Anthropologising Design by Lucia Neva
Designers and producers have forgotten that the production of graphic material is crucial in the construction of global and local identities.
Unfortunately, Graphic design has generally quite unappreciated impacts upon many significant areas of social and cultural life. Graphic Design as a profession has been regarded as inferior compared to other design practices, such as Industrial Design or Interior Design. It has been affected by the conceptions of low and high art and usually compared with the fine arts and applied arts modifying its purposes. Also, technology has created liminal zones around the role of the designer generating perceptions around the passive voice of Graphic Design. The latter may be motivated by the fact that many of the visuals produced with commercial purposes are not created by Graphic Design professionals, but for those called ‘computer drivers’ who are limited to follow ‘client instructions’.
The difference between a graphic designer and a ‘computer driver’ is that the designer is aware of conceptual strategies to implement work with efficacy, having clear concepts, aesthetic and technical control of the creation. The computer driver is limited to produce a graphic piece just through the manipulation of a certain kind of technology but does not have the conceptual foundations to solve graphic situations. In other words, both graphic designers and computer experts work for the same production system, the difference is that the first one proposes and the second one just executes. Although these distinctions might not be clear to the social scientist, they have repercussions in the construction of imaginaries around Graphic Design as a profession.
There are approaches from anthropology that recognize the importance of visual culture in the construction of identities, but so often they fail to identify Graphic Design as a source for theoretical illumination. Anthropologists are often quite unaware of the particular traditions that are carried by the style and organisation of textual and other visual forms and despite its ubiquitous public presence it is something that they generally do not see precisely because it is so pervasive.
In Anthropology, especially in material culture studies, the intention is generally to pay close attention to genres that are powerful because they are so ever present that their role in cultural reproduction generally goes unnoticed. Graphic design is studied by the anthropological eye as a service function, failing to address and acknowledge that Graphic Design is an active practice that goes beyond the execution of the visual, and that theoretical design principles can actually influence consumption and production processes. An approach that combines the potential of both anthropology and graphic design theories can give us a much more powerful assessment of the way design culture is produced and consumed. In material culture studies it has been evident that the visual is analysed based on the indexicality of the image and less on the qualities and representations that can influence behaviours.
In an anthropology sensitive to graphic design, the analysis of the visual realm should start from the visual and then through a combination of anthropological and graphic design approaches; unpacking visual relationships and integrating this analysis to the understanding of the cultural dynamics where images have been created – a focus upon local visual cultures – and the logics of production and consumption of images and its cultural context.
Graphic Design is a mediator, a maker in the construction of identities and, importantly, it is a valuable process when analysing visual culture. New, graphic orientated questions need to be asked and opened up to further anthropological analysis about the connections of Graphic Design with daily life.
Lucia Neva 2010
Well Lucía,in general I agree with what you say. Is true that given hierarchy in which to design, no matter what last name it takes. HIerachy offensive but is the consequence of the same dynamics of production that you noted us, and also taht is the cause and justification the design itself.
I think, then, to address the question of the impact on identities that produces the design without assuming a critical position to the system that underpins the nature of design is a short range approximation and doesn’t provide the solution to the segregation between conceptual design and operative activity. I also think we could get closer to a better state of things, if we solve first the question of the nature of the relationship between identities and mindless consumption of all kinds of tangible and intangible products promoted by the design in general.
I think Lucia is entirely an issue of bigger relevance. In fact for me is a sensitive issue that I live every day. Thanks for inviting us to think over it.
/Pablo Sebastian 09/07/2010