and intervention mechanism to supplement psychiatric counseling, especially focusing on suicide prevention on campus.
However, a hidden risk factor which is significantly associated with the possibility of suicide among university students hasn’t been detected by the government, society, and/or universities. The design of student accommodation in universities should be considered as an important point, which may precipitate depression or escalate the level of mental illness. A number of suicide cases, which have happened in student dorms highlights that there are some problems with the design of student accommodation and perhaps should be taken into account as a subversive in campus suicide.
Subversive
Poor student accommodation design can be classified into three categories.s
1. Surroundings. A number of universities are located in suburbs or far away from town centres, understandably their student hall developments are situated close by, which is convenient for the students to access between their dorms and campus. But some characteristics of an urban location can possibly cause depression in students.
A. The shortage of entertainment in suburban districts may induce feelings of a sense of dullness. It is difficult for students to get rid of their tension through the limited facilities, and always living under pressure without any form of release may cause depression and other mental illnesses.
B. Lack of company and poor public transport also decrease the possibility of social communication between students. Taking part in city centre activities requires the students to go out of their way, therefore they may opt to stay in their rooms.
C. With the exception of watching DVDs and playing computer games, the only entertainment for students appears to be peer parties, but the two popular problems with these parties are alcohol and drug abuse. These are other high suicide risk factors, more than half of all suicides involve drugs or alcohol.
2. Layout and interior design. Common features of the student flat are small, crowded, and low. These interiors also have uniform layout, poor colour coordination, dull furniture and framework. This is all very monotonous and depressing to those who are more vulnerable.
Black, white, gray, dark blue and some other cool colours are extensively utilized in student accommodation, because these colours look clean, tidy and steady. But from the psychological perspective, a negative influence on people’s mood can be generated when living in an environment with these colours together.
Psychologists believe warm colours like red, yellow and orange can enhance people’s mood and make people happy; contrary to this, dark blue, gray, brown and other cool colours can make people quiet, even depressed. Black and white are two extreme colours, many surveys show that black can distract people’s attention, and make people upset, empty, desperate and depressed. When living in such an environment for a long time, pupils of the eyes will be enlarged, therefore people will be getting more and more detached; in addition, their health and wellbeing will be influenced. However, although white is clean and can calm people down, living in an environment such as this for long periods can lead to the pupils of the eyes shrinking because of the strong contact with white light, and it will cause headaches and nervous debility.
Wayne Liao, a graduate student of Lancaster University, who lived in a student hall when he was studying in Grizedale College of Lancaster, said: “my flatmates and I couldn’t stay in our rooms for more than three days, the black doors, the ceilings, and the white walls of the flat almost drove us mad. But if we were to go out, it usually took us 2 hours to get to the city centre area, and at least 40 minutes by bus to the nearest supermarket. So, compared to going out, we’d rather stay in our flat, drinking and taking drugs to release our depression. Once when I spent my Christmas holiday in our flat alone, I really felt suicidal. To have such a feeling is horrible, and I don’t even want to recall it.”
Students who lived in a flat of student hall in Lancaster University were sitting and drinking in their flat’s corridor, in order to release their depression.
Samantha Dong, a graduate student of Loughborough University talked about one of her flatmate’s death in the student flat of Loughborough University. “When we found her body, it was several days after her death. It was a devastating scene. She died in her bath room. Nobody knew she had died until someone noticed a flow of water coming out from her room through a crack between her door and the floor. There was also an unusual smell. No one knew how she died. People said maybe she died from sudden illness like heart attack or etc., but no one can give us a satisfying answer. This happened several years ago, but I still believe she died from suicide. A week before her death, she told me she felt like she was living in a cell; dark, cramped, and silent. I know she was very anxious about her study, because she couldn’t focus on studying in her room that felt like it is a cell. I can understand and relate to how she struggled with her studies, life conditions, and mental troubles.”
Student flat of Loughborough University. Too much white may lead to feelings of tenseness nervousand can cause mental illness.
3. Supports and services. This is a service design problem. Most universities haven’t built support services for students living in campus accommodations, such as neighbourhood facilities (for entertainment, sport, communication and study), and it is necessary to run workshops for staff to develop appropriate attitudes and working ways when dealing with student matters.Poor supports and services might make students more frustrated with their accommodation, and it may also be a trigger for depression. Alternatively, investment in the infrastructure and services of university will decrease the possibility of student’s depression, which is influenced by the poor design of their rooms.
Time to Intervene
Suicide leaves a wide path of destruction: they not only harm themselves but those they care for most around them. In Nancy O'Malley's book, ‘Suicide on Campus’, James Rhem states, "Suicide hurts us all. When a student kills himself in a dorm, the whole campus is affected. His fellow students, his teacher, his resident advisor all feel the loss in some way or another. It challenges each of them, each of us. Clearly, we must work together against suicide not just for the sake of the victims but for all our sakes."
It is time to highlight the importance of the living environment of students as a crucial factor, which may lead to the suicide of university students. Hence psychologists, designers, architects, and sociologist should collaborate together, to clarify this problem and tackle it as soon as possible.
Monday, 10 March 2008
Logos I designed for Our Magazine 'Spark'
I don't know why when I uploaded these pictures on the Internet, their colour changed, maybe because I transfered their format from AI. to JPEG. so they look strange, but anyway they have nice colours in my computer.
Other graphic design team members' logo
Tuesday, 4 March 2008
Monday, 3 March 2008
An Email from Mike
From: Mike Press Sunday - March 2, 2008 10:29 PM
To: Jia Cui
CC: Hazel White", "Qin Han"
Subject: Re: Tutorial notes
Hi Michelle
Thank you for your tutorial notes.
I thought that it would be useful to clarify one or two points, just to make sure we have no misunderstandings.
I'm pleased with your thinking on this project, and the dedicated approach that you have taken. At our last meeting we considered the two broad approaches you could take:
(i) a communications design project that considered aspects of non-verbal communication that may assist in identifying people of high risk, especially in an A+E context;
(ii) a critical design project that focused on suicide. From our discussion it was clear that approach;
(ii) better suited your strengths and aspirations, and I'm most pleased that you took the initiative to contact Graham, whose email to you raised some interesting issues and creative strategies.
As long as you keep uppermost the ethical and sensitive nature of your subject matter, then you should explore this more fully. Essentially you are looking at how design can raise debate and awareness - creating objects that have a 'mediating' value - in other words, a value and function in being a focus for discussion and discourse.
I suggested that the work of artists Dalziel (pronounced "Dayell") and Scullion could be worth looking at in detail. They are not PhD students, but rather two of Scotland's leading contemporary artists who have a base in our College. Their website is here: http://www.dalzielscullion.com/ They use art to raise debate about our relationship with nature.
Your project will require you to look at the variety of ways that graphic design can connect with social issues, but to focus on 'critical design' as one approach that you will develop and evaluate in the specific context of suicide. Some of the variety of ways are these:
1. Advertising campaigns - I showed you a campaign directed at victims of domestic violence.
2. Subversive approaches to the advertising style - eg: Adbusters, which is online and in the library.
3. Information systems to help people to get help or assistance easily, or to provide assistance in a counselling or clinical context.
4. Critical design
You may wish to talk to Jonathan Baldwin briefly, as he is a specialist on visual communication.
A good example of 3. above is 'Living in the Moment' - http://www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/projects/lim/LIMWeb_28feb_01.swf - which our colleague Gary Gowans in graphics has been working on. This is a system to help families who have family members with dementia.
We can have another discussion about this on Tuesday.
Mike
Professor Mike Press
Head of School
School of Design
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design
University of Dundee
Perth Road
Dundee DD1 4HT
To: Jia Cui
CC: Hazel White", "Qin Han"
Subject: Re: Tutorial notes
Hi Michelle
Thank you for your tutorial notes.
I thought that it would be useful to clarify one or two points, just to make sure we have no misunderstandings.
I'm pleased with your thinking on this project, and the dedicated approach that you have taken. At our last meeting we considered the two broad approaches you could take:
(i) a communications design project that considered aspects of non-verbal communication that may assist in identifying people of high risk, especially in an A+E context;
(ii) a critical design project that focused on suicide. From our discussion it was clear that approach;
(ii) better suited your strengths and aspirations, and I'm most pleased that you took the initiative to contact Graham, whose email to you raised some interesting issues and creative strategies.
As long as you keep uppermost the ethical and sensitive nature of your subject matter, then you should explore this more fully. Essentially you are looking at how design can raise debate and awareness - creating objects that have a 'mediating' value - in other words, a value and function in being a focus for discussion and discourse.
I suggested that the work of artists Dalziel (pronounced "Dayell") and Scullion could be worth looking at in detail. They are not PhD students, but rather two of Scotland's leading contemporary artists who have a base in our College. Their website is here: http://www.dalzielscullion.com/ They use art to raise debate about our relationship with nature.
Your project will require you to look at the variety of ways that graphic design can connect with social issues, but to focus on 'critical design' as one approach that you will develop and evaluate in the specific context of suicide. Some of the variety of ways are these:
1. Advertising campaigns - I showed you a campaign directed at victims of domestic violence.
2. Subversive approaches to the advertising style - eg: Adbusters, which is online and in the library.
3. Information systems to help people to get help or assistance easily, or to provide assistance in a counselling or clinical context.
4. Critical design
You may wish to talk to Jonathan Baldwin briefly, as he is a specialist on visual communication.
A good example of 3. above is 'Living in the Moment' - http://www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/projects/lim/LIMWeb_28feb_01.swf - which our colleague Gary Gowans in graphics has been working on. This is a system to help families who have family members with dementia.
We can have another discussion about this on Tuesday.
Mike
Professor Mike Press
Head of School
School of Design
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design
University of Dundee
Perth Road
Dundee DD1 4HT
Reflection on Tutorial 03 3 08
Yeah, I need to research tons of examples on advertising campaign, because this is what I want to do for my project and will be one of my project outputs.
Actually what Qin suggexted me to think about is just the proper question I need to answer in my research paper. It is difficult to explain now because I don't have enough evidence which supports me to claim my point, and I also really don't know what is my point, sad...
The story telling idea is an interesting idea, especially different ways of story telling. To be honest sometimes I thought about critical design and would like to give it a adjective word: ridiculous. However I neglect that the word 'ridiculous' can be paraphased as 'humor', just similar to the caricature - makes people thinking after their laughing. Maybe I can think about a comedy way to do my critical design instead of very serious expression. I'd like to watch that movie to get some inspirations.
Sunday, 2 March 2008
A Decision
I've skimed the book 'Design Nior' and 'Hertizian Tales', and I also searched on the Internet, now I get to know what is critical design and who does it. But still confused about how can I generate my idea in a critical design way and how can I make my design works critically.
Today I wrote an abstract of my research paper, I decided to explore how can graphic design be involved into critical design, in another word, how to do a critical graphic design. My idea came from my raw understanding of critical design. When read or searched on the Internet, I found it almost all the critical design is expressed by the way of product design, interaction and electronic product, and I couldn't find any critical design expressing in a graphic design way. This made me alittle surprised, because graphic design - a very board and practical design field which can be expressed in almost any ways, but why there is no information about critical graphic design, this is really a sas thing. As a graphic designer and a fan of graphic design, I decided to explore the way that graphic design might be translated in critical design. Actually in my opinion any forms of design can be translated into critical design such as enviornment design, interior design, texile design, even fashion design. So why don't I go through the multi-discipline and have a look how every kinds of design were translated into critical design, and how they work, in order to light up my idea in my project.
I think maybe there are some designers have adopted graphic design in the critical design, but I don't know yet, so I need to do more researches and literature review on my specific problem. Hope I can create a new fads of critical design.
Today I wrote an abstract of my research paper, I decided to explore how can graphic design be involved into critical design, in another word, how to do a critical graphic design. My idea came from my raw understanding of critical design. When read or searched on the Internet, I found it almost all the critical design is expressed by the way of product design, interaction and electronic product, and I couldn't find any critical design expressing in a graphic design way. This made me alittle surprised, because graphic design - a very board and practical design field which can be expressed in almost any ways, but why there is no information about critical graphic design, this is really a sas thing. As a graphic designer and a fan of graphic design, I decided to explore the way that graphic design might be translated in critical design. Actually in my opinion any forms of design can be translated into critical design such as enviornment design, interior design, texile design, even fashion design. So why don't I go through the multi-discipline and have a look how every kinds of design were translated into critical design, and how they work, in order to light up my idea in my project.
I think maybe there are some designers have adopted graphic design in the critical design, but I don't know yet, so I need to do more researches and literature review on my specific problem. Hope I can create a new fads of critical design.
Saturday, 1 March 2008
Thursday, 28 February 2008
Reflection on Tutorial 28 2 08
To be honest now I am alittle confused on what should do first and how I should do. I have no conception with critical design at all, so this time I need to start from zero. One problem is I know I should do a critical design and I will focus on the Media, but what my critical design looks like? How can I stimulate discussion and debate via my design? How can I lead people to discuss the Media problem? Is there any other aspects of suicide I can explore in a critical design method? So much things I need to do. I think the most important thing for me is to understand what is critical design and how critical design be designed and how it works. Therefore, literature review is the first thing I should do.
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
Researches and My Idea on Nonverbal Communication
Once I thought about the concept nonverbal communication, the online chatting emotions came into my mind. I am a fan of chatting softwares, such as MSN, QQ and ICQ, and I am a experienced practitioner who is good at using emotions to express my feelings. I usually download emotions from the professional website and install them in my computer. There are thousands of emotion symbols and animitions extensively used by online chatting practitioners, and those symbols give people fun and happiness when they chatting online, so that people can enjoy their chatting experience.
Nonverbal communication for clinical department is different from for entertaining. I did some researches on the existing noverbal communication methods/systems in clinical field which help patient to communicate with doctors.
One of them is invention which discloses a communication device to facilitate the communication abilities of speech-impaired individuals. In particular, the communication device is designed to offer those speech-impaired individuals with limited manual motor capacities the ability to communicate quickly and unambiguously.
Another example is communication with nonverbal patients in India - augmentative communication devices. Various communication prostheses have been developed to augment the limited communication abilities in children and adults who are speechless because of developmental disabilities or neurological diseases. Communication boards remain the most economical of such communicative prostheses. Five communication boards in Hindi containing alphabet, words, and pictures are discussed, which were developed to assist non-verbal persons in northern India, and which have been used to promote communication with adults with stroke. These communication boards can equally be used with minimum modification by both developmentally disabled children and neurologically impaired adults.
Alphabet Communication Board
Lexical Communication Board
Eye-Gaze (E-Tran) Communication Board
Communication Board
Picture Communication Board
Blissymbol Communication Board
From the above examples, it is obviously that their nonverbal communication device is design for patient who is disable or inability to speak, and their device are very practical and more focussed. The nonverbal communication system I want to design is for suicidal people who reluctant to talk about their stories to professionals and clinicians face to face, but utilizing a communcating system or device which can use tons of symbols to express their experience and stories.
An idea came into my mind - can I design a gamelike system which gives suicidal people an oppotunity to play themselves according to their own story in a game? But they are only allowed to set their real personal information such as job, age, sex, background, hobbies and so on. I bet many people have played one of the most popular games - 'Sims', it's an amazing game that people can create their own characters and control the characters' life. It's a really good example for me to explore, but one important thing is my game is not for entertaining, but it tries to creat a relaxing enviornment for suicidal people to talk about their story in a tricky way. So there should be a strong and enormous database which support the clinical department to evaluate the risk of suicide of people who have finished playing the game.
Devices of the game 'Sims'
In addition, of course there will professional methods exist which teach possible suicidal people how to play the game efficiently and explain to them the purpose of the game - evaluate the risk factors of suicide. However, this idea is difficult for me to practice, because I am a graphic designer, not a game designer or a multi-media designer, so I have no idea about the database, the scripts and the related softwares. Therefore, my interest is tend to do the critical design in my project.
Nonverbal communication for clinical department is different from for entertaining. I did some researches on the existing noverbal communication methods/systems in clinical field which help patient to communicate with doctors.
One of them is invention which discloses a communication device to facilitate the communication abilities of speech-impaired individuals. In particular, the communication device is designed to offer those speech-impaired individuals with limited manual motor capacities the ability to communicate quickly and unambiguously.
Another example is communication with nonverbal patients in India - augmentative communication devices. Various communication prostheses have been developed to augment the limited communication abilities in children and adults who are speechless because of developmental disabilities or neurological diseases. Communication boards remain the most economical of such communicative prostheses. Five communication boards in Hindi containing alphabet, words, and pictures are discussed, which were developed to assist non-verbal persons in northern India, and which have been used to promote communication with adults with stroke. These communication boards can equally be used with minimum modification by both developmentally disabled children and neurologically impaired adults.
Alphabet Communication Board
Lexical Communication Board
Eye-Gaze (E-Tran) Communication Board
Communication Board
Picture Communication Board
Blissymbol Communication Board
From the above examples, it is obviously that their nonverbal communication device is design for patient who is disable or inability to speak, and their device are very practical and more focussed. The nonverbal communication system I want to design is for suicidal people who reluctant to talk about their stories to professionals and clinicians face to face, but utilizing a communcating system or device which can use tons of symbols to express their experience and stories.
An idea came into my mind - can I design a gamelike system which gives suicidal people an oppotunity to play themselves according to their own story in a game? But they are only allowed to set their real personal information such as job, age, sex, background, hobbies and so on. I bet many people have played one of the most popular games - 'Sims', it's an amazing game that people can create their own characters and control the characters' life. It's a really good example for me to explore, but one important thing is my game is not for entertaining, but it tries to creat a relaxing enviornment for suicidal people to talk about their story in a tricky way. So there should be a strong and enormous database which support the clinical department to evaluate the risk of suicide of people who have finished playing the game.
Devices of the game 'Sims'
In addition, of course there will professional methods exist which teach possible suicidal people how to play the game efficiently and explain to them the purpose of the game - evaluate the risk factors of suicide. However, this idea is difficult for me to practice, because I am a graphic designer, not a game designer or a multi-media designer, so I have no idea about the database, the scripts and the related softwares. Therefore, my interest is tend to do the critical design in my project.
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