Project 2 was to design an initiation for the communities we had each been studying. We were to initiate our chosen community into a new understanding, awareness, etc. of something its members are (presumably) unaware of. A large part of the assignment was based around readings from Shaping Information: The Rhetoric of Visual Conventions, regarding visual language and conventions within communities.
I’ll admit that during my first attempt, the “prototype,” I could make neither heads nor tails of the project goals. I hadn’t fully digested the reading yet (Have I by now? Good question…) and wasn’t finding much help there. So I designed a starter idea, a mini-site to initiate my antiques resellers’ online community into taking better photos for auctioning antiques online.
As it turns out, this was a good example of problem-solving-oriented design, which graphic designers are trained to do, and which most designers practice. And which we’re not doing in this program.
As I told Denise, I’m still crossing the bridge from problem-solving land into the larger world of design that looks at issues and raises questions. In problem-solving and solution-oriented design, the questions are generally supposed to be answered: a logo that solves a business’ need for a more updated image… a website that provides a store’s customers with more convenient shopping possibilities… etc. Those things have a place, but miss the point in the type of work we’re doing. What does it really mean for the business to have an “updated image”? Why do the store’s customers value convenience? We’re creating designs that look to raise bigger questions, that provoke discussion.
So for the final round of this project, I took the seeds of some of the ideas I was dabbling with in the first prototype and explored them further.
1. The visual representation of antique objects plays an important role in the discourse of my chosen community. Members upload large photo collections to share with others the objects they are selling, buying, collecting, or just have a fondness for. Those photos become the centerpieces of their discussions. I wanted to create something that looked more closely at members’ attachment to these objects, as represented in visual form.
2. Part of me wanted to completely revise their homespun photography methods, as evidenced in the “how to take better photos” prototype. And the other part of me fought that desire, wanting to avoid a top-down “education” with a high-design veneer forced onto an unwilling community.
3. I wanted to retain aspects of the community’s visual language (and visual conventions… and visual rhetoric… some of our catchphrases). Visually, antiques resellers tend to speak in ways that project their appreciation for personality, character, quirkiness (evidenced by the typography in their store signage, which often uses multiple exaggerated “period”-looking typefaces). They are also very comfortable with what, to outsiders, may look like clutter. Their stores are filled with unique items from a range of cultures and historic periods, objects of many sizes, colors, and uses. This expression of a love for collecting and diversity seems to reflect in their visual vernacular, as the community website is just as much an amalgamation of familiar and foreign, small and large, old and new–a hodgepodge–as their stores are.
I had the idea to give community members a viewfinder–a simple paper tool, a card with a shape cut out of the middle–which artists and art students use to frame the objects they are studying to depict. Viewfinders help to give them a different perspective, to see something in a way they may not have thought to look at it otherwise. This would be an initiation into a new way of looking at objects–into artist’s perspective. After experimenting with some viewfinder models, I decided that I wanted to incorporate layering in my design, as a metaphoric way to point to the amalgam language the antiques community is used to.
I started with a very simple rectangular viewfinder, and took photos showing it framing different antique objects. At first, I wanted to bind all the photos into a book, but decided that presenting them loosely, as cards, would help to reinforce the layering idea. The photos themselves also became layered, as I arranged them on cards in collages. The stack of cards started with a brief explanation (with a nod to personality-filled type choices), followed by a viewfinder card, then a single photo of an object the way it might “normally” be seen, then a card with a collage of viewfinder photos of the object. More cards followed, showing objects and their viewfinder collages, and ended with a set of viewfinders in different shapes.
I grappled with both being “stuck” on the photography medium (trying to purge myself of the problem-solving mindset of my prototype), and presenting the initiation in steps, over time. Photography was hard to get away from, in the end, since it was such a large part of how the antiques community speaks to each other–but I tried to avoid being too prescriptive with it. And in class we talked about how initiations should be immersive, transformative, and should happen over time. This is why I chose the book format, to guide users to move through a set of steps (the book was unbound but kept the same effect), and why I used a repetition of seven antique objects, each followed by its own viewfinder collage.
The critique raised interesting points, such as how the photo presentation could be taken a step further by next showing images without the viewfinder–what these new views could look like in themselves. And how the images could have explored perspectives like that of a person who is actually sitting in the antique chair. This made me think about the correlation between the collages and cubism, in the ideas of exploring new perspectives.
We talked in critique about how opting not to “ape” a community’s visual rhetoric actually leads the designer to take a particular new stance within their discourse. In a way, I think that trying to introduce something new into a community’s rhetoric makes the choice to design “from the top down” almost inevitable. I had wanted to avoid that way of designing, but in introducing a new visual rhetoric (which I saw as the modernist, streamlined, artistically de-cluttered language of my card set), I created something that my community would recognize as coming from outside their circle. This is an issue that probably all designers working with communities will face: is it better to innovate and bring something new to the table, or to speak steadfastly within the boundaries of the community’s defined conventions? Perhaps it depends on the purpose, and the community.
If we are designers, and almost by definition creating new things in our work, we will always be introducing new rhetoric to communities though, right? This project really gave me an appreciation for how incredibly complex a community’s visual language is. For instance, diligently parceling my initiation into steps, to occur over time, forced me further from the community’s amalgam language. My rhetorical stance became simplification, which stood diametrically opposed to their “hodgepodge” language. I wouldn’t want to tell them that their current language is wrong… but is that what my design implies? I hoped to introduce something new–a new way of seeing–that could be added to their arsenal of ways to appreciate their belongings. But looking so different, and coming from the outside, I suppose, itself implies judgment.
Like Denise pointed out in class, taking a particular stance by using a different rhetoric is like the dialogue you have when you say “I could design that better.” So what exactly do we mean by that?
