Eden E1023

Elina + Janne + Joao + Lisa + Suvi

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Summary The New Materiality of Design by Janne, 7.10.2019

As all of us came into a conclusion that standards in general are quite handy but they come with many drawbacks. Some of those mentioned were the updating issues and unequality boosting standards.

Making of standards needs much labour and of course updating of them also. We’d guess that standardization organizations, hopefully, have limited resources and onepower as well and with that comes the fact that all of the standards would never be up to date at the same time. And because standards need to have many users and those users are engaged to using the standards they are also going to follow the outdated standards because if they would not, there would most likely be some sanctions and disciplining. And those actions might be financially massive if the user was for example a large company.

The un-equalizing view of standards was brought to our conversation by Elina: standards are made for standardized people/objects/something else. If a person for example differs from “a standard Finn”, that person might come across many kinds of problems – be it elevator doors that are too eager to get closed, buttons that are too stiff to get pressed or getting frown upon because of a drug problem.  

The one point that we came across as often as standards were mentioned was the goal to make life/work/whatever faster and easier. It is of course nice when you think about for example graphic designer doing some repetitive work (84 same but different-sized web banners in 4 hours) or a construction worker building 20 prefabricated row-houses, in other words doing something where it only helps you to get it over faster, more efficiently and without thinking much.

That is my main concern when speeding up work (or something else in that matter): even at the moment much of graphic design could be done without thinking basically anything. The designer could follow some frameworks and voilà – there you, the client, have your new identity/new web page/new marketing materials and whatnot. The only problem is that by eliminating thinking from the process the designer could only make a hollow container that looks good for a few months or even for a few years – but when the client reaches the container and gazes inside the only thing there is emptiness. So, speeding up and standardizing processes, using the same honed tools on our elaborated Apple computers, and having the same trendy and contemporary references the work itself might become the manifestation of unoriginality, of emptiness.

Faster! Funny note on the end that thought was something my companion mentioned quite some time ago about a research done among the schoolkids: they were (and are increasingly so) so accustomed to having basically everything right away with their smartphones that when they got to a situation where they needed just to wait for something for a few minutes many got really anxious and got also physical reactions like sweating palms. Interesting to see where this is going.

Latour made us think about all the mundane non-humans that are intertwined to our everyday lives. We are so dependent on so many things and that is so normal that when you stop to think about it you’re flabbergasted (ugly word). The standards took all the attention on this writing (which was not the case on the meeting) so I’ll just mention our amusement regarding the Väre blackout some time ago. Everything works when it works but when it doesn’t, it really doesn’t. It is hard to open the safe if the key is inside.

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Summary — Reading III: The New Materiality of Design

by João Emediato, 7 Oct 2018

In the group meeting we discussed about standardization and how I can bring so much comfort but also so much exclusion. Suddenly I realized that we have actually created a comfort standard from what we consider to be a reasonable way of living, and even that standard might not be sustainable. It's like we become too spoiled by the technological advancements we create. How much effort and time and money have we, as a society, spent in correcting attitudes promoted by technological achievements? For instance, diseases related to cigars, obesity or anxiety related to social media.

We talked a bit about “Cargo Cult” and how it presents a connection between religion and technology. When we think about our lives, it is pretty clear how notions of efficiency, speed, productivity are always related to good things. But if we agree with Giorgio Agamben when he argues that capitalism has become our new religion, than efficiency and productivity are its dogmas. How much of what we do is shaped by our mere faith in this system?

Yes, we were a bit lost about the concept behind OOO. So, if all objects are all at the same level, who is conducting the research? What does that mean exactly?

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Summary, Reading III (New Materiality of Design) by Suvi, 7th Oct 2019.

Bruno Latour’s text inspired greatly our discussions during the meeting this time. Our conversation revolved around the impact that technology has on our habits individually and on societal level, too, but we raised some issues around standardizations as well. It became quite obvious that objects shape our habits and everyday life – we even have generated rituals around them.

As mentioned, objects possess various dimensions, in addition to the use what they are designed for. The pace of new innovations in technology is constantly getting faster. What will be lost if we rely too much on technology? Have we already lost some essential skills? At least our ability to concentrate has changed drastically. There’s been some mentions in media that modern people have become separated from nature – instead, the smart phones are glued to our hands, we want everything now and not any second later, which has led to short attention spans and inability to focus properly especially seen while observing small children. So many changes have happened in our behavior already because of certain objects. Is humanity’s separation from nature originally a consequence of hunting of knowledge and intellectuality? Have we pushed that quest too far?

Our group also pondered if standardizations and systems make life always easier and work more efficient or might they rather be considered as boundaries? Do they create obstacles which are tried to be avoided if they’re hard to apply in practice? One example was the EU Accessibility Directive that became valid in Finland this September: the definition is rather vague, and there’s not necessarily enough flexibility for it to be implemented in different kind of formats or materials. Also, it was pointed out that standards are not equal to everyone (e.g. Bauhaus’ standardizations, interesting article on Independent regarding Bauhaus, of the issue mentioned in previous chapter.), which led us to discuss inequal division of resources in the world and wonder if pursuit of efficiency and maximum production has something to do with that as well.

Finally we discussed briefly of Object Oriented Ontology: on how it was a bit unclear definition, we would have needed further explanation. Though we all agreed, it pointed again a new perspective on examining objects.

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Summary, Reading III (The New Materiality of Design) Elina, 7.10.2019. We began our discussion about Cargo cult and how it is questioning the necessity of technology and arguing if we need all of it in the end. We are basically ’slaves’ to our system, technology and  services - for example if power runs out - we are totally out of some basic needs and functions of what we consider as everyday life.  I liked how Joao pointed out that this partly happened when Väre had a power out few weeks ago and we were supposed to use the projector, but the key to turn it on was behind electronic locks that could not be opened for some specific reason. Why these kind of systems are even created? We believe every system to be there the next day - rather than coming up with more sustainable solutions. We pay attention when something happens to it. So these evolving ’things’ in our society are difficult to take away from us, since we are so used to the efficiency it provides. It’s true that behind a standard there is a need for efficiency - but when things become too standardised could it be considered unequal? Is standardising something leaving every time some new group outside of the ’normality’? Some can bypass this idea but it sounds rather difficult on an individual level. Laws might be preventing us to do so too -  as Suvi pointed out. Even though some standards are absolutely fine - such as A paper sizes  - there are plenty of outdated ones as well. Some of them evolve quickly and some are also thought almost as laws. Is AI going to override other standards in the future? That was an interesting question as well. Technology has made our attention span shorter but is that efficiency in the end? And what does efficiency even mean. We have lived a time before technology just fine as well so is it possible to inspired by some factors anymore? Is there something to learn from the past and bring back? Or are we just too impatient for that.

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Introduction — Reading III: The New Materiality of Design

by João Emediato, 7 Oct 2018

On a broad take, I think the three texts that we read this week were about looking at everyday objects and seeing how they reflect us, our culture, in other words, how we function through them as a society. That is very much related to what I consider to be a designer's practice. To deal with the ordinary - to convey sense where things seem to have none, and maybe to disturb sense where things begin to feel too natural.

Bruno Latur's text reminded me of the works from french nouvelle vague cineast Lu Moullet, who's short films usually depict very sardonic criticism on technology and human ethics revealed through everyday objects. In his films "Barres" he reenacts a very bizarre evolution of the ticket gates on the french metro stations and also compiles diverse methods of frauding your way through them. In his film "Essai D'Ouverture" (1988), he lists a rather fantastic number of attempts of opening a glass bottle of Coke. Both films are ironic commentaries on how we create objects that recreate us. They not only become mirrors of our cultural values but they also interfere in our social and political relations. Also, it shows how each one of us, through our own limitations, negotiate with everyday life technologies and its utopia of functionality.

This brings me back to the text by Nader Vossoughian. In one hand, standardization can make life much easier. In other, it reveals how much do we believe in efficiency and productivity as a sort of modern religion.

Provoked by this idea of efficiency as a sort of religious belief and Bogosts text, I remembered something that might bring new light into this discussion. "Cargo Cult" is a concept created in the early XXs, originally related to a few events when isolated tribes of the south pacific first came in touch with war artefacts, like carcasses of plains, for instance. These objects suddenly appeared and had absolutely no trace back to its origin, meaning or function. So they started to be mystified and reinterpreted by a sort of fetishist religion. Later on, the term was appropriated by artists, philosophers and anthropologists as inspiration for works that criticize high-tech culture and also the fetishist aspect of capitalism itself.

A little bit about Cargo Cult: https://cargoclub.tumblr.com/

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 Introduction, Reading III (New Materiality of Design) by Elina, 06.10.2019 These texts made me realise how much a designer can be dependent on standards in everyday work. How these standards are setting a creator free of certain problems and giving shortcuts - by not having to think certain sizes for example; not having to make hundreds of banner variations since most of the platforms are supporting same ratios; or not having to learn their programme from the start as new update emerges.  On the other hand it has become challenging to expose oneself to any actual change through programmes (that are not mass production). Also, being experimental becomes more and more challenging comparing to traditional ways of creating. Ways of working needs to become routine, yes, but why not question the programmes themselves all over again?  Could they even provide something completely immaterial themselves (When it comes to Object-Oriented Ontolgy- way of thinking)? Usually malfunctions makes the user question the equipment - it makes the user annoyed and maybe return to ‘older’ medium for a while, but its features do not usually attract as it used to when it was introduced as new (Unless it’s something retro, maybe?). Technology and updates for me are representing efficiency; how this thing x becomes easier and faster, and how this thing y becomes compatible with the new update. Updates are in fact obligatory and I personally try to find new methods - but it raises a question on how much these big corporations are leading their users into certain patterns? Does standardising take away some kind of originality? For example; a book design that is not based on A-sizes looks much more compelling. Everything needs to be created with a target group in mind but is the target group too broad and sometimes unequal?   I believe that standardising something leaves out an x amount of people, that do not belong in the average group but are still users (Also Latour mentioned about this when it came to automatic doors). Many inventions are quite unequal towards people who have some kind of a disability for example. How escalators might go a bit too fast. How buttons are too firm to push for a person that has no strength in hands. How door hinges are making the door too heavy to be pushed or opened. When it comes to our society in general I’ve paid attention that an assumption of an average citizen who is using doors, elevators, public transport, has not lost any motility or part of it. Only few expectations are made towards people with some kind of immobility issues - but it is not anyway customisable.  Latour’s seatbelt reference reminded me of an ad campaign called E.V.A (Equal Vehicles for All) by Volvo. Volvo has collected a lot of data of car accidents since the 70’s - So, based on this data, they stated that women are more likely to be injured in accidents because of the design. Volvo has now started to do more specific research on this (And as a side note: I don’t think that this is as simple as they state, since there are people of every size and in general…). But the point is how “accident data is making new technology safer” is quite an interesting fact. Why this has not been used before? And how much data is actually being unused because it is not fitting into some certain target group? Still, accidents are usually led by a human error by people who are maybe driving too fast, drinking and driving, using their phones whilst driving or having a sudden health issue. Could these be prevented somehow? Is all of these issues in a need of a technological update? Car will recognize the speed and slow the car down, car will not start if you have been drinking, autopilot? Or are these problems based to some other fundamental levels that should be fixed?    This suggests that not all standards are equal and should not take as default. How to even start disobeying standards? Is this something related in cultures? And is disobeying a right thing to do in some cases? Is disobeying standards a desirable trend for a designer? Unhumaning As Latour stated in his text “…this scare of unmorality, laziness in people will increase the population of unhumans..” I started to wonder how far will artificial intelligence go, and will it take over creative work for example? Will this be a danger or a new set of standard? Will the machinery learn to adapt into different users and situations better? This has a scary aspect to it. What happens when it makes an error?  Work places with human presence are still being replaced my machines. So are future jobs mainly jobs going to be about tracing malfunctions of machinery and fix them? How big part of the producing companies are in repair services? What does ‘quality control’  in this kind of case even mean? In the end are all standards end just results of capitalism?

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The Consequences of Design  (and systems)

Introduction, Reading III (New Materiality of Design) by Suvi, 6th Oct 2019.  

How often do you think of what kind of objects shape our habits in everyday life and how? Some of these artefacts and systems have become invisible but quite essential part of our mundane life. Also, information is organized with carefully designed standardizations. I started reading with a brief definition of What is Object-Oriented Ontology, continued with Nadel Vossoughian’s Workers of the World, Conform! and finished with “Where are the masses?” by Bruno Latour. The texts led me to think about not only the impact of design of various things in societal level, but also provoked numerous thoughts from the deeper meaning of different kind of objects to morality, ethics and happiness. I couldn’t examine all of them here in detail, but instead, I’ll try to make some sense in the mass of my thoughts.

Especially Latour’s text made me perplexed at first – it wasn’t an easy task to see his point. However, it’s the one that fascinated me the most: he peers in his text to laws, ethics, morality, habits and rules and dichotomy between technology and human. He plays somewhere in-between the extremities, creating divisions and juxtapositions like human vs. nonhuman, novelist vs. engineer, extrasomatic vs. intrasomatic, prescribed user vs. user-in-the-flesh, figurative and nonfigurative characters, persons - things.  

Universal systems set us free ...or do they?

Based on the texts, universal systems and standardization are mainly built through social communication, common rules and culture. To me, it resembles some kind of co-design. Latour’s and Vossoughian’s texts made me aware of the number of various standards existing in modern world. Efficiency seems to have always been the driving force for developing standardized systems and universal formats (Wilhelm Ostwald). In the end everything always comes back to producing more and faster. But is it also just a natural result of the human nature?

It’s fascinating that according to Latour the skills (learned by a support of designed system or standards, e.g. the seatbelt in a car) become so incorporated that we don’t need specific (written) instructions anymore. “From extrasomatic, they have become intrasomatic. Incorporation in human or excorporation in nonhuman bodies is also one of the choices left to the designers. -- The beauty of artifacts is that they take on themselves the contradictory wishes or needs of humans and nonhumans.” Without even realizing it we have so many this kind of activities in our everyday life.

Happiness comes with harmony

Human mind is eager to find patterns and harmony. The invention of standardized paper sizes is a great example of how life can get easier and national and cultural borders can be crossed with universal design. Vossoughian mentions that with the right technical adjustments and systems society can be liberated, which is kind of true, but at the same time they create silent boundaries. In Latour’s text it’s obvious that we cannot understand how societies work without understanding of how technologies shape our everyday life, effect on our decisions and habits and routines. I fully agree, since how it would be possible to solve societal problems if you don’t understand the environment you’re living in.  

This reminds me of some things I read in social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s book, Happiness Hypothesis, that certain amount of restrictions, limits and automated actions make people happier than unlimited range of alternatives, complete freedom and constant change. Unorganized world without any structures with full of happy people is something that seems quite improbable.

After all, happiness is often something related to tranquility, peace and harmony. And the same tendency can be discovered in nature when observing all the beautiful patterns and harmonious forms which can be found from larger scale to the microscopic level. It’s natural for us to aim for finding structures and creating habits that are repeated in similar ways day after day. They create an illusion of safety when life itself is so uncertain.

The essence of our everyday life is constantly changing

Another notion I focused on is the change in the nature of work, but it’s not just work, that kind of changes have reflections to our everyday life, too. The invention of personal computer brought new possibilities to process and archive information. “Maurizio Lazzarato’s essay Immaterial Labor (1996) theorizes the shift from traditional industry to the production of the informational and cultural content of commodity. Separating intellectual and manual work, both which are subject to rationalization and automation, is not so simple.”

The dualism of technological determinism and social construction which Latour mentions is still prevalent, and I cannot help but think of AI and all the dimensions (and the worst-case scenarios) it has brought to this discussion. There’s now existing potential to change our societies in profound level by turning multiple manual tasks, routines and to automated ones, to create invisible layers leaving empty slots which need to be filled. Latour mentions that attribution of roles and action is also a choice – but are they really? We’re most likely affected by our environment and common attitudes, at least on individual level the generally accepted choices might not be very substantial.

All these standards are created by human mind, and it is extremely difficult for us to see the big picture or operate without our emotions effecting to our judgement. Are we able to see the consequences of our designs on a larger scale (before it’s too late)? Look what happened with doors (or paper sizes).

Conclusion (or at least a try)

What kind of life would be without design? To some extent, design is connected to innovation. In the best scenario human life can be made easier by good design, and good design is problem-solving and problem-solving seems to come naturally for humans.  

Morality and ethics are fascinating themes to think of, but in no way easy ones. On the individual level it might still be comprehendible but stepping up to strategic levels the same rules might not apply anymore. On societal level the change becomes visible slower, and the consequences of different kind of actions might not be so easily detected. Do we, as designers, need to start considering the consequences of our designs more carefully?

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Introduction The New Materiality of Design by Janne, 5.10.2019

Standardizing One can see the process of standardizing from many viewpoints and in the following I am going to demonstrate two quite contrary perspectives to the subject.

First one is beautiful and idealistic: when building standards to mundane objects like, for example, components for building prefabricated houses to Henna, a township in Orimattila, it makes the building process a lot easier, faster and convenient. Element makers, supervisors, builders, other workers and the future residents all know what to do, how the house is built and what’s it going to look like when ready. And bundled with standards comes the documentation: everything you need to know from materials to manufacturing to how to maintain the house after it is built is documented and (ideally) reachable by anyone, involved in the process or not. When one follows this straightforward train of thought, the standardizing process seems quite convenient and first of all, equalizing. The equalizing aspect comes from the fact that when anybody could be aware of how the object is made, is able to acquire the object and especially to learn how it works and applies to this standardized world of ours, the whole process seems to be transparent. Knowledge and know-how to people! Save time and good riddance expensive specialists! One could think of it as an open source code of objects.

The other point of view might be the cynical and unpleasant cousin of the first. The standardizing process is a massive effort because you need to have a huge amount of people following the standard – otherwise it would be useless in a broader sense. As Markus Krajewski wrote about Ostwald’s and Die Brücke’s paper sizes: “No world format can function without a world that accepts it.” For making these massive efforts of standardizing something, from screws to processes, you need to have power, money, connections and positive political will behind your back. With all that comes the unappealing (for some) effects of self-interest, benefiting at the cost of others, capitalistic profit seeking, oppression of workers, disregard for the consequences of actions and spreading the one view all over even though that view might be built completely on morally wrong ground. And after the independent standardization organizations (you wish) have standardized everything from spoons to work to ideas and thinking, the organizations with their associates would be able to control a large part of people’s lives by quality control and means of enforcement.

The truth about standardization lies somewhere in between these views. There are many aspects to like and as many to be afraid of. I’d suppose we are not going to live in a world of happiness and sunshine where the existing standards are built on lasting values, all we do is for a greater good and where anybody could learn/build/think basically anything. Nor I see it probable that the whole world turns into a strict surveillance society where the higher quarter controls and governs the lives of people. It might be a bit sad that the latter option seems more likely when observing the events of the world today. And China is doing great job anyway – shepherding the nation to do better choices for climate for example whereas the land of the free would like to ruin everything even more instead.

Of dark matter and the girlfriend of A-D4M Based on these reading group texts I might have to confess my liking for these texts by French philosophers. I love that they circle around the subject for too long, observe it from various, sometimes unnecessary, angles and finally come to a conclusion that might seem as handy as a fork when eating soup. It might be because, from my point of view, the search for easy answers (or answers at all) seems to be quite an useless effort for making our lives easier.

The search for the dark matter in space (and in sociology) is really a nice example of the built-in human search for answers. I am not saying that my personal opinion is against the one of the science world as I too have made a choice to believe in science, but still: we, the animals with our efficient brains, have built theories that are based on other theories and based on these theories the scientists believe that some portion of the universe must consist of dark matter. Otherwise the calculations and theories we have would prove to be false, the explanations non-existent and we’d need to come up with a new theory of everything. In Latour’s text I actually liked the conclusion that the dark matter of sociology is not something that is missing and that you need to find and add up to the existing theory but to rewrite the existing theory as it may not be the definitive theory (that is, if there are definitive theories).

The text brought up many thoughts about humanity, work, morality and discrimination to name a few. Something that hadn’t crossed my mind earlier was the role of the engineer as an author or director: creating something non-human is not just the technical act of building it but it consists also of in-depth thinking about the non-human’s role in the world, how it behaves and what kind of morality it has. I can’t resist associating the engineer as the Creator constructing self-portraits to fill the world. Hopefully they get an easier start and the human-serpent won’t persuade EV-3 to slurp the forbidden liquid silicone from the Pipe of the inscription of good and evil.

As final words I’ll mention (as extensively as the text of Ian Bogost) that we should be concentrating on the being and future of non-humans as the human life is and will be even more linked to that of non-human life.

Note: I managed to write this whole introduction without any connections to design world or my trade and that was refreshing.

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Summary, Reading II (Design and Knowledge) Elina, 1.10.2019. We ended up discussing how capitalistic society is having its impact basically to everything we do and see - since getting paid is one of the driving factors in this world. But how are we as designers fulfilling our own values in it - or can we? Are ones values set to stones and how much can a designer adapt? Or even in some situations withdraw from a project? It’s an interesting question would it be possible to tailor a certain position based on employees values, for example in an agency. Of course a person would drift towards a working place that seems to share more values than the other. However when it comes to certain clients, how declining to working them would be taken? We also dove into an interesting conversation about how fast fashion industry is compared to ours; seasons are not only going by winter and spring - but everything in between and movement is fast. It’s quite amusing how do these people ‘predict’ trends and ‘create’ them -  trends are actually already existing but only appearing in new form every now or then again. Nothing is lasting very long, which kind of drove us back into capitalism. While discussing about fast movements of design, fashion, memes and so, I think Suvi raised a good question about is there possibilities for classics to evolve anymore? Since always something new is pushing after it and nothing lasts very long. Are remakes or updates underlining that the original piece is a classic?

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Summary, Reading II  (Design and Knowledge)  by Janne, 1.10.2019

Once again we had many similar thoughts on the texts of reading II. Drucker’s Graphesis got us into a discussion about the ever-present human error that might or might not twist information and knowledge to something very different than it was meant to in a first place. The things or thoughts we can take for granted are sparse and we must be aware what we choose to trust all the time. Overthinking this might get us paranoid but life in general is a balancing act. From the human error and being conscious of it we moved into the theme of responsibility of a designer (again, I think we had a talk about the responsibility in the last meeting also). Be careful, be aware, don’t leap to conclusions, check the facts and so on – even when you know and are aware of all the things that could go wrong in, for example, information design project, you still are just a one tiny human being prone to making mistakes. Consider working in a group and showing your work to people from other backgrounds to map the problems and to make better and understandable design with less flaws.

Mills text divided opinions if it was good or relevant or not – some of us liked the lyrical, provocative style of his and some of us considered it childish in a way which is totally understandable. The problems of being a designer in a capitalist economy could be transferred to just about any other field also and the outcome would be the same: what am I doing, why am I doing and deep down you feel a bit sorry for yourself – and you of course notice that the text is pretty much just finding flaws of the system we’re living in but it does not really offer any alternatives for it. How to replace capitalist economy? Should we have a 45 minutes brainstorming session on the subject in the lobby of Väre someday?

Memes and trends were also something we touched briefly. Who creates trends and is it possible that a trend somehow creates itself like a meme? Trends are over so fast and sometimes they seem to live the short life of their own – then the trend per se is over but continues living in people’s heads until it will become a trend again. From trends we might as well move to complain the ultra-fast pace of fashion industry and the lovely quantity over quality madhouse we’re living in at the moment. João told us that the big companies of disposable fashion might have a new season for eversy month and that made me sad (and not a bit surprised).

At some point we shared thoughts about the (lack of) equality of information and knowledge for example in visual communication. People might have many kinds of different troubles interpreting shown presentations: be it old age, impaired vision or blindness, cognitive problems, cultural differences or just about anything else. And the cause for the inequality could also be, and commonly is, something not that apparent: a worn-out and true example being an offspring of a working-class family that has lived on the margins of poverty all one’s life versus a literate descendant of an upper middle class family – the starting level on understanding and interpreting shown information might differ quite harshly.

Some “funny” notices about equality were the development of facial recognition apps where the algorithms struggle to recognize black faces and the different film emulsions made for different skin colors – Kodak’s film stock produces beautiful skin tones on Caucasian people and Fuji’s stock does the same on Asian people.

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Summary — Reading II: Design and Knowledge by João Emediato, 1st Oct 2018

Today's group discussion really took a drift on where we stand as designers among this capitalistic system that we live in. How can we preserve our own moral values and still be active in this system? Are all design practices in the end only endorsing this destructive "merchandising machine"? Well, I don't really think so. Personally, I think we can still use design as a resistance weapon, creating alternative narratives that will encourage people into more sustainable and meaningful ways of living their lives. One way of doing this, for me, is to pursue a track of work turned into the promotion of culture and art. I find real pleasure in doing that and also think that this could make the world a better place.

Despite being so striking and eloquent, I think the kind of criticism that Mills points out in his text is quite dated as well, in the sense that we all are already very familiar with this apocalyptic description of capitalism. And the responsibility for this lies not only in the hands of the media workers, but I feel that all professions are somehow subordinated to the maintenance of its oppressive system. I think it is about time that we start to consider some other criticism that will show alternatives out of this scenario, rather than just intricately detail our doomed fate as a capitalistic society.

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Summary, Reading II (Design and Knowledge) by Suvi, 1st Oct 2019

Our second reading group started by a general discussion of how people perceive and process information. Gestalt principles and individual approaches were mentioned. As a designer it is useful to be aware of these principles, though even the most talented designers cannot guarantee that the message of their visual presentation is clearly understood in the end.

That lead to discussion regarding individual abilities and differences in sensing and interpreting the world. The final interpretation depends on multiple factors in different levels: individual, cultural, societal etc... On individual level there are more variation depending on one’s background, cognitive abilities, education, family and other social contexts etc.. There are still various inequalities, e.g. wealth gaps, physical and cultural differences, which make it utmost difficult to create a universal graphic language.

We all though the The Man in the Middle was more or less thought-provoking text, maybe a bit outdated, but it still managed to raise some current issues that designers have to consider in the modern world, too. It’s not the easiest path to stay true to your values in design industry, that is true. Can you even be a designer without selling your soul (or values)? Currently, sustainable values and e.g. the climate issues have been raised in the public discussion, but the money still runs the world. In practice the (commercial) designer needs to produce and sometimes that means quantity over quality. There were some interesting experiences shared on this theme.

We also talked about the overlapping themes of the texts – could there be found one? In general, it was possible to link information and visual presentations somehow to all of the texts. We also touched the evolution of visual world, since it seemed distantly be also a common theme. This led us to discuss how technology has evolved and by whom, which was, I must admit, a relatively new perspective for me (which I hadn’t earlier much thought of) – world’s pivotal innovations are mainly made in a certain cultural context.

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Introduction — Reading II: Design and Knowledge

by João Emediato, 30 Sept 2018

When I started reading the texts from, I was still a bit confused by the notion of a visual epistemology. I couldn't really understand if we were talking about ways of learning how to design or ways of using design to learn about anything else? Gladly, Drucker had a very on-the-point determination for that: she calls the language of graphics both "a highly formal set of visual elements with rules for their use and a verbal description of this system and the ways it works". Further on in her text I questioned myself what would be the actual difference between her notions of visual epistemology and semiotics. I realize, by the end of the text, that it comes down to dissecting the visual elements, isolating them and creating a more clear way of scrutiny for a visual (graphic) work. It is about creating common ground to discuss our own sensorial experiences related to vision, like perceptions of size, scale, depth, shade, rhythm, color, vibration, order and hierarchy, balance, symmetry, weight, volume, and so forth. These aspects constitute any visual creation, much before any conventions of style, taste or particular cultural symbolism. In fact, by being able to analyze these elements we can understand the very concept of style, taste and symbolism more clearly and also become critical of them.

Also, I became intrigued by the particularities of what we call "graphic". How does it differ from other kinds of visual work, especially now when design practice is no longer restricted to the creation of printed images. 

Another thing that grabbed my attention is the understanding that the systematization of design as a language, or what Drucker calls visual epistemology, is mostly related to the process of industrialization. This has very much to do with the topics approached by C. Wright Mills on his text "The Politics of Truth". He reveals how this so called language had to be more and more developed for the sake of capitalism. In other words, this language had to become more and more eloquent in the ways it would persuade the masses.

Drucker states in her text that we tend to associate sight with truth. On the other hand, Mills is showing us how we became experts in using our visual tools to fool or at least bend our own notions of truth. In fact, the massive virtual world of images that we as humanity produce shape the way we all experience our most immediate material reality in an individual and subjective way. In fact, Gleick argues that this happens in such a radical way that we cannot even consider ourselves in control of these images anymore, as they became a sort of parasite.

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With Great Knowledge Comes Great Responsibility

Introduction, Reading II (Design and Knowledge) by Suvi, 30 Sept 2019.

The title is a slight modification of the famous quote “with great power comes great responsibility”, since knowledge is tightly connected to power. After reading these texts by Johanna Drucker, C. W. Mills and James Gleick I recognize that connection even better. Knowledge as an idea (and as a goal) has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. It can provide a ticket to success, but also enable a possibility to make terrible mistakes.  

Visual presentations possess also a great power. Sharing information and transmitting knowledge through images have evolved through centuries. In his text regarding the origin of meme, Gleick asks who is responsible of the outcomes eventually. It’s a bit terrifying question, since evolution might be everything but controllable. Johanna Drucker’s text clarified how the visual conventions and systems are created. The Man in the Middle by C.W. Mills was only which didn’t quite succeed on capturing my attention: it felt like reading a poor echo of the texts of previous reading.  

World makes sense through our senses

It's almost overwhelming to think what kind of systems human mind has created in order to make more sense in this chaotic world around us. We are eager to recognize patterns and create connections, even if they don’t exist. Our cognitive abilities interpret the signals they get through our senses, often based on cultural context and intertwined with previous experience. We live in the visual culture, and I can’t help but wonder, do we rely too much to our vision?  

History of knowledge and visual presentation walk hand in hand. Drucker states that for long, graphic methods have been crucial to science in many ways: recording observation, expressing results, testing hypotheses, formulating projects. Johannes Stradanus claimed that every aspect of human knowledge could be communicated visually, but now is known that the breadth and depth of knowledge exceeds the capability of visual presentation. In addition, visual codes are unstable, too imprecise to communicate knowledge with certainty – is it even possible to create a codification of visual principles or to have a universal visual language system?

Can’t help thinking that creating one universal visual language is a challenging task, because individual cognitive abilities and restrictions define how the information is transmitted and interpreted. Visual presentations do not have a one single cultural convention, but many. Naturally, there can be found some common basic visual forms and perception rules (e.g. Gestalt). However, common rules and basic principles based on conventions facilitate understanding. We as designers cannot guarantee that the message is understood, but by understanding these facts we can support it.

Human is prone to error

What really bothers me when considering visual representations, is that human mind is also prone to error and creating (cognitive) biases in visual world. No matter how much we want to rationalize and reason, we tend to be led by our emotions and previous experiences, in good and in bad. To some extent, visual presentations always plead to (and play with) our emotions.

I wasn’t fully aware of the original concept meme before I read Gleick’s text, but it seems the idea of meme is now more actual than ever. They’re mimicking information selectively, based on the ideas, which are selected (almost randomly) from almost an infinite pool of information. There are so many platforms, channels and interfaces where information can spread, but at the same time it’s not enough and it’s too much. Who can control the quality and validity of the information? All people are not equivalent when it comes to knowledge and information. On digital age it could be accessible to everyone, but still it’s not. Reading and interpreting it require skills.

Margaret Atwood’s quote makes me think of all the possible directions human evolution could’ve taken instead of the one we’re currently living. “As with all the knowledge, once you knew it, you couldn’t imagine how it was that you hadn’t known it before. Like stage magic, knowledge before you knew it took place before your very eyes, but you were looking elsewhere.” It almost overwhelms my mind to think if the things we call science are based on memes which were generated in brilliant but obsessive people’s brains and we found evidence to support them just because we wanted to see some kind of order in this chaotic world.

Gleick states that “it was obviously predictable that manufactured electronic computers, too, would eventually play host to self-replicating patterns of information.” Nothing seems to be original; everything has a pattern. Does this mean that anything in this world could be predicted if there only was enough information and a powerful system enough to interpret that information?

Conclusion

What I find all these texts have in common? They force the reader to be aware of the risks of the information around us – it must be inspected and interpreted carefully acknowledging the systems its transferred with. In that viewpoint, these texts were a bit disturbing – if I’d be constantly aware of all these things, I would be exhausted by information overflow at some point.

Knowledge is not static. It’s not equally available for each and every one of us. In addition, the nature of knowledge changes over time: as Drucker mentions centuries ago vision was the most highest-ranking sense “what could be seen could be known — representing that knowledge were taken for granted rather than studied in their own right”. But do we actually know any better now? With great knowledge comes a great responsibility, indeed.

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Introduction, Reading II (Design and Knowledge) by Janne, 29.9.2019

Texts of the reading two were an interesting collection of really different excerpts. Drucker’s Graphesis was more of a textbook reading about visual knowledge, Gleick’s part bit into the origins and aspects of memes in a striking type size and Mills’ text was a lovely rant against the revolting nature of capitalist mass consumer culture and designer’s role in it.

Visual knowledge is (naturally) based on seeing but essentially what we see is a co-operation of our vision and cognitive capacities. What we see is just our very own impression of the world and it is deeply interesting to try to imagine how the world looks by the eyes (or brains) of others. Is my truth the same my companion has and how does it differ if it differs? Is my world more made-up than the world of someone else? And moving from vision to other senses: would it be possible to build universal languages based on sound, taste, smell or sense of touch? I’d imagine that some simple principles could quite easily be found but that the collaboration of senses and brain of different human beings differ so much that it would be quite hard to come by with a set of complicated and universal rules.

I’m fond of the idea of a complete graphic language system but am slightly skeptical that there ever would be one unified system that the whole world (or a large part of the population) could use. Cultural differences, differences on how we see and experience the world and how the visual knowledge we have at the moment transforms and develops are matters that complicate the task. In a way this reminds me of the last readings dialogue about designer being an author: is it possible, reasonable or needed to take the concept from one field and try to duplicate it to another? Would it be possible, reasonable or needed to have this “complete graphic language system” that holds true in all situations or would it just be another sorry attempt to organize the world the way it should and could not be organized?

I understand René Thom’s view about the two ways of communicating knowledge. The numbers seem to be really honest and unambiguous but as we move on to even written language and especially to graphic images the attempt to transfer a message from people to people the sheer number of interpretations becomes massive. And then we come to the fact that the numbers, those neutral ambassadors of knowledge, are also a made-up system by us humans – the masters of non-objectiveness. We might just be trying to make sense of the world our whole lives and as the end comes nigh and we realize that there is none we reach for the cross-star-crescent and give up. Life might just be the meme of memes: a neat collection of memes (of very varied quality) bundled up and passed along time after time.

Is a graphic designer, or a concept of a graphic designer, a meme? Designers might have quite strong and consistent characteristics and behavior patterns especially in the eyes and minds of other designers and I’d say that non-designers also connect some of those stereotypical traits easily to a designer. Let’s say the original idea (or meme) of being a graphic designer was that the designer is creative, full of ideas that one can execute wonderfully and has great freedom to do whatever one wants. Have I become a graphic designer just because somewhere along my life I’ve got that certain image of “a designer” into my head? I’ve then followed the meme, spread the meme, and eventually kind of embodied the meme – and as the meme is not something one can be, I became a meme vehicle and the meme in my head developed to something else than it was before and I continued spreading a different meme of being a designer – for example the meme of a romantic, pseudo-miserable specialist who loathes the mass-consumption culture and tries not to abandon one’s values.

I must say the text that resonated with me the most was Mills’ part: I’ve been thinking about those subjects during my work as a graphic designer and before that when studying the trade. I enjoy quite a lot finding and reading books or texts that have been written a long time ago (long being a relative term of course, in this case 61 years) where the message is as relevant as ever. Sami Hynninen sang in 2007 that “Christs may come and Christs may go but Caesar is forever” – the good stuff does not get old.

It is interesting and scary at the same time that a designer in Finland might struggle with same issues in 2019 than a designer in the United States in 1958 – about being just a disposable money-making tool for companies, advertising stuff that nobody really does not need in any way (unless living in this psychosis-like state of mind where the market is driving us) and ditching one’s values for maintaining the standard of living. Maintaining meaning more, more, more (expressed the way Billy Idol did in Rebel Yell) as the economy is growing endlessly, right?

I began a basic python programming course two weeks ago and the first, kind of classic, script can be seen below:

def main():     print("Goodbye, World!") main()

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Introduction, Reading II (Design and Knowledge) by Elina, 28.9.2019 I found it fascinating that Mills wrote in his text from 60 years ago how “designers work in the intersection of certain trends". He might talk about nationalism and capitalist economy, whereas I think todays trends, at least from my point of view, next to capitalistic economy can be added anything from politics to global environmental issues and climate change (I’m also writing this on the day of the climate strike). Before writing this introduction I did myself a list of things I’m distributing from a consumerism point of view (inspired by Mills mention about how our society is shaping our worldview from the beginning) but in the end I don’t feel like publishing it because I found it so embarrassing. As an adult I am supposed to be more aware of my surroundings and understand the factors that are shaping my life, my practise and my design. But it’s not just as simple as slogans or images around me. This got me into thinking analytics and big companies, like Google, that are managing these analytics and shaping my way of using social media for example - since many of my social media usernames and e-mails are connected to same the company somehow (Google again). How is this shaping me as a designer when I get the ‘right content’ and ‘right ads’? Does it take into account my worldview, or does it know it? Or is it just giving me ideas of stuff that looks like the same product I was searching before. I think Mills listed three kinds of obsolesces are still somewhat accurate today: Technical, artificial and statuses. They exist but in way they might be overlapping with each other. Trends are not just something that was ‘last year’. They are faster. They evolve overnight and might be outdated the next day. They are recognised in a nano second on insta feed. It raises a question about how memes work today and can they even be used in design. - The world of memes is somewhat a beehive to me rather than a pool.. How one version of a meme is expanding but not the other one? Even though the message have been slightly modified. Mills separates quite well how one is either a hit or fail. And I started to reflect this through the other two texts. Is trend just luck? Because not all of them are great but they create discussions or make people laugh. Humour is a powerful tool too. Are these trends following some kind of universal formal principles? Memes might spread twice as fast and become a massive trend themselves - even creating businesses (e.g. Grumpy Cat) but memes are not completely predictable. In the end it’s not necessarily about the size of an audience but also matter of luck, in my opinion. Anyone can contribute but not anyone can be the first creators. In fact, the creator might always be left unknown if the meme represents a recognizable face, or even an animal or a product. These targets or representatives then claim the ownership. Text based memes on the other hand might be a different case - when they are quotes, they are much more traceable to their original source. Some advertisement campaigns might try creating memes but even if everything is ‘right’ they might fail miserably. Design is not about only selling products - at least from an advertisement point of view, from which I’m looking at this subject right now.  It’s also about stating something to get consumers intrigued about the companys point of view and that way point themselves towards that organisation. - In Image, Interpretation and Interface text Drucker mentions how in the past “lithographic and photographic capacities added naturalistic accuracy to visual images”. This got me thinking how this accuracy of images are arguable today. It’s so easy for anyone to create and publish visuals that even cropping them differently will change the whole agenda - and of course the platform where it is published in. Different users can use the same image for two totally different ideas. It works like a misleading graph.  In the same text Drucker states: “Just think how quickly image quality in digital output or even screen resolution becomes identified with a particular moment in history”. I don’t believe this to be totally accurate either. Sometimes I clearly can not see if images have been modified to resemble some part of history and is actually fake. It’s about the context and knowledge of, for example history, how I read the context.  

When coming down to meta level of meanings of elements in visual knowledge I got interested how some of the symbols that have shaped our understanding of for example traffic signs and UI interfaces. How only colours are playing major part of our understandment of what to tap or watch next. It also raised a question of how we are also using plenty of ‘outdated technology’ and ‘objects’ as symbols. Are we reading these like letters? For example the phone symbol ( 📞) on our smartphones represents calling. It clearly doesn’t represent any physical part of the phone itself yet it is clear to us what its meaning is. We’ve just chosen an image to represent something and then it has become universal.

Also, coming back to misleading graphs, I don’t entirely believe in those either. Even though graphs are playing a major part of putting knowledge into visualised for for it to be understood better. But this also raises question how much you can also create misleading graphs only by doing improper scaling, using wrong kind of shape comparisons, by spacing differently, using either linear scale or logarithmic scale and so on. ( i found this quite interesting to look at https://venngage.com/blog/misleading-graphs/ )  So, in the end it comes into me. How I as the reader and creator(author) need to be judgemental of my surroundings and dig deeper into materials/news/data that are shaping or trying to shape my view. 

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Summary, Reading I (Discourse and Authorship in Design Practice) Elina, 23.9.2019. During our reading group meeting I came into a conclusion that nowadays there are so many environments to design in, people to collaborate with, and platforms to publish the work at, that there are way too many ways define who is the modern author and who can claim authorship. Authorship can be integrated to variety of things and understood as variety of things - from individuals to big brands. However, designers work for clients, which is arguably also sifting the notion of to whom the authorship actually belongs to. While on the contrary, during our conversation, we started to doubt if authorship is necessary for everyone. Is it something to desire for? Is it compulsory to be a credible designer? Some of us felt that author feels somewhat permanent and surroundings adapt to author. Author is a label - among with many others labels.   And because of that I honestly felt relieved. I avoid labelling my work too precisely since I’m not completely sure about my practice - or which ones to proceed. Yet, as designers have their own critical approaches (consciously or unconsciously) it would be good to understand the reasons and dig deeper into my own reasons and results, so I can claim credibility in that sense. It’s important to understand what I do and why I do.    I still want to label my work somehow. For example is a username on a social media enough? I also found quite interesting how corporates are claiming authorship under a big umbrella name and nobody from outside actually knows the actual persons behind it - unless creators are listed publicly somewhere (which usually happens during awards). I think this could be compared to my experience on an advertisement field. Do art directors, copywriters, creative directors, graphic designers have authorship over their part of the work? Do they have that critical approach as individuals or are people only adapting with the corporational ideology? Personally: I don’t know. This is something I would like to ask from the people I work with. But in the end, designer is so much more than an author.