Finished Sociology paper
Dec. 3rd, 2007 01:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladydoujiSince a couple people asked here's my final paper for Intro to Social Problems
“An alchemist locked up by a predatory prince who needs gold and needs it quickly will have had little chance to interest his employer in the lofty symbolism of the Philosopher's Stone,”(Berger, pg. 169)
Graphic design as we know it today is relatively young, we can find it's roots in the industrial arts of printmaking and typography of the 18th century, with craftsmen and artist seeking to illustrate and decorate their pamphlets and books, or even going back to when man first began creating visual symbols in an effort to communicate with others. It has since grown into many different uses, from road signs, posters, and web design. A graphic designer's goal is to communicate to their audience in ways that are visually appealing, creative and clear. A rather elegant and sublime example of this goal is a logo designed for the Consumer Society and Citizen Networks featuring a barcode as rain, outlining an umbrella, combining a symbol of consumers with a symbol of protection, clearly stating the mission of the group. Over time graphic design have evolved three basic functions outlined by Hollis as;
“The primary role of graphic design is to identify: to say
what something is, or where it is from(inn signs, banners
and shields, mason's marks, publishers' and printers'
symbols, company logos, labels and packaging). Its second
function, known in the profession as Information design,m is
to inform and instruction, indicating the relationship of one
thing to another in direction, position and scale(maps,
diagrams, directional signs). It's third role very different
from the other two, is to present and promote (posters,
advertisements), where it aims to catch the eye and
make it's message memorable.”
Perhaps the real beginnings of graphic design laid within the Arts and Crafts movement in the late 1800's. The Arts and Crafts movement was an aesthetic movement in response to industrialization, calling for craftsmen to take pride in their work and seek meaningful styles and designs outside of the repetitious items that came from mechanization. Oddly the movement did not condemn industry and machines themselves but merely sought a compromised between the two. This movement worked very well in the realm of printing where the bookmaker, or print maker could create illustrations and formats of great variety and interest and then easily reproduce them. Such as the works from Morris's Kelmscott Press, with books of different sizes, with decorative border and prints, and specialize type, giving an inkling of graphic designs love affair with the interplay between words and imagery.
A later artist, by the name of Van de Valde created a poster for the Tropane concentrated food company, which was publicly treated as art despite being strictly an advertisement. Hollis notes that “Such patronage began a tradition of enlightened interest in design shown by the leaders of some large companies in Germany in the early years of the century: Bahlsen biscuits, Kaffee Hag and Gunther Wagner 'Pelikan' inks were the forerunners in corporate image making.” With the creation of trademarks, designs connection with business and commercial endeavors is firmly established.
The next great push in the importance was design was sadly during World War 1 and later World War 2, for both its ability to instruct and it's ability to promote. Diagrams were created to help instruct soldiers to learn their duties, know what to do in events, and even to identify the badges and insignias of ranking officers. However it is graphic design's function to promote ideas and items that saw the most use by the governments of the world. Art posters, previously used to advertise entertainment venues or new goods entering the marketplace, now became recruitment posters and propaganda. Some of the posters created during WWI are considered to be crude in terms of design, even if they are effective propaganda, however during WWII Abram Games developed a key ideal for designers when working; “Lettering, in particular must work equally with the design and not be merely an added afterthought . . .Posters should not tell a story but make a point.”
It is also during the second world war that people began to see the usefulness of design to display data in a subset of graphic design referred to as Information Design which is the main point of graphic designs second function of informing the public and instruction.
In the prosperity that followed World War 2 graphic design was primarily focused in the third function, to promote, as different companies with similar products competed for customers. It was in this time that designers began looking for a label to identify themselves with, as they had moved beyond the labels of illustrators and printmakers of their origins and came up with the term graphic design. So there is the start of graphic design, and although the tools and techniques have changed since it's humble beginnings the goals of communication have not. The principle of the graphic designer is to act a messenger and mediator between their client, and their intended audience and it is the designer's responsibility to deliver that message both clearly and creatively.
The American Institute of Graphic Arts, has produced a series of pamphlets regarding ethics and graphic design, but those primarily are concerned with business practices( don't use another designer's work without proper license, don't use pirated software to create work) and a more recent addition print design and environmental responsibility(encouraging designers to create solutions with minimum negative impact to the environment). Under the AIGA standards of professional practice there is an inclusion to “avoid projects that will result in harm to the public,” but sadly very little discussion about what that means.
I found trying to determine graphic design's impact on society extremely difficult because despite how ubiquitous design is, there is very little discussion about it's impact. It appears that there is a fragmentation of responsibility when it comes to designs impact, similar to issue Glover discusses in relation to human tragedies and atrocities. When people talk about advertising and complain about it's excesses, they look more to the companies who purchase the advertisements to place the blame, rather then on the designers who create the adverts. This is an unconscious modern day example of “Don't shoot the messenger.” So now I am going to try to interpret the field, both as a whole and some of it's subfields to see how it fits with society as a whole.
Returning to the main goal of graphic design as communication, and three main fields, of identification, instruction, and promotion, two of them(identification, and promotion) have combined into a subset of design referred to as branding. The phenomenon of branding can be examined through Robert Merton's approach of manifest and latent functions, as described by Berger; “The former are the conscious and deliberate functions of social processes, the latter the unconscious and unintended ones.”(Berger, pg 40) The main function of a brand name is to identify who the maker of the product is, and to symbolize the promises of that manufacture gives for his product. The latent function of the brand has been to become a status symbol, and to become personal co-ordinates on the social map, for example the man who wears Ralph Lauren, or the person who declares they prefer Coke over Pepsi.
There is also a great deal of harm that comes when branding goes to far into a person's identity, “The power of brands has increased geometrically in the past two decades, in the past two years. Brands are out of control, creating cathedral --- like Niketown, for example, where people go to worship the swoosh and renew their branding vows.”(Holland, pg 5) and he identifies the young, the consumers in training as the most at risk in the brand culture. “Weiden & Kennedy make terrific Nike commercials that create intense desire(verging on identity crises) among their young audience. Branded products aimed at the young are habit forming (not unlike cigarettes and drugs), and the kid's first 150$ pair of Air Whoever's can be the start of an expensive and insidious habit. Plus, the products these poor kids crave are often made by even poorer kids in a factory in some third world country.”(Holland, pg 6) These two issues display a lack of social imagination on the part of designers who create the pervasive and persuasive brands, unable to link their creations with the exploitation of both the consumers(their target audience) and their client's laborers.
Another surprising latent function of branding as a mechanism of social control. Within various social groups most often, family, friends, coworkers and other peers a group brand loyalty can develop. Those who do not purchase and wear the “correct” brands will find themselves ridiculed and ostracized by those who do. The group brand loyalty aids with the development of social stratification and Marx's ideas of false consciousness.
“False consciousness: The inability to identify and act
on one's own best interests. Marx's assumption was the
the class controlling the means of production controlled
the production of ideas. The ruling class produces ideas
which justify it's own existence. Being powerless, the
subjected class readily embraces this set of false idea about
what is and what must be. Thus, they embrace as true and
necessary their own subjugation.” (http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mazur/dictionary/f.html)
This is most easily viewed among the brand conscious youth and fashion. With fashion brands, the trend will often start with a celebrity, a rap or rock star, sport icon stating a preference for a particular brand, sometimes with the added incentive of an endorsement deal. Ironically enough the first to pick up on these trends are the poor, urban, ghetto youth becoming the fashion trend-setters for the rich suburban youth, seeking alternate identities for themselves which will later be abandoned when they mature.
Then there is the second most visible use of graphic design, propaganda. Oddly within my research I found a reluctance for designers to use the word propaganda (it is such a dirty, nasty word in today's world), instead preferring to call it, political art, activist art, or protest art. I suppose after the world saw how effective propaganda could be in leading people to moral atrocities in Nazi Germany no-one wants to be associated with creating propaganda. I can not decide whether it is advertising and branding or propaganda that creates the larger problem. Propaganda, as defined by webster as “ the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.” can have a remarkable effect for both good or ill. Designers instead prefer to look toward the positive aspects of what propaganda can do, as stated by Liz McQuiston in Graphic Agitation 2, “Graphics have long played a powerful role as a social tool – they raise awareness, apply a critique and ultimately provoke change.” However this ignores the role graphics have played in also maintaining the status quo, DK Holland notes the negative images of blacks, indians, and women used for promotion, product and packaging all came from designers. Even as these images fall out of favor and disuse, new negative images are created. It was only five years ago that the clothing brand Abercrombie and Fitch went through a major controversy and backlash over a series of t-shirts depicting stereotypical Asians. This also denies the work of designers working in what Jean-Paul Sartre called bad faith. Berger explains the concept as “to pretend something is necessary that in fact is voluntary.”(Berger, pg 143) They do this by creating images they themselves find morally and ethically offensive under the direction of their clients. They justify it to themselves that they need the money to pay their bills, and that it doesn't have to go into their portfolio.
So what must I do as a graphic designer to work in an ethical and responsible manner? For me the answer lies in being aware, being aware of my client's goals and business practices, and to refuse jobs from clients whose ethics I cannot support. To be aware of images which perpertrate hate or intolerence, at first to make the client aware of the problem, and then to leave the project if they insist on using those images. Finally being aware of the intended audience for my work and make sure that while my work communicates to them, it does not lie to or manipulate them.
“An alchemist locked up by a predatory prince who needs gold and needs it quickly will have had little chance to interest his employer in the lofty symbolism of the Philosopher's Stone,”(Berger, pg. 169)
Graphic design as we know it today is relatively young, we can find it's roots in the industrial arts of printmaking and typography of the 18th century, with craftsmen and artist seeking to illustrate and decorate their pamphlets and books, or even going back to when man first began creating visual symbols in an effort to communicate with others. It has since grown into many different uses, from road signs, posters, and web design. A graphic designer's goal is to communicate to their audience in ways that are visually appealing, creative and clear. A rather elegant and sublime example of this goal is a logo designed for the Consumer Society and Citizen Networks featuring a barcode as rain, outlining an umbrella, combining a symbol of consumers with a symbol of protection, clearly stating the mission of the group. Over time graphic design have evolved three basic functions outlined by Hollis as;
“The primary role of graphic design is to identify: to say
what something is, or where it is from(inn signs, banners
and shields, mason's marks, publishers' and printers'
symbols, company logos, labels and packaging). Its second
function, known in the profession as Information design,m is
to inform and instruction, indicating the relationship of one
thing to another in direction, position and scale(maps,
diagrams, directional signs). It's third role very different
from the other two, is to present and promote (posters,
advertisements), where it aims to catch the eye and
make it's message memorable.”
Perhaps the real beginnings of graphic design laid within the Arts and Crafts movement in the late 1800's. The Arts and Crafts movement was an aesthetic movement in response to industrialization, calling for craftsmen to take pride in their work and seek meaningful styles and designs outside of the repetitious items that came from mechanization. Oddly the movement did not condemn industry and machines themselves but merely sought a compromised between the two. This movement worked very well in the realm of printing where the bookmaker, or print maker could create illustrations and formats of great variety and interest and then easily reproduce them. Such as the works from Morris's Kelmscott Press, with books of different sizes, with decorative border and prints, and specialize type, giving an inkling of graphic designs love affair with the interplay between words and imagery.
A later artist, by the name of Van de Valde created a poster for the Tropane concentrated food company, which was publicly treated as art despite being strictly an advertisement. Hollis notes that “Such patronage began a tradition of enlightened interest in design shown by the leaders of some large companies in Germany in the early years of the century: Bahlsen biscuits, Kaffee Hag and Gunther Wagner 'Pelikan' inks were the forerunners in corporate image making.” With the creation of trademarks, designs connection with business and commercial endeavors is firmly established.
The next great push in the importance was design was sadly during World War 1 and later World War 2, for both its ability to instruct and it's ability to promote. Diagrams were created to help instruct soldiers to learn their duties, know what to do in events, and even to identify the badges and insignias of ranking officers. However it is graphic design's function to promote ideas and items that saw the most use by the governments of the world. Art posters, previously used to advertise entertainment venues or new goods entering the marketplace, now became recruitment posters and propaganda. Some of the posters created during WWI are considered to be crude in terms of design, even if they are effective propaganda, however during WWII Abram Games developed a key ideal for designers when working; “Lettering, in particular must work equally with the design and not be merely an added afterthought . . .Posters should not tell a story but make a point.”
It is also during the second world war that people began to see the usefulness of design to display data in a subset of graphic design referred to as Information Design which is the main point of graphic designs second function of informing the public and instruction.
In the prosperity that followed World War 2 graphic design was primarily focused in the third function, to promote, as different companies with similar products competed for customers. It was in this time that designers began looking for a label to identify themselves with, as they had moved beyond the labels of illustrators and printmakers of their origins and came up with the term graphic design. So there is the start of graphic design, and although the tools and techniques have changed since it's humble beginnings the goals of communication have not. The principle of the graphic designer is to act a messenger and mediator between their client, and their intended audience and it is the designer's responsibility to deliver that message both clearly and creatively.
The American Institute of Graphic Arts, has produced a series of pamphlets regarding ethics and graphic design, but those primarily are concerned with business practices( don't use another designer's work without proper license, don't use pirated software to create work) and a more recent addition print design and environmental responsibility(encouraging designers to create solutions with minimum negative impact to the environment). Under the AIGA standards of professional practice there is an inclusion to “avoid projects that will result in harm to the public,” but sadly very little discussion about what that means.
I found trying to determine graphic design's impact on society extremely difficult because despite how ubiquitous design is, there is very little discussion about it's impact. It appears that there is a fragmentation of responsibility when it comes to designs impact, similar to issue Glover discusses in relation to human tragedies and atrocities. When people talk about advertising and complain about it's excesses, they look more to the companies who purchase the advertisements to place the blame, rather then on the designers who create the adverts. This is an unconscious modern day example of “Don't shoot the messenger.” So now I am going to try to interpret the field, both as a whole and some of it's subfields to see how it fits with society as a whole.
Returning to the main goal of graphic design as communication, and three main fields, of identification, instruction, and promotion, two of them(identification, and promotion) have combined into a subset of design referred to as branding. The phenomenon of branding can be examined through Robert Merton's approach of manifest and latent functions, as described by Berger; “The former are the conscious and deliberate functions of social processes, the latter the unconscious and unintended ones.”(Berger, pg 40) The main function of a brand name is to identify who the maker of the product is, and to symbolize the promises of that manufacture gives for his product. The latent function of the brand has been to become a status symbol, and to become personal co-ordinates on the social map, for example the man who wears Ralph Lauren, or the person who declares they prefer Coke over Pepsi.
There is also a great deal of harm that comes when branding goes to far into a person's identity, “The power of brands has increased geometrically in the past two decades, in the past two years. Brands are out of control, creating cathedral --- like Niketown, for example, where people go to worship the swoosh and renew their branding vows.”(Holland, pg 5) and he identifies the young, the consumers in training as the most at risk in the brand culture. “Weiden & Kennedy make terrific Nike commercials that create intense desire(verging on identity crises) among their young audience. Branded products aimed at the young are habit forming (not unlike cigarettes and drugs), and the kid's first 150$ pair of Air Whoever's can be the start of an expensive and insidious habit. Plus, the products these poor kids crave are often made by even poorer kids in a factory in some third world country.”(Holland, pg 6) These two issues display a lack of social imagination on the part of designers who create the pervasive and persuasive brands, unable to link their creations with the exploitation of both the consumers(their target audience) and their client's laborers.
Another surprising latent function of branding as a mechanism of social control. Within various social groups most often, family, friends, coworkers and other peers a group brand loyalty can develop. Those who do not purchase and wear the “correct” brands will find themselves ridiculed and ostracized by those who do. The group brand loyalty aids with the development of social stratification and Marx's ideas of false consciousness.
“False consciousness: The inability to identify and act
on one's own best interests. Marx's assumption was the
the class controlling the means of production controlled
the production of ideas. The ruling class produces ideas
which justify it's own existence. Being powerless, the
subjected class readily embraces this set of false idea about
what is and what must be. Thus, they embrace as true and
necessary their own subjugation.” (http://www.public.iastate.edu/~mazur/dictionary/f.html)
This is most easily viewed among the brand conscious youth and fashion. With fashion brands, the trend will often start with a celebrity, a rap or rock star, sport icon stating a preference for a particular brand, sometimes with the added incentive of an endorsement deal. Ironically enough the first to pick up on these trends are the poor, urban, ghetto youth becoming the fashion trend-setters for the rich suburban youth, seeking alternate identities for themselves which will later be abandoned when they mature.
Then there is the second most visible use of graphic design, propaganda. Oddly within my research I found a reluctance for designers to use the word propaganda (it is such a dirty, nasty word in today's world), instead preferring to call it, political art, activist art, or protest art. I suppose after the world saw how effective propaganda could be in leading people to moral atrocities in Nazi Germany no-one wants to be associated with creating propaganda. I can not decide whether it is advertising and branding or propaganda that creates the larger problem. Propaganda, as defined by webster as “ the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.” can have a remarkable effect for both good or ill. Designers instead prefer to look toward the positive aspects of what propaganda can do, as stated by Liz McQuiston in Graphic Agitation 2, “Graphics have long played a powerful role as a social tool – they raise awareness, apply a critique and ultimately provoke change.” However this ignores the role graphics have played in also maintaining the status quo, DK Holland notes the negative images of blacks, indians, and women used for promotion, product and packaging all came from designers. Even as these images fall out of favor and disuse, new negative images are created. It was only five years ago that the clothing brand Abercrombie and Fitch went through a major controversy and backlash over a series of t-shirts depicting stereotypical Asians. This also denies the work of designers working in what Jean-Paul Sartre called bad faith. Berger explains the concept as “to pretend something is necessary that in fact is voluntary.”(Berger, pg 143) They do this by creating images they themselves find morally and ethically offensive under the direction of their clients. They justify it to themselves that they need the money to pay their bills, and that it doesn't have to go into their portfolio.
So what must I do as a graphic designer to work in an ethical and responsible manner? For me the answer lies in being aware, being aware of my client's goals and business practices, and to refuse jobs from clients whose ethics I cannot support. To be aware of images which perpertrate hate or intolerence, at first to make the client aware of the problem, and then to leave the project if they insist on using those images. Finally being aware of the intended audience for my work and make sure that while my work communicates to them, it does not lie to or manipulate them.
