I still don’t know what exactly I want to do for this project. But during the summer break I have read some books, and used Obsidian to organise my thoughts. This post is going to be a bit messy.
Rubbish
A topic I keep returning to. As a packaging designer, we make things look desirable. But we also produce rubbish. Strangely, the desirable thing (a cereal box on a supermarket shelf) and the undesirable thing (a cereal box in the recycling bin) are the exact same thing. “Abjection”, something that’s familiar and odd, something we must get rid of. Is this where meaning breaks down?
Repurposed designs. When designed objects are repurposed, its original form becomes rubbish, but out of it new context is born. From using receipts to make origami boats, to crossing out words in a poster, and collaging images to make zines, the old meanings are used as ingredients to create the new. Maybe I can collect some examples, like people using corporate jargons to wrote poetry. Compost your rubbish and let new authentic meanings grow out of it.
Designers do this. We take styles, symbols, and repurpose them to make new things. Sometimes it’s just borrowing a calm colour palette, but other times it’s cultural appropriation, it’s commodifying political sentiments. Is this the natural cycle of things? Designers take from culture, and in return, culture takes from designed objects. Are they trying to kill each other? Are they feeding each other too?
Comic Sans is an example of rubbish, and its rubbishness makes it a powerful tool to make fun of serious things.
Idea: a book/website on rubbish
Is rubbish a liminal entity where rules stopped applying?
Uselessness
What does uselessness mean? Uselessness as a surviving strategy that refuses commodification? Failing intentionally. “An undiscipline of design happily fails at reinforcing patriarchal imperatives for the filed of graphic design and its institutions, towards a messier, fuzzy, emotional, unruly and collaborative landscape of design.” (Halberstam, 2024)
Do something with a rule of failing. I was inspired by this comedy, Kissajukian made an art business with one rule, never do what businesses do, making the user experience as hard as possible.
The Mushroom at the End of the World talks about the thriving ecosystem on ruins, and how the uncultivatable matsutake mushrooms move in and out of the capitalist system. I wonder if wild bits of culture are like the mushrooms?
Are jokes useless and powerful? “The joke is an open-source weapon of the public.” (Metahaven)
How do people make useless things sound useful? Read the romance copies on water packagings. Can we expose the master’s tools by reading romance copy closely?
Carving out blank spaces, adding “nothing” to the world.
Strange.
Neoliberalism
Capitalism destroys alternatives and turns them into fertile and stable ground for further growth. “contemporary capitalism actively seeks out those who are opposed to it, and offers fame and fortune. In essence, capitalism stabilizes those movements, people and ideas that are ‘outside’ it by naming them. It brings them into the ‘mainstream’ and the broader public consciousness. It does all this to prep them for commercialisation. Many countercultural movements, from hippy culture to punk to skateboarding, have fallen foul of capitalism’s lure of monetary reward. In the twenty-first century, this process of co-option has become intensely rapid, and in some cases, extremely crass.” (Against Creativity)
Capitalism enclosed our imaginations. to be able to imagine differently, we need to not just think different, but sart doing different. (Haiven, 2014)
Neutrality in Design
The design industry is not really aware of its biases. Designers think they are creative problem-solvers who are better than everyone else. Comic Sans is a good tool to see this. If you use Comic Sans, you are objectively wrong, according to designers. If your thinking is not Western, middle-class, and masculine, then you are not talented. Thinking that you can be neutral means removing your authentic self with perspectives and experiences out of the picture. But if design is actually impersonal, then AI could do it too. Instead, we need to acknowledge our positioned views and welcome diverse perspectives.
Decolonise the words we use to talk about aesthetics? Classic, elegant, timeless describes the taste of the colonisers. The industry only welcomes people who already fit in. Get out of the way and let others occupy the space. A good example is The world after Amazon, a speculative fiction collection written by Amazon workers. “To avoid taking charge of another’s narrative, or appropriating what isn’t yours, recognize when a project is not yours to take.” (Khandwala, 2019).
Design is a top-down process. People affected by the design are not the ones who design. Designers think they can role-play anyone. “Design thinking” is a conservative process, it cannot deal with complex issues, it can only package predictable solutions as some kind of breakthrough.
Challenge the normal, familiar. Add friction.
Design for social good
This could mean anything. Every company can spin its offer in some way to make it sound nice.
When classifying something as good, who has framed this design space? Who has not been involved?
AI
AI is like graphic design
I want to include AI to my project, at least slightly. I feel there is an echo between what AI does and what a graphic designer do. We browse the world, ferment the data, and spit out a blended outcome based on external prompts. We get out nutrients from the cultural commons, and we extract, and we commodify. AI is a twin to reveal how graphic design works. AI masters one aesthetic, and original creators of that aesthetic become “basic”.
Idea: use text-prediction (kind of how LLM works) as a mechanism for a small web game. You are a designer and you are writing a case study for your work. Select word by word from 3 predictions at a time to build a compelling paragraph. Maybe I also add more things after the paragraph’s built so we have a more full story.
AI and hauntology. AI cannot produce something innovative because it works on averages and predictions. Similarly, our culture is dominated by capitalism, which values safe growth and predictability. That’s why in the past decade or two, we haven’t seen anything culturally revolutionary (Ghost of My Life by Mark Fisher). AI is homogenizes everything, maybe designers can make things fresh again, as long as we’re being authentic.
AI replacing designers? We’re doing it to ourselves. Design thinking, problem-solving is a system that makes design look more scientific. This system makes people work on an assembly line and their personal thinkings are not as important. This means more easily automated. New cool brands all look the same. AI could be a reason for designers to stay away from shaping ourselves into robots, and value our human experiences and connections more.
AI seeks to fulfill every request, as smoothly as possible. We can design for frictions.
AI is kitsch.
Commons
AI and commercial design both extract from the cultural commons. We are quite proud of it.
Art used to be a part of collective social life. Less emphasis on individual authorship. According to The Culture Industry, now celebrated geniouses create high art, and popular culture was produced in a mechanical way.
Capitalism relies on the commons. Capitalism expands by colonizing new commons. Also capital can’t provide the necessities of human life so it’s counting on us turning to the commons. Capitalism is both predatory and reliant on the commons (Haiven, 2014).
“For authors like Silvia Federici, Massimo De Angelis and George Caffentzis the means to overcome capitalism is through the defence of actually existing commons and the establishment of new commons where we can cooperate on other terms, terms which obey other values, not the single pathological value of capital.” (Haiven, 2014).
Crediting everyone like how the movies does it? Storytelling centre crediting the origins of their stories.
Authenticity
Authenticity as a commodity for hire. Amateur designers are the fuel for new styles. As soon as something can be avoided it will be amplified. We use real things as aesthetic trends, like homelessness inspired fashion.
We make cheap little bits of styled fragments, and you can buy these looks to create “authentic” images.
Design seeks coolness. We are not selling the products, but lifestyles/identities, so making the audience feel cool is important. Marginalised experiences (e.g. homeless-core in fashion) is a inspiration for cool styles. Exotic!
Non-extractionary co-design practices
Feminism — Ambiguity, complexity, plurality
Clear boundaries are all fake.
White space. We don’t have to say everything clearly. Folklore leaves space for interpretation. Symbols are multifaced to gain power by allowing meanings injected by the viewer.
Design tends to try to simplify things. Neoliberalism flattens rich stories into marketable trends. Name the dominant narrative, mention the alternatives.
Many worlds exist within our one world. Can we make complexity visible and accessible through graphic design? “creating access to more than one story—more than one truth—can lead us towards justice,” Adisa-Farrar
I started using Obsedian. I like the way it works and maybe the connected web structure could be used somewhere in my project.
Feminism — Power
What’s valid? Lived experiences as a valid source of knowledge.
Whose knowledge do we value? What type of knowledge do we value? “Taste” is training oneself to be a knower.
Unlearning. Oppressive systems interweave into each other. love as a path to transform the world into a peaceful and free one (bell hooks?)
Why graphic designers often struggle with legitimacy? Robert Harland noted that graphic design is interdisciplinary and hard to describe. We can only use other discipline’s languages to talk about ourselves.
As Sasha Constanza-Chock describes, “what stories are told about design problems, solutions, contexts, and outcomes? Who gets to tell these stories? Who participates, who benefts, and who is harmed?”
Escaping commodification
Rebellion can often be absorbed into capitalism and sell really well. Is there a way to escape this? Adding swear words to your Google search can prevent AI answers. Genderfail provides free protest-inspired fonts with conditions that prevent large for-profit companies from using them. Other inspiring things liclude social enterprises, libraries, and the mushroom that grows from forest ruins. Can we learn anything from them?
Future
Pop culture is now based on nostalgia; the future is cancelled. The end of social democracy means less art for art’s sake. Neoliberal commodified art. If you can’t sell, you can’t continue doing art. So no more radical changes, just re-selling old ideas.(Fisher, 2022)
Hauntology. We are now haunted by the lost exciting future that never came.
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Methods, options:
Archive
Should I interview people/host workshops if i want to advocate for co-creation?
Something interactive? Something narrative? (For example, a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy style interactive fiction related to the design industry) A collaborative fiction?
Self-publishing or website
Masters tools. In Chinese we say using magic to defeat magic, and it means beating something using its own logic (The people who tells you not to vaccinate your kids are actually Russian spies!). Swearing during google search can stop AI results. Designers like posters and pretty print finishes, I can make something pretty to blend in. Or maybe I can use a symbol of commercial design and rebuild its meaning (barcodes).
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Other important bits:
Viewing my project should be an enjoyable experience. I will try to be funny.
Optionally, produce something I can’t own
Juxtaposition of two related things to add rhythm.
Doing things the ooposite way (failing, design for discomfort, time delay, engage the body, facilitate the unpredictable and strange).
