Love/Hate
As we know, the very purpose of graphic design is shifting heavily towards a future defined as a vocal medium of personal expression and authorship. The designer as author and master of his or her content has become a realistic and sustainable economic model for the graphic designer who wants to work free from commercial restraint. Seemingly, graphic design has the monopoly on the capacity to entertainingly say anything it chooses to an audience who, at the continuing behest of industry, are educated in all its nuances and references, and who are willing to play its visual games.
Therefore, as design has begun to shift its focus towards autonomous self-expression, and as graphic designers are now free of the clients commercial agendas and can literally say anything within their ‘work’ without fear of economic impact, the question must be asked, why within this work do designers consistently and obsessively invoke the visual political language systems of their former censors, their former oppressors, their former inhibitors? In the retention of their image, their language and their techniques, have designers learnt to love their metaphorical captors, these political and industrial kidnappers of creativity?