Eye Forum: Burning Issues

Review of Eye Forum no. 1 by Peter Brawne

Twenty years ago, when there were few places for the discussion of ideas within design from a critical perspective, a number of us set up a discussion group called the 032 Group. The first meeting was held in June 1986 in the boardroom of the St Bride Institute, and over the next couple of years, debates ranged from ‘what is an ethical design practice?’ to a packed meeting about the Pentagram redesign of The Guardian (above the Betsey Trotwood pub opposite the newspaper’s offices). The 032 events were informal, and chairs were positioned in as much of a circle as circumstances permitted. There was never a raised podium, neither slide shows nor microphones, and chairing was minimal, but at their best they were heated and provided real illumination.

So maybe I’d raised my hopes too high for the Eye Forum no. 1. Since it was run by one of the few graphics journals that has consistently differentiated itself from others by its intelligence, I had hoped that this would carry through into contributions from speakers and audience. The promise was to debate and discuss four ‘burning issues’ that affect graphic design today, promising something refreshingly different from the usual thin, self-congratulatory quasi-PR exercises that frequently pass for conference content.

So what did we get? Mark Thomson, art director of HarperCollins, rejected the idea of design as a problem-solving activity, invoking notions about pleasure, regarding design more loosely as an expression of ideas and an existential activity in itself. It was a bravura performance, but it amounted to a kind of nihilistic ‘do what thou wilt’ and to hell with anything else.

Nick Bell, elaborating on his Eye articles about branding, talked about the way that marketing and advertising are moving away from ‘selling to’, towards ‘selling with’ the consumer. As examples, he cited the Innocent drink company’s annual Fruitstock festival and the Humvee company’s HOPE (Hummer Owners Prepared for Emergencies) initiative. The companies sell lifestyle by appearing ‘good’. Interesting, but nowhere did Bell let on what he actually thought about these developments.

Lucienne Roberts talked about social and ethical design that for her entailed a struggle ‘to be good’ and more pertinently to be a ‘good’ designer. Speaking about Melvyn Bragg’s radio programme that morning on the theme of altruism, she agreed with the belief expressed by a contributor that people were – by and large – innately good. This gave her ground for hope.

Daniel Eatock, moved away from the microphone and lectern to deliver a shouty list: the small, the serious and the humorous: ‘No leaving the washing up after dinner’, ‘No serifs’, ‘No urban 4x4s’, ‘No dropping litter’ (ostentatious dropping of one of the sheets being read from). When Aaron Seymour, from the audience, asked him about his Big Brother graphics (why not ‘No reality TV?’), he prevaricated. Later, when quizzed further by Rick Poynor, Eatock said that he believed the work had integrity in its own right, whatever the merits of the TV programme.

So it would seem the upshot of all this is it’s all down to the individual. The S-word (society) was conspicuous by its absence, as were ‘politics’, ‘analysis’ or ‘ideology’. All the talk was about choice, ethics and personal morality. When graphic design course leader Noel Douglas (also a card-carrying member of a Marxist party) made a vociferous, anti-capitalist interjection, he was followed by a comment from a non-designer who worked in marketing, who also questioned the panellists’ emphasis on individualism. Neither point – from different extremes of the political spectrum – was taken up by the panel or other audience members. It may be deeply unfashionable to hear the word ‘capitalism’ as used by Douglas, but has anyone come up with a better, more succinct term that expresses so much about power, economics, and social relations? And if I hear one more naive platitude about ‘putting food on the table’, ‘behaving professionally’ and ‘brand guardian’ – all used by contributors from the floor to justify maintaining the status quo – I think I’ll scream.

You don’t need to be a party member to have a political understanding about the world and our place within it, both as consumers and (graphic design) producers. Though the old excuse of being a ‘young’ profession is frequently trotted out, we should have moved on from the tired and simplistic ‘who will, who won’t you work for’ argument to something more sophisticated. What about an examination of the structures within and without design companies? How are these companies run? What is a designer-client relationship? What does it imply? Should it change and if so, how? There was no examination or expression of these sorts of issues at the forum.

The ’design’ of the forum itself meant that such debate would inevitably be difficult: not enough time was allocated to discussion; there was an overly formal and hierarchical structure with discussion left unsatisfactorily till last; a roving microphone passed from the aisles impeded spontaneity; and the questions asked by the chair, Ken Garland, of each of the four speakers seemed superfluous. The promised discussion and debate – such as it was – seemed stuck in an immature phase.

‘Saying NO!’ by Daniel Eatock

On - off
Black - white
Yes - no

An order
A defiant answer

No thank you
No way
No shit
No clue

Just say no
Opposite of yes
Positive no

No manifesto

No dropping litter
No urban 4x4’s
No blocking cycle lanes
No religion
No junk email
No telemarketing
No smoking
No ignoring people
No perfume
No dumb advertising
No drink driving
No copying ideas
No objectification of women in advertising
No dumping car batteries
No free pitches
No sugar in coffee
No hitting
No leaving the tap running whilst cleaning your teeth
No leaving the TV on standby
No freewheeling
No fast food
No fly tipping
No poker websites
No leaving the fridge door open
No bank charges
No fee for withdrawing money from cash machines
No bending the corner of a page in a book as a page marker
No skirting boards
No down lighters
No carpet
No automatic cars
No being late
No replying to group emails
No paying rent
No hiding grey hair
No secrets
No milk
No fashion trainers
No war
No gold jewellry
No diamonds
No guns
No cycling fast past pedestrians on canal tow paths
No vicious dogs without leads
No spitting
No spitting chewing gum on the street
No adding service charge and also leaving room for a gratuity on the bill
No driving slow in the fast lane
No sitting guarding an empty table in a café whilst your partner queues up
No eating too much
No chewing the ends of pencils and pens
No leaving the washing up after dinner
No serifs
No Spray Mount
No direct mail marketing
No decoration
No fireworks sold to children
No coffee before bed
No instant coffee
No performance enhancing drugs
No undertaking on motorways
No praying
No building new buildings to look old
No retro design
No music packaging
No checking emails after 8pm
No working at weekends
No Christmas decorations
No vacuum cleaner bags
No television on holiday
No sunbeds
No fake tan
No Flash websites
No celebrating Christmas in November
No Christmas shopping
No watching others do the work
No stepping back
No killing whales
No fur coats
No designer handbags
No talking on mobile phones whilst driving
No ghosts
No God
No U F Os
No packaging of fruit and vegetables
No over packaging of general goods
No leaving the lights on whilst your out
No microwave meals
No putting feet on the seats on public transport
No boiling more water than you need
No tattoos
No body piercings
No frozen food
No motorbikes and scooters in the cycle area at traffic lights
No back break on fixed wheel bikes
No fashion accessories
No limousines and stretched Hummers
No pissing in the street
No gentlemens clubs
No suicide
No monopolies
No hiding from the truth
No hunting animals for sport
No graffiti
No vandalism of private or public property
No over selling of seats on aeroplanes
No strong cleaning products in restaurants whilst diners are still eating
No eat as much as you like buffets
No long finger nails
No black tie dress code at formal events
No Christenings
No promising things you can’t deliver
No piecing the ears of small children
No pushing in cues
No alcopops
No page three girls in daily news papers
No Sunday newspaper advertising inserts
No standing on the left hand side of an escalator
No over estimating on clients print quantities, so they end up throwing old stock away
No taking the elevator when you can walk up stairs
No Thanks Giving
No microphone
No voice

Eye Forum no. 1, ‘Burning Issues’, RSA, London, 23.11.06

‘Being good’ by Lucienne Roberts

I have been trying to be a ‘good’ graphic designer for the last twenty years. I’ve realised recently why I have found it so hard – because I don’t know what being good in graphic design terms really means. When I try to unpack the phrase I realise it encompasses many things, but I have found that most avenues take me back to ethics in some way.

Please don’t assume that you are now in for some kind of sermon, or a rant about recycled paper. I understand completely that you might be asking ‘what’s so good about being good anyway?’ or feeling uncomfortable since whenever ‘good’ is mentioned then ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ follow swiftly behind. I don’t have lots of answers so this isn’t about judging or pointing the finger. This is a huge and complex subject so I’m just going to cite a few examples and see where we go from there. But I would add that, although it’s impossible to do anything but allude to it here, I’ve found it very useful to test my ideas against objective attempts by philosophers to explore what we mean by the concept of ‘good’.

For many designers the property of goodness (if there is such a property) lies primarily in aesthetics. When a piece of work is deemed ‘good’, really what we mean is that it is either to our taste or that we think it has merit for expressing the zeitgeist or being ground-breaking in some way. Interestingly, if we consider aesthetics further it relates to ‘goodness’ in a more ethical sense too. Is our work good if it engenders happiness for example – if it adds to someone’s quality of life by making the world a more beautiful (I know that’s a loaded term), delightful or pleasurable place?

From this it’s easy to deduce that goodness lies partly in how our work, both directly and indirectly, affects other people. Philosophers would call this the consequentialist position – looking at goodness in terms of outcome, which for us is partly determined by the kind of work we choose to do and therefore who we choose to work for. I know that we don’t always have the luxury of choice but for now let’s assume that we do.

Graphic design is generally a rhetorical art – its job is to persuade – so do we have a responsibility to be mindful of what we are persuading people to do? We might, for example, argue that creating desires for things that people don’t really want or need is ultimately damaging both to the people concerned and to the environment on which we all rely. We may therefore not want to participate in doing this. Alternatively, we may see constant demand as a prerequisite to a successful capitalist society and argue that this is broadly for the good.

So, is there any justification for acting as an advocate for opinions that are not your own and that you believe to be ‘wrong’ – an extreme example might be designing for the Conservatives if you consider yourself to be left-wing. At first this seems clear cut – it’s obviously a bad idea – but what about looking at this a different way. When I asked the philosopher AC Grayling about this, he pointed out that if I believe in the notion of free speech then I should surely want to encourage the representation of a diversity of views – even if I don’t always agree with them? Is upholding these freedoms not more important than propagating my own world view? Personally, in this case I’d still say ‘no’ but what I’m trying to demonstrate is the complexity of ethical decision-making, particularly when the choice is arguably between two opposing versions of ‘good’ rather than an obvious good or bad.

These are big questions and ones that demonstrate how professional decisions reveal something of our personal ethos, but perhaps for the purposes of this debate it is more useful to narrow down the territory a bit and look at what designers are directly responsible for. The golden rule might be quite helpful here – that’s the ‘do unto others as you would be done by’ rule – an equivalent of which exists in nearly all religious and secular belief structures.

Applying this rule might result in a few more ‘pleases’ and ‘thank yous’. It might mean we take plagiarism more seriously, argue for more environmentally friendly print techniques or advocate inclusive design, although here too there is a conflict between two ethical positions. Most designers fear that in order to achieve access for all, they will have to adhere to creatively restrictive guidelines, so accessible design could result in exclusion of a different kind: aesthetic refinement. This reminds me of the uphill struggle I have working for some charities and NGOs who advocate a sort of anti-design policy because they associate ‘good’ design with wealth and luxury – thereby denying the many access to visually engaging or stimulating work. Some philosophers would argue that goodness doesn’t lie in the design outcome alone, but that the intention of the designer has some bearing as well – perhaps a way to make me feel better but not an idea that I am completely happy with, I have to say.

OK, so what about being professional, this too is surely an ethical concern. In accepting a commission we agree to do the job to the best of our abilities, on time and within budget. In exchange, we have the right to be paid as agreed and not to be hindered in our job. This seems simple enough but how then do we justify marking-up print and not telling the client, or saying yes to a deadline we know to be unachievable? Easy – because clients think nothing of pulling a job at the last minute, are always late themselves and despite the fundamentally neutral nature of the exchange of money for services, abuse financial power all the time. Oh dear, this professional business isn’t very ‘good’ at all is it? I wonder if this is because at present the market decides all. Free pitching, for example, is to my mind unethical. Had a bomb fallen on the Barbican during the private view of the Communicate exhibition, and wiped out great swathes of the graphic design community, ours would no longer have been a buyer’s market and that would have been the end of free pitching. The market won’t determine best practice, so would some kind of otherwise determined code be useful perhaps?

Despite my earlier promise, I can feel a rant coming on so it’s probably time to stop. So although there’s plenty more to say… for now this is the end.

Eye Forum no. 1, ‘Burning Issues’, RSA, London, 23.11.06

‘Brand madness’ by Nick Bell

Design finds it difficult to do diversity. Human relationships as a model for brand identity design.

There is a new approach that is building in marketing (and advertising) that turns the old propositional sales model on its head. It is based on fostering long-term relationships with members of a community. Not at all unfamiliar to brand-building graphic designers but brand spanking new in advertising,
founded as it is on the momentary opportunistic assault. Instead of selling you things, it’s marketing’s idea that brands should start giving things away. It seems they’ve finally cottoned on to the fact that ‘commerce is divisive’ whereas, as they put it, ‘gifting is the glue’ 1 – it brings people together. The theory is that ‘part of the brand value resides in the interactions, relationships and rituals’ 2 of a ‘happening’ 3 group of people others want to join. The classic example of this is Fruitstock – Innocent’s yearly gathering in Regent’s Park – an event we are told ‘they don’t even want to make a profit out of’ 4. A place where attendees become advocates for the brand. Perhaps they’ve hit on something here? Other examples of the sharing, give-away culture are rather successful: Wikipedia and YouTube many of us look at every day.

What is the challenge to brand identity design when the need for ideas is not so much to create beautiful surfaces for the brand but to imagine events, interactions and experiences that rejuvenate the brand relationship and keep it alive? When visual consistency is superseded by the coherence of the programme. If brand identity is more about designing experiences, how do we set about doing that? Visit the blogspots of the marketing gurus and you’ll be forgiven for thinking you’ve stumbled across a debate about sustainability or service design – so close is the approach (or at least the language) of brand experience design. Apparently, if you want to increase the level of attention you receive from current and prospective customers, you must create capability in them by providing a platform for engagement that meets their interests, expectations and needs. Where am I? On the Doors of Perception blog, the Design Council’s RED blog?

Genuine service designers say that you can’t design experience. Only use design to ‘elevate the likelihood of us making certain kinds of choices’ 5 by co-designing services around the user, with the user. Choices that are in the user’s own interest as a human being. Nevertheless, some level of service design coming from a company after they sold me a product, I would appreciate I think. As part of brand identity, designers can consider how customer support, through a carefully planned system of touch points, can genuinely help people use their new product and guide them in navigating other information in relation to the product that could be of interest to them. Engagement marketing calls these ‘timely offers from an old friend’ 6. Rather scarily, one cited example, to engage owners of the fuel inefficient, military style Hummer brand of SUVs, is HOPE, the Hummer Owners Prepared for Emergency programme that will contribute $4 million to the American Red Cross to assist with disaster relief efforts. Another rather more gentle, friendlier example of engagement marketing is the ‘pattern of interaction’ 7 created by the conveyor belts in Yo! Sushi restaurants.

For an existing company with a dodgy track record, a brand identity overhaul that focuses on playfulness can work wonders. A strategy of self-deprecating cuteness can, temporarily at least, detach a company from its unflattering history. How BP would love to appear so sweet and innocent as Innocent, for instance. When good design has become the badge of the corporate world, no wonder it can be better to be naive and goofy. But just like any real human relationship it can be damaged by calculation and deceit. After all (and it’s stating the obvious I know), but brands are what they DO, not what they say.

Being overly controlling is not a good thing when it comes to a long-term relationship. Control comes to mean to reduce, diminish, denude – and especially when exerted from within a design culture so predicated on Modernism, as ours still is. It leads to representing only a part of a constituency and disenfranchisement of the rest. Better now, perhaps, to see brand identity as working only by association, as a vessel onto which people can project their own opinions. One that remains open enough to carry an array of points of view and in turn mean something slightly different to everyone. Branding should not simply be about pinning things down. Increasingly, brand identities will have to negotiate the degree of flux that users desire if they are to continue to appeal to many. The challenge is to achieve this without losing coherence. Control too much and it will appear we have something to hide. We all want to present our best side, divert attention away from our weaknesses and to our strengths. But to err is to be human and to be human is a quality we all cherish.

Footnotes
1. John Grant, founder of St Luke’s advertising agency, London. http://www.brandtarot.com/blog/
2. John Grant, ibid.
3. John Grant, ibid.
4. John Grant, ibid.
5. Jennie Winhall, senior design strategist, RED, Design Council, London. Is Design Political, www.core77.com
6. John Grant, founder of St Luke’s advertising agency, London. http://www.brandtarot.com/blog/
7. John Grant, ibid.
from Eye Forum no. 1, ‘Burning Issues’, RSA, London, 23.11.06

‘Design is not a solution’ by Mark Thomson

There is a point of view in the design world that says that ‘design’s purpose is to solve problems’, and that design is expressed in ‘solutions’. It always makes me think of Marcel Duchamp’s comment: ‘There is no solution because there is no problem’. It makes me think: what happens if there’s no problem in the beginning? Would there be no design?

Duchamp was talking about a door in his apartment that could be both open and closed at the same time, but the comment could also be interpreted in a wider way, as his approach to work and life. And the same idea comes into my mind when I hear that design is a solution: why problematise the world? Do I have to have problems to be a designer?

I don’t know where this point of view of design came from. I can’t imagine the works of Theo van Doesburg or Max Bill, or Eric Gill, Jan van Krimpen or Giovanni Mardersteig being described as a ‘solution’, or any of those designers chewing on a pencil while formulating the next problem to be solved.

It’s not that problems and solutions never come up. Sometimes there are genuine problems than can be ‘solved’ in the same way as a mathematical problem – some pieces of information design, for example. And there’s also an element of resolution in a lot of design. Ideas are developed to a point at which they are thought to be ‘resolved’, like the resolution of a theme in a piece of music.

‘Design’s purpose is to solve problems’ is obviously an answer to the question: ‘What is design for?’. I don’t know that it helps to ask this question at all. I used to pass a sign on the way to work that said: ‘God is the answer – now what’s the problem?’ Is design really an idea in search of a purpose?

And what about when the ‘solution’ is itself a problem? Who really needed the plastic cup? Another 4x4? What exactly is the problem there?

Another example: the US presidential election in 2000 turned on the design of the so-called ‘butterfly ballot’ paper. This ballot paper had been designed to make it easy to count votes by machine. Voters would punch a hole alongside their chosen candidate, and the choice would be picked up by an infra-red beam. But the paper itself was so visually confused that many people actually voted against their candidate by mistake. By any standards it was a bad solution.

There is of course work that was not designed to solve anything: ‘no problem’ work. One of my favourites is the Paris street sweeper’s broom with its perfectly copied twigs in fluorescent green plastic. There’s no reason for these ‘twigs’ to be such perfect simulations, other than to surprise and be funny.

And then there is work that was not ‘designed’ at all – the undesigned world. Are letters scratched in the dirt with a stick less capable of holding thought than those drawn in Bézier curves at 2000 per cent? The undesigned world is neither more nor less imperfect than the designed world.

‘Design’s purpose is to solve problems’ is a big statement, and actually I would rather avoid simply replacing it with another big statement. I am uncomfortable with making ‘design is…’ statements. I want to shake off those ideas that reduce design to cause and effect, or anything else. I want to reject formulas, because formulas only produce formulations. And I want to lose the ‘big idea’ idea and replace it with nothing at all – to allow something else to develop in its place.

It’s an existential view. I think design existed before the twentieth century; it just had a different name. It’s what Francesco Griffo was doing, and Claude Garamond. It’s what scribes did.

I prefer just to think of design as expression of ideas, and as language. It’s a way of experiencing the world. What I’m interested in is the idea of pleasure, desire, uselessness – of walking through the world with your eyes open. Not cause and effect, but sensation.

This is both an approach to doing work and a way of experiencing the world, designed and undesigned. It’s a liberating approach, because it removes the need to be ‘right’. It’s about looking at design in a democratic way: as something we share rather than something a few people do. A piece of design is the expression of an idea. It’s not a solution.

from Eye Forum no. 1, ‘Burning Issues’, RSA, London. 23.11.06

Eye forum no. 1

The first Eye forum took place on Thursday 23 November 2006 at the RSA, John Adam St., London from 6.30 to 9pm. A full house (200 people) listened to four five-minute presentations by four speakers, chaired by Ken Garland. The individual presentations were followed by a panel discussion that led quickly to questions from the floor (which gave rise to some additional ‘burning issues’). Our thanks to everyone who took part.

The four issues were as follows:

‘Design is not a solution’ by Mark Thomson

‘Being good’ by Lucienne Roberts

‘Brand madness’ by Nick Bell

‘Saying NO!’ by Dan Eatock

About the participants

Mark Thomson, corporate design director, HarperCollins; art director, Collins.
Mark recently masterminded a major typographic rebranding of Collins publishing. He was also art director of Taschen in the mid-90s, introducing Scala Sans as the corporate type. From 1998 to 2003 he was principal of London-based International Design UK.

Lucienne Roberts, designer, sans+baum
Lucienne, inspired by the political engagement of the early Modernists, has always worked in the areas loosely defined as political and social. She is best known for her work within the arts and the third sector, and wrote and designed Drip-dry shirts: the evolution of the graphic designer (AVA).

Nick Bell, Nick Bell Design
Nick was creative director of Eye magazine from 1997-2005 and has won several awards for his work on the exhibitions Sparking Reaction (Sellafield) and the Cabinet War Rooms, London.

Daniel Eatock, artist, graphic designer
Dan was a co-founder of Foundation 33, where one of his first projects was the logo design for Big Brother. He divides his time between self-initiated projects and client work, establishing Eatock Ltd in 2005.

chair: Ken Garland, designer, author and photographer
Ken is the doyen of British graphic designers. His clients have included Galt Toys, CND, Design magazine and the Arts Council. He initiated the First Things First manifesto in 1964; this has since been updated as First Things First 2000 (see Eye no. 33 vol. 9). In recent years he has concentrated on photography, with several books and four one-person shows in the past six years.

Event sponsored by Adobe and The Paper Company

Event promoted by Eye: the international review of graphic design

Editor: John L. Walters
Art director: Simon Esterson, Esterson Associates
Commercial manager: Victoria McDougall
Publisher: Rachael Stilwell
Eye is published quarterly by Haymarket Brand Media
Next issue: Eye no. 62 vol. 16 out in December

Subscribe to Eye