Students developed dialogue-triggering-'totems' and tested their specific purposes in certain localities and communities.
Public dialogue
In western countries, freedom of speech is considered an essential component of how people get along with each other. Set beside some (mostly religious) voices, most people feel encouraged (by law and socially) to have one's own opinions - and many consequently express them.
In the last decades 'opinions' seem to be outed in a new way. We reinforce our personal thoughts, doubts, annoyances, solutions by desktop publishing and personal media (blogs, wikis) and online services like youtube, myspace, and facebook. On the surface, this seems to lead to something we have long sought: freedom from institutional and corporate restrictions, and the creation of an open and accessible climate for debate and inspiration.
On the other hand we reached a point where the 'ownership' of an opinion is raised to the level of a goal in itself, a required accessory for one's social and professional existence. Tools for giving ideas visual form, through imagery, typography, or motion graphics, have become mass market commodities. Users are urged to express their own personality - in a 'particular', 'personal' way. Much of the techniques and concerns of a classic design school curriculum have become the everyday experience of, let's say, dentists, schoolkids and shop assistants. On top of all of this, closer readings of the "terms of use" of services like myspace and youtube reveal subtle asymmetries as "your ideas" are framed in a way to propel "their business models".
Besides the advantages (never so many people felt an urge to express themselves visually) we suffer under a visually supported inflated sense of self-esteem and self-worth. The traditional graphic designer is, once again, placed in a challenged position. In most cases he/she still has to be what he/she always was: a facilitator, a helper, somebody who works on and thinks of ways to express someone else's messages (in most cases: a client). But in a time, in which the layman earns respect by the way he designed his own corporate identity (he might also publish an illustrated electronic travel-column instead of writing postcards), the classical designer loses prestige as a person who works solely in the service of another. He/she is expected, with all this designer-knowledge and experience, to make 'free' work, initiate 'own' productions, in other words, to be just as creative and inventive in spreading his own 'speech' as anybody else. Clearly, banning the freedom of expression for dentists and other 'non-designers' is not a solution.
In practice
small::This project will explore ways of deepening the social role of (graphic) designers. Authorship will less be used as a way of raising a voice but merely to share capabilities with, and listening to others. Ultimately the project aims to develop ways to represent and/or facilitate dialogue in print-, screen- or other media.
In the preparatory stage students will outline a focus area (a neighborhood, a family, a corporation, a certain sport or any other community (extremely local or broadly global) in which dialogue might lead to better understanding and as such improve social relations.
Students will act as 'visual communicators' which involves collecting existing perspectives and experiences and/or setting up ways to record/register new material. The editing part will include storing, sorting and shuffling and (again) sharing fragments of dialogue. The eventual effect will depend on accurate articulated typography and imagery.
You will be stimulated/encouraged to:
-- use given circumstances as main point of
-- inspiration
-- cooperate with others; make compromises
-- listen and connect (by interview, summari
-- zation, translation)
-- share the process of generating text and image
-- learn to alter the direction of apparently static ideas
-- create an independent platform (in contrast to market driven, commercial and main -- stream media outlets)
-- involve feedback from readers/users/viewers
-- see loss of control as a creative advantage
Inevitably you will make a statement with this project anyway. It will prove the surplus value of professional design.