The Iconoclasts

I would encourage anyone who doubts the potential of visual communication to take a look at the history of the Byzantine Empire. Periods of iconoclasm in the Middle Ages demonstrated how the debate over the proper use of Eastern Orthodox religious material in visual arts exemplified the power of the icon itself. Iconoclasts destroyed visual representations of God, Jesus Christ or the saints. In their view these icons were not just pictorial representations of holy figures but false idols, as people worshiped not to God Himself, but to these painted pieces of wood.

From a design perspective, these Middle-Age icons are incredibly successful at communicating visually (whether they are innately pagan or not) because they imply more than they show. To an Eastern Orthodox worshiper at the time, worshipping to an icon was to implant the power of the Deity or saint in a picture. In my view, this means the painting is working both as an icon and a symbol (that is, it shows the religious figure’s body and at the same time signifies the figure’s spiritual power without depiction).

The iconoclasts had no problem with symbols. They often tore down iconic representations and replaced them with non-pictorial symbols like the cross. To them the symbolic aspect of religious icons was too overwhelmed by the fleshly aspect of depiction.

The fact that an image, be it icon or symbol (or both) can have the power to embody such a complex and significant concept, and exist as an instigator of social strife, testifies to the clout of successful visual communication.

Getting the most out of what's outside yourself

At this point I must point out that I do not exclude myself from the criticisms I make about designers or design students, and that what I think (my opinions, conclusions and feelings about things other than facts) is always changing. As a critic I will try my best to remain objective but since it is not mathematics or science, some bias may be unavoidable.

On that note we can proceed to the topic at hand! What we all think is constantly changing for each of us. There are thoughts and images that stick with us because they provoked something in us or reminded us of something that we found upsetting, amazing, weird, etc. How we filter through all the data we receive every day is either in what we are predisposed to find interesting or what challenges us to think otherwise. I think it’s important to recognize that we select these things above all the rest of the information being thrown at us (either by nature or by people). Once we pay attention to what catches our attention us we can talk about what “inspires” us (I can’t help loathing that word because in my mind it implies that our ideas and feelings come from some holy light being shone down upon us which subsequently releases us from all judgments). It’s each of our responsibilities as artists to listen to our intuitions, but it’s also our responsibilities as designers to keep those in check with what the client wants.

Slippage

My last post contained an image that encourages something called “slippage.” Slippage is the fissure between mind and mark in which all misunderstandings are spawned. We can’t read each other’s minds so we create forms of communication (media, languages) to convey our own thoughts to each other. But no form of communication is perfect and there will always be something lost when dedicating a thought to a medium. This is the realm of slippage. The only language I can think of that may be completely free of slippage is the binary code of computers, and I’d like to rule out any non-human communicators. Most graphic designers want to discourage slippage, as their goal is most often to deliver a particular message that is easy to understand visually. This is often done by using simplified figures, or the ties between color and emotion, or images commonly recognized by people within a culture, etc. But being free from the constraints of a real job, I can explore the potential of slippage just for intellectual amusement. I’d be interested to know what people get out of something that doesn’t try to say anything at all.

More on the Ambiguous

Without having any real content to draw from recently (as a result of having no classes or design jobs over the summer), I’ve been interested in images that don’t say anything specific but may imply a connotation. The image above is the cover for a book I recently bound that I plan on filling in the future. I didn’t have any message to convey but my interest in foreign type forms and the emphasis given on letters as a descendant of pictorial representation in Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics led to the use of Russian fonts. The reason I’m mentioning my own work is to convey an aspect of graphic design that I’ve been thinking about recently. The communication not of distinct messages but of ambiguous images can lead to any number of interpretations. Somebody might be reminded of military camouflage, while someone else may immediately think of a cow or an ice cream wrapper. Ferdinand de Saussure would note the relationship between signifier and what is signified, that is, whatever the viewer sees is affected by what they already think, and whatever the creator sees is affected by their own predispositions. I’m sure someone who could read Russian would point out that the letters I placed together have no meaning whatsoever, while someone else may wonder what they mean.

Exhibitions

Last week I attended three exhibits in Davis - the UC Davis Design Museum’s Typographic Exploration in Hangul; Hart Hall’s display of works by Florentino Laime Mantilla and Salvador Dali; and the Pence Gallery in downtown Davis. Two of these exhibits were entirely comprised of local artists and designers. The typography display in the Design Museum was of particular interest to me because of its cogency even in another language. Entirely in the Korean script of Hangul, the precise meaning of any of the texts escaped me. But the arrangement of the type forms, alongside short descriptions of the works shed light on an abridged notion of what the scripts held. For example, Phil Choo’s Ileona depicted a three-dimensional representation of a script whose title translated in English means “stand up,” emphasizing some of the characters by seemingly have them standing vertically alongside a mass of characters lying flat. Obviously most of the message was lost on me because of the language barrier, but the graphic design alone brought me a small understanding of the overall message. This exhibit was also of interest for me because of my inability to read the script. I have previously been enamored by design work in foreign languages, such as the poster designs of Russian constructivists like El Lissitzky. With the text incomprehensible, it can give rise to a more diverse number of interpretations. I especially like the Russian and Vietnamese languages for this purpose because they share some, but not all, of their letterforms with the Roman alphabet. The ambiguity is, in my opinion, of great interest.

Is design’s popularity detrimental to the discipline?

Design in recent years has become more and more present in popular culture. This has elevated the study’s perception to a superstar status. But does an increase in stylistic popularity water down the field’s effectiveness? Studying graphic design in particular has become commonplace in America, and alongside that perception a growingly homogenous idea of what the study is has been manifested. This is in part due to its current status as being “cool.” What happens when something becomes cool? In his 2007 publication, The Etymology of Design: Pre-Socratic Perspective, Kostas Terzidis argued that “‘coolness,’ fashion, style, the unapologetically fashionable, desirable, and ephemeral are not about the new, but instead are deceptive, obfuscating methods of establishing and authority on art, architecture and design without offering the means to truly lead towards novelty.” This implies that the trendy nature of current design inhibits real innovation. If everybody wants to be like Shepard Fairey, we are left with a field plagued with imitators of an aesthetic becoming increasingly tired and contrived. Making a portrait of yourself that looks just like Barack Obama’s campaign posters does not make you a graphic designer. It merely imitates a temporary style delivered to you by the mass media. Imitation may be a good place to start as a designer, but to be successful (perhaps not monetarily) one must move into more experimental grounds.

Why is graphic design so popular these days?

There was once a time when the term “graphic design” was not commonplace at the family dinner table. Now one can take classes in design at community colleges across the country. So what changed? Why is it so trendy to study graphic design in particular? Is it fair to say that western culture has become decreasingly literary as a whole, while at the same time more accepting of the use of images to communicate? Many signs point to that assumption. Newspapers and magazines nowadays have an overwhelmingly higher percentage of pictures than those from fifty years ago. Mass media saturation must be an essential player in changing the average American’s psychology. Technology has always changed the way people communicate. Just as the advent of printing drove the written word away from pictorial resemblance, the upsurge of new media in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has made us accustomed to visual implications, rather than the audio-based phonic nature of the English alphabet. As a natural result of this cultural shift, the demand for visual communicators has gone up. The number of applications for graphic design has increased in the information age, and subsequently the number of schools offering the study has gone up. In response to this, many college-age students think making visuals will be easy, (which very well may be a vestige of printing-age society’s tendency to demote picture-making to mere child’s play). This new perception of graphic design has led to its popularity, but at the same time may dilute its potency if too many people go into the field for the wrong reasons.