In Octobers Blue Print there is a comment piece about the faliure of Graphic Design to be taken seriously and the lack of good journalism on the subject. Its by the venerable Rick Poynor and he does what few journalists do when commenting on Graphic Design, he actually slags people off, he actually has an opinion, which is applaudable. Commenting that some "...already regard Graphic Design as lightweight..." and not taken seriously when compared to other disciplines ie Architecture, Product Design, Photography etc... He comments that most design journalism is at fault by lauding the next big thing without much substance," why run a whole article lauding the barely established Neasden Design Centre?" - (an article that ran in Blue print itself). He goes on to say, rightly, that there isn’t enough critical design writing out there, especially in main stream media, targeting magazines such as Graffik for merely offering pictures and not much depth, this goes for Creative Review too in my opinion. Anyway to my point...
Why would NDC's lack of establishedness mean their work is anyless intelligent and incisive? Poynor has talked at length about the likes of Peter Savile and seems to suggest that his breadth and depth of work allows for deeper critical analysis and presumably better critical writing? To be fair if we are drawing parallels between other disciplines, say architecture, then the same argument would have written off Future Systems who only really got on the map after the Lords Media Centre. Presumably, one significant piece of work isn’t enough to offer good critical writing? The point Im trying to get to here is that looking indepth at design doesn’t mean writers can only focus on established big names. In fact it seems much more interesting to look at emerging talent and encourage critical debate at that level than retread the usual suspects.
SO why is this called "process" you ask? Well I've been working at various design studios recently and have found the process of creation at each a real eye opener. The process itself being as interesting, in fact very often more so, than the actual work itself and this seems a very interesting way to approach design critique, to look at the way the work has been produced (and I dont just mean on a Mac) and then apply the analysis.
The underlying rationale from brief to client reaction adds the depth that graphic design writing misses. If the writing itself started to properly engage with the design process then I think it would not only improve but also make graphic design that much more accessible to a bigger audience and by default elevate its standing through understanding and believe me the amount of architects I know that don’t have a clue about graphics is very surprising.
Mike
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