ART 470

ART 470 Final Project Presentation

ART 470 READING RESPONSE 4 & 5

Cultural Probes and Audience as Co-Designer: Respect > Empowerment > Honesty > Solutions

Effective design comes from immense research and will only show its aesthetics when real understanding of the context begins to emerge. In more formal or scientific research methods, researchers usually begin with an answer and test certain questions until connections emerge. The artistic approach seems about the opposite and is more effective when pertaining to design solutions.

By focusing less on a predicted outcome, creative research can act to more directly engage the affected audience and therefore create more deliberate and effective solutions. But as nothing is black and white, the most effective approach to interaction with this audience lies somewhere between doctor and waiter – a doctor responds with more authority when concerning solutions, whereas a waiter will do anything to get you the results you are looking for. When concerning cultural probes as a way to tug solutions out of the intended audience, it is important to proceed with care and respect (waiter), so that they feel more supportive and open to your final working solutions (doctor). 

When considering solutions to a design problem, people are all about being heard and considered within their own context. This is where, I believe, most graphic design is lacking, as it seems more concerned with delivering content they consider to be effective as opposed to delivering solutions based the given scope of the problem. We as designers are supposed to solve problems by thinking on our feet while trying to avoid at all costs canned or packaged responses – as each problem is different, so is each solution.

One step further in focusing more on the the context of the intended audience is to actually involve them in the design process themselves. By almost removing the client from the process between the stages of hearing what their design problem is and delivering them viable solutions, and getting the intended audience, if not actually then metaphorically, to fill the in between research and roughing phases –which isn’t always possible. Often times the client doesn’t totally understand what a designer’s role really is and therefore what they are really paying you to do.

Effective design is all about empowering the audience to act, feel, or think and as it has become more common to get them involved in the design process, we have finally started to see them more appropriately as users. This, I believe, will lead to greater and more effective solutions for all.

Power to the People Poster by Hannavi Ktorsson

Since I was a wee one of about 13 years old I have been into punk rock. There’s an ongoing debate about the true origins of punk – whether starting in Britain with bands like the Sex Pistols and the Clash or the New York scene mainly focusing around The Ramones. But i think the expressive/progressive/dripping with passion and voice/not afraid to call people out on their shit/pushing the limits of what is acceptable and what defines expression/kick you in the teeth with lackadaisical attitude/community building part of punk can be traced, graphically speaking at least, to the Dada and Constructivist movements of the first half of the 20th century in Europe. Using abstraction, collage and photomontage as there weapons to socially project instinctual expression of internal consciousness, artists like John Heartfield redefined expression through the poster. Attributed as the father of photomontage, Heartfield was one of the first to use it as an expressive social device. By attacking the injustices he strongly disagreed with through photomontage and poster collage, he was able to make great social impacts around the world. Long before posters as a communicative device sold out to the commercial aspects of advertising, posters were a device to empower the common class and educate them of injustices and indifferences in the world.

In a poster attacking the press from 1930, first image above with head wrapped in newspaper, the headline proclaims that “whoever reads the bourgeois press turns deaf and blind. Away with these bandages which cause stupidity.”

In an anti-Nazi propaganda poster from 1935, second image above, the headline reads “Adolf, the Superman: Swallows gold and talks tin.”

*Images and descriptions from A History of Graphic Design by Philip B. Meggs

Unsquaring the Circle: A Study of Simple Solutions To Complex Questions

The term Squaring the Circle is often used to dismiss the idea that there can be simple solutions to otherwise complex problems. I wish to turn this idea on its head. The event will allow participants to explore a range of great/complex/meta ideas and attempt to break these down into simpler scenarios of human interaction. For example: (A) The more abstract question of What makes a Community? could be broken down into what sorts of interactions do we all have on a daily basis that reinforce the idea of a community. Or (B), the often controversial and co-opted idea of Diversity is a fairly metaphysical or philisophical idea, but how can we break down what it means to be diverse through simple human interaction?

Participants will be asked to simply explain an otherwise minute/unimportant random human interaction they have had or witnessed that they believe is a great example of these larger questions. They will be given a card with a topic such as Community or Diversity , and their response will get exhibited in real time so viewers and participants alike can engage and reflect on these simple solutions to overly complex issues. 

The intended outcome is for participants to recognize and embrace the idea that everyday human interactions are what make the world what it is and will be.

After the event takes place, I would document and reflect in the form of a hard-bound book and companion website. The book will include a photographic and written narrative of the event, a compilation of the questions, answers and insights reflected by both participants and viewers alike, while the website will become a linear and open-ended single page website cataloging the event in its entirety.