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Our call for essays
generated a tremendous response, with hundreds of designers from
all over the country writing in to share their responses to the
following statements:
-How information design can strengthen citizen participation
-How I fulfill my desire to do socially responsible work without
going
bankrupt
- How I find my voice as a designer
- The most powerfully socially or politically motivated piece of
design that I've ever done or seen
We've included a small selection of these VOICES
for your enjoyment.
Brigitte Anders-Kraus
Washington, D.C
How I find my voice as a designer? I've been a designer for 11 years.
Only after three years, however, did I start my training and education.
The previous years I spent traveling to Brazil, learning the language,
enjoying the color and vibrancy of two carnivals, exploring remote
cities and their people. I took pictures whenever I could trying
to capture the simplicity of life and yet the richness of the people.
I learned the corruption of the government and helplessness of the
country and I saw poverty like nowhere else before. I indulged in
the unique world of Australia; koalas and wallabies, rainforest
and desert, surfers and outbackers, Aborigines and Japanese, modesty
and abundance. I witnessed sex tourism in Thailand and hated it;
I took part in a Buddhist garden blessing in the central part of
the country and will treasure the memory forever. I spent traveling
the world, learning new languages, working odd jobs, smuggling gemstones
and reading many, many books. I still consider that time and all
the things I saw and did and learned essential to shaping my voice
as a designer. Those experiences actually let me realize that I
want to be a designer. That I want to incorporate the cultures and
their colors and their styles into my creative work. That every
movie and the various music I listen to are waiting to influence
a cover design. Living and noticing and indulging. No major traveling
is required to experience new things, however. But in order to find
your voice — not just in design — living and an open mind
are absolutely essential.
Rachel Christensen
Seattle, WA
On April 14th of my junior year in high school I was shocked to
discover that all the rumors about filing taxes were true. The ironically
named 1040EZ (there is nothing easy about this form) sent me on
a looping journey through pamphlets, backwards graphs, dotted lines,
and greasy paper that left me wishing I had never earned my two
paychecks of $250. After filling out the form for the third time
I finally got ti right, and rushed to the Post Office with fellow
procrastinators. Since then, I have felt that it might be possible
that the majority of tax evaders are simply avoiding the headache
involved with reporting income. Designing an intelligent and articulate
tax form might just be the solution to citizen non-participation
and procrastination when tax time rolls around every spring.
Laurie Churchman
Raleigh, NC
I read a wonderful book once in which a character, who was a dwarf,
described her method for being heard by others. She said she often
whispered when speaking, which caused people to consider her statement
important and also invited them down to her level to hear it. I
thought hers was an ingenious solution to making her voice heard
that involved neither high volume nor drama. (I should also note
that she was careful not to use this technique in a cavalier fashion
and always made sure that her statement was worthy of her listeners
attention.) Since then, I have used her communication method as
a metaphor for creating voice in my own design. I believe that small
gestures can accomplish as much as large ones and that drawing in
an audience by bringing them to your level encourages them to listen..
I try to concentrate on delivering a message that creates curiousity
while respecting the recipient.
Diane Godzinski
Brooklyn, NY
The strong graphic black, white and red of the nazi flag with its
implacable energetic swastika is still a potent symbol; more than
50 years after the end of the war it still arouses strong feelings
in people who see it. That these feelings are mostly negative doesn't
detract from its power. A strongly conceived and executed symbol
can motivate people for good in the same way. I believe there's
a collective unconscious and it is from this that symbols are invested
with power (also from this that good design springs). The challenge
is to find what is beneath the surface, the everyday hum; finding
it requires clarity.
Lauren Goldberg
Kansas City, MO
As I stood, impatiently, waiting to order my bagel and coffee, I
saw him walk in the door and I knew it was love at first site. He
was wearing a t-shirt I designed over a year ago for a 5K run benefiting
Alzheimer's and when I saw it I knew I loved being a designer. The
t-shirt was faded from the wash, and sweaty form his run, but it
was mine and it had a VOICE. I knew each time someone saw the words
they would think of Alzheimer's, which had taken my grandmother
from me just weeks before. Each of us is empowered with an opportunity
to be heard. You just have to use your VOICE.
Jennifer Horn
Boston, MA
The most powerful socially or politically motivated piece of design
I have ever seen... Many years ago, I worked as an administrative
assistant for a company that manufactured military missile heads.
One day, I was at the copy machine and noticed a poster hanging
in the cubicle of one of the engineers. The poster was a picture
of a garbage truck, up on end with rocket fire emitting from the
bottom. The slogan at the top was "What Will We Do With Our Space
Garbage?" The descriptive paragraph spoke of the increasing amount
of miscellaneous items (missile, rocket pieces, satellites) floating
out in space that are no longer functional and what can be done.
I found the design of the poster so graphically stimulating it offered
much more impact to the message it was relaying. It has stayed with
me since the beginning of my career as a graphic designer and something
I share frequently with both designers and clients.
Catherine Ishino
Duluth, MN
Nelson Mandela was being released from prison in SouthAfrica after
27 years of captivity. I was the video designer working with Charlayne
Hunter-Gault who was hosting the live event for PBS. We no budget
to access to high end imaging capabilities, so I worked prudently.
Using the only available photo of Mandela, I created prison bars
over his face, then placed his collaged image frame left. Reiterating
the colors of the ANC Freedom movement: black, gold and yellow,
I stacked ëCompacta' type, frame right, to reveal my title, ìFree
at Last!î. Watching Mandela walk out of prison, my title graphic
went toair ( for all of 5 seconds). At that moment, I saw design
could help to make a positive change in the world. I was assured,
after years of contributing my skills to the anti-apartheid movement,
design had helped right a wrong.
Ethel Kessler
Bethesda, MD
Fortunate, does not begin to describe the experience of being the
Art Director of the country's first semi-postal stamp. The public
nature of the project was daunting...Congress passed the bill, the
President signed it into law, first day ceremony at the White House,
appearance on the Today show, radio broadcasts on NPR. Normal design
jobs don't usually get so much publicity. They certainly don't give
the media attention to the designer. But I also represented the
Breast Cancer survivors. I was no longer the designer/art director,
I was now The Voice of the stamp. People didn't really want to know
the creative details as much as they wanted to be heard, and to
tell their story to someone who could relate to their pain. And
I shared my story, and they shared theirs, and they bought stamps,
stamps and more stamps. From a thought that a doctor had, who shared
his voice with his congressman, who shared it with the senator,
who spoke it to Congress. And the American people responded. From
6 cents a stamp, so far we've sold over 300 million stamps and raised
over 20.2 million dollars for breast cancer research. Fortunate--all
the way around!
Sheri Koetting
New York, NY
How information design can strengthen citizen participation? We
live in a society that demands instant gratification. Human effort
has grown increasingly rare, and patience has become obsolete. Studies
show more than 20% of Americans read at or below a 5th grade level
and have an attention span of approximately en seconds. Encouraging
today's society to participate has become close to impossible. It
has become the designer's responsibility to engage society. Understanding
social trends and audience needs can help information designers
to communicate with the average citizen. This understanding enables
designers to breakdown complex information into small increments
to accommodate the user. Though this may appear simple at first,
the process of determining what and how much information to include
is often very complex.. Careful attention must be paid to wording,
typeface, color and imagery. Ultimately, the average participant
should be able to effortlessly navigate through information. The
advantage of increased social participation are innumerable. The
benefits range from imp, such as increasing voter and census roving
the life of one person, to a more widespread impact, such as increasing
voter and census participation. Society depends on citizen participation,
and information design holds the key.
Joseph Lemarre
Denver, CO
how i find voice it was only when puberty was completely over that
i would finally realized what the hell i had gone through. it was
amusing how the hormones forced me to forge comical one-liners,
regurgitate PETA perspectives and audaciously deliver come-on attempts
that wouldn't go. it's even more amusing now, being that those days
continue to serve up healthy portions of humble pie. what enables
me to find voice today is furnished by the wisdom inherent within
hindsight's capacity. you have to look back in order to provide
a current context to look forward. this is neither a new nor hackneyed
discovery, instead it is as essential as it is personal. today i
realize that money could be substituted for hormones just as easily
and therefore could deliver similar repercussive states like communicating
by clever one-liners, passing on other peoples' agendas (that aren't
familiar), and selling concepts by way of shameless seduction. i've
come to the conclusion that voice, when considered as audible expression,
personal philosophy or as client, needs to be built on a stable
understanding of its own past in order to entitle the participants
involved to mature comprehensively without blemishes.
Mike Lizama
Minneapolis, MN
The Most Powerfully Politically Motivated Piece of Design that I've
Ever Seen. I can't say that the piece I am about to describe is
necessarily the most powerfully politically motivated piece that
I've ever seen, but for me it certainly is the most memorable. The
piece I'm talking about was a poster designed by Semour Chwast in
the late sixties featuring Uncle Sam with the slogan ìEnd Bad Breathî
printed at the bottom. I was in 5th grade in Hawaii in the late
sixties and as an Army brat I had spent my life growing up on military
bases. Being a schoolchild on a military base was a unique situation
to be in. On base you are completely engulfed by military soldiers,
equipment and procedures. We rode in military trucks to school driven
by servicemen; past the columns of soldiers running alongside the
road every day. Sometimes we would have to stop to let tanks lumber
by (really cool to watch for an 11 year-old boy). From the time
the canon fired in the morning to raise the flag, to rubbing shoulders
with camouflaged soldiers in the commissary at lunch, and then playing
baseball or basketball with the soldiers at night, all I knew was
the military way of life. Too young to really grasp war; I noticed
activity beginning to change on base. Outside our school playground
the army was using the great field to stage mock wars with soldiers
dressed as Viet Cong. We would stand at the fence and point them
out to ìourî soldiers laughing at ruining the surprise attacks.
At night helicopters flew up and down the mountain range doing target
practice; tracers coming down like strings of Christmas lights.
My parents started shielding us from the evening news more and more.
Each news report always summed up the day's body count for both
sides, human lives reduced to a tally contest. And I saw that poster.
It looked funny at first, Uncle Sam with a green face and airplanes
in his mouth bombing which at first looked like his teeth but upon
closer view were houses. He looked comical; a crazed clown juxtaposed
in front of a blue sunburst like the flag of the Japanese Imperial
forces. That was the first time I remember anything negative about
war, particularly our ìconflictî in Viet Nam and I was shocked.
I quickly discovered that there were 2 sides to every war. Here
in the United States the political powder keg fueled by anti-war
sentiment was about to blow. With the ability to visually articulate
ideas and beliefs, what an exciting and powerful time it must have
been for a graphic designer.
Tim Moore
Brookine, MA
The most powerfully socially or politically motivated piece of design
that I've ever done or seenIn the eighties I was working in my home
town of London, England, where I was introduced to a filmmaker named
Phil Agland. Phil had produced 4 brief award winning films for British
TV on various nature topics. I was particularlyimpressed with one
of them. He and his team had built a series of tree camps in the
rainforests of the Cameroon, to film the forest canopy, high above
the trees. I suffer from vertigo ,so I was impressed!Phil was preparing
to leave for Korup, another of the national rainforests in Cameroon,
where for the next four years, he would document life with the pygmies
who lived in those remote jungles. He asked if I would design a
piece that would help educate the public about deforrestation, as
well as generatefunds to help protect the Korup rainforest from
further destruction. Together, in conjunction with the Cameroon
government, we devised a sponsorship program .I designed a poster
which was a map of the Korup area with 600 squares on a it, each
square representing 1,000 trees. For ten poundssterling you could
cover the cost of a 1,000 trees. When you made your contribution,
a little yellow dot was added to the poster to cover your square.
The poster was both a record of your contribution as well as a keepsake
commemorating the project.In designing the poster ,my intention
was to educate the public about how life on earth depended on the
rainforests; to regulate air;to house the millionsof species of
wildlife and plants and to provide sustainence for more than abillion
people. Without the rainforests we knew that the earth would not
survive, and yet within 40 years the oldest and richest expressions
of life on earth would be gone if we didn 't do something to save
the rainforests.The project offered a way to raise the consciousness
of a broader public. We launched our campaign at a time when environmentally
conscious individualswe e limited to radical hippies in sandals
.But the poster helped each more ofmainstream culture. And what
started as a poster developed into an 86 page color magazine! It
was rewarding to see our grass roots campaign to raise money as
well as national awareness, grow into a major political issue.
Melissa Niederhelm
Tempe, AZ
I find my voice as a designer by writing about design. Design has
long been assumed to be a visual exclamation rather than a vocal
argument. For most of designhistory, passive observation of a metaphor,
message and meaning has been a substitute for rhetoric, criticism
and reflection. But in order for design to become more central to
people's lives in the future, greater articulation of what design
is and what it can contribute is required.By writing about design
I hope to create a more identifiable context for the discipline
in the eyes of non-designers. We need more writing about design
that will examine who it affects, how it makes a difference and
the role it plays in everything from politics to profitability.
Through this effort, I believe we will further the message that
design is not only important, but that it is also democratic and
a benefit and tool for all people.
Barbara Nwacha
New London, NH
As a graphic design professor I am aware that newly emerging design
professionals must decide where to position themselves within business,
culture and community. Through assignments that address current
social and political issues I try to shape design experiences in
the classroom that raise student awareness. We cover topics that
deal with voter awareness, habitat for humanity, Greenpeace, Amnesty
International, City-Meals-on-wheels, WIC, Pro-Choice, and Elder
Abuse. Through the design process students learn to do the research
to determine the purpose, the audience, and the message. The goal
for these assignments is to raise social awareness in our college
community. As a graphic design professor I believe that it is my
responsibility to help further design students to be active, globally
conscience members of society. It is my hope that this class of
assignments will encourage emerging designers to build their own
sense of self within the context of social responsibility.
Bennett Peji
San Diego, CA
How I fulfill my desire to do socially responsible work without
going bankrupt. Our AIGA chapter in San Diego has evolved from a
professional organization to a service organization whose mission
is to utilize design for the public good. I volunteer 20 hours a
week and run my business the other 20. I serve on the boards of
5 non-profit organizations such as CityMoves.org. CityMoves is an
after-school, elementary school arts program. The key to truly affecting
any groups design perspective is to affect change by serving on
the board, not just being a pro bono vendor. I prompted the renaming
of the organization (from San Diego Dance Institute to CityMoves),
a new mission statement and graphic identity. Organizations like
CityMoves, who have never been in a position to work with high-level
graphic design professionals, are awakened to the power of design.
Next month they'll be putting on their first major fundraiser because
of the new identity and are able to recruit higher-level board members
because of the enhanced image. For relatively so little of our design
time, we can make such a huge impact to these non-profit organizations.
And, frankly, my business is more profitable because serving on
all these boards has taught me to delegate truly effectively and
focus on my core competencies. That is, I work only on the highest
profit margin areas of projects and delegate or subcontract the
rest which frees me to focus on more important things. Imagine one
day seeing headlines like "The American Cancer Society and the AIGA
raise $10 million dollars to fight lung cancer" or The Muscular
Distrophy Association and the AIGA raise $20 million to help children
stricken by the disease." Design is not the end goal. Design is
simply a tool to help us connect to our communities and make a difference.
When I became president of the San Diego chapter of AIGA in 1994
we had less than 100 members and were completely broke with no funds
for even the smallest events. Within 2 years, we tripled membership,
had over $50,000 in reserve, established scholarships, educational
programs and the AIGA-SD Y Design Conference. We rallied a complacent
design community into supporting city urban art programs led by
the AIGA to enhance blighted neighborhoods and created the largest
graphic design conference in our region (600 attendees last year).
Now, with our enhanced strength, we are establishing significant
alliances with creative groups including photographers, illustrators,
architects, web developers and environmental designers to truly
build a creative community with political clout in San Diego.
Michael Williams
Something I feel should be addressed, but does not fit into the
4 categories for the 150 word essay: There has recently been a resurgence
of activists trying to help the earth in many various ways. In most
cases, they have dedicated their lives to their causes, and expect
no reimbursement. They make up for their lack of any financial support
through living simpler lives. Our design is part of what many of
the above activists are fighting against. Our processes and tools
cause pollution, and as their efficiency rises, so does consumption.
With every new identity package and annual report we create, we
are promoting corporate interests. Advertising creates more consumption
and a dependant society. Is design, by its nature, good or harmful?
Even if we produce positive messages, it the process undermining
them? These are hard questions to ask, but I feel it is important
not to overlook them at VOICE. |
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