Now offering brand assessment services on a scale:
Quite Wonderful
Super Solid
Appropriate
It’s OK
Falls Flat
Hmmmmmmmmm
Not Even Average
Um, We’ll Get Back To You
Maybe As An Album Cover
Your Cousin Do This?
We will tell you it’s tremendous while winking
Week 4 Update: Backwards appears to be the course for America, at least for now. While resistance on the left grows and the movement to stand up to this administration strengthens, the battle to inform, inspire, persuade, and motivate will only get more intense. It will be important that progress continues to speak truth to power just like it always has. Old is new again and these posters will keep doing what they originally intended — to give power to whoever posts them.
Where do you find yourself wandering in the pitch black? Where do you go when confronted with a blank white whatever? Where is that place you reach into and summon something you can call a brilliant magnificent new way of being? What keeps you up in the still night? What makes you uncomfortable enough to keep looking? What is the thing that you just can’t let go of? Why is there a pang in your chest when you’re sitting still? Agitated? Yes. Jittery? Yes. Unsettled? Yes. Why must you insist on pushing through when you clearly do not have to? [ ... ]
It’s been sort of a long time since I’ve made a political poster. Too long. Now in 2017, here’s the first of the resistance age:
An urgent, hasty, sketchy mess of a design. Scribbled over and over. Repetition you can feel. A whirlwind of speed to let you know I think this is just enough. This is all that needs to be shown. The point can stop here. With the mess of hair, the piercing eye slots, that cavernous mouth. Spewing forth chewed up words of lies and nonsense. Spitting on you. Spitting on me. With a simple 1-word association: FOOL.
Trump as the fool, the court jester, that laughing stock that wasn’t taken all that seriously until now he is. He fooled you, he fooled me, he fooled us all. Now with his endless Tweets of distraction intended to continue to fool us. To keep us from watching what’s really going on. He wants to fool us away from truth and away from each other. Divide. Confuse. Numb. He’s the greatest fool of our generation. Created to fool. With his fury unleashed at the top of the heap. We need to stay vigilant and we can no longer remain on the fooled end of a fool’s errand to the insulting of the highest office in the land.
We propose a reversal of priorities in favour of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication — a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning.
— From the Design Manifesto First Things First 2000.
An incomplete and diverse list of “socially engaged designers” was recently published by Kevin Lo of LOKI Design within the frame of this manifesto. An inspiring document to be sure. And the list of designers and studios put together here is certainly impressive. Barnbook Design. Hyperakt. Justseeds. Firebelly. Just to name a few. I’m even included on this list. All in one place, this incomplete list of varied approaches to social change through design is something to bookmark and come back to.
Part of my response to a question about war from a 2007 interview for a design job:
A movement whose voice resonates so loudly that the unpopularity of the war cycle will simply fade away into memory — a way we used to live, a way that we will courageously push out of our will — as we realize there are far better things to do with our wisdom, understanding and resources.
No matter your politics, now is a time that demands renewed civic engagement... We must take direct action to improve our communities and our country.
The 2017 Citizen Designer Pledge, started by AIGA/NY, was recently posted to Medium by Cliff Kuang. It was posted because design is political. For individuals, it asks:
I signed it. I signed it because designers need to act. Because designers need to standup to the universal values we hold dear. Which, the pledge points out, are politicized — transparency, inclusion, and fairness. I’ll add open-mindedness, creativity, and thinking critically. I’ll add believing we can solve problems when we work together, believing everyone should have a voice, and believing that our differences should be celebrated. And I’ll add a firm rejection of intolerance, hubris, dishonesty, chauvinism, hate, and fear.
It’s time to improve our social fabric:
