October 27, 2003 — 1 PM

New World Design

After a ten day absence from writing, be warned that the following will definitely fall into the category of “doozy”.

I returned to Montreal last night after spending nine days in Vancouver, partly as a brief chance to visit family and friends, but more to attend the biennial conference of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), the association of graphic designers in the U.S.

One might think it odd to hold a conference in Canada for an association whose members are all American, but no one was complaining as the sun locked into place over the mountains and water for the duration of the events. Vancouver can be staggeringly lovely when the clouds and rain blow away — even if I was locked into a cavernous, windowless convention room for most of the three days of nice weather. Ahem.

The focus of the conference was on sustainability and the role of designers in promoting social change, a rather lofty theme to be sure. There were a variety of speakers, many gathered from fields outside design to emphasize the role of the design profession in the larger context of education, science, government, business and, well, life.

So basically, someone somewhere said, “Let’s gather two thousand well-dressed, white-collar dandies into a room, charge them many hundreds of dollars, and preach to them for hours at a time on topics that don’t seem obviously connected to their one passion.” I thought the potential for utter disaster was perilously high.

Well, I was blown away right along with all the nasty, grey clouds. I came out of the conference charged by a series of highly inspirational talks that had me rethinking how I want to conduct my career and further challenge my mind.

One speaker, science fiction author Bruce Sterling, spoke at length about the history of futurism, and concluded by asserting that what our contemporary culture lacks is a conception of where we’re going in the next century. In the 1950s, people thought about the future in flying cars, and thought we would live in pods or cloud-dwelling towers. In the ’60s, people thought about a world without war. In the ’70s, people thought about a future of starvation, energy crisis and environmental disaster. Well, the twentieth century is over now, there are no flying cars, we haven’t really cleaned up our act a whole lot, and, to top it all off, we also seem to have lost our imagination too. When’s the last time you saw a picture of what our transportation will look like in 2050? We’re standing still now, scratching our heads at the mess, and we don’t know what to do. That doesn’t mean we need to figure out what life is going to be like in fifty years, but, as Sterling put it, we can still “do the next thing.” Do the thing that will lead us forward, not around in a circle. The old definition of progress (more wealth, more people, more industry, more, MORE!) is failing, but we haven’t redefined it yet.

I’m not about to foment any revolutions through web design, photography, or writing, the activities that guide my time these days. It’s very easy to be cynical about how important graphic design is to the world. Frankly, I’m sure most designers have had moments as I have where they felt they were engaged in nothing more than a shallow task of beautification without some deeper merit. Hearing the words of wise and passionate people over the last few days, I feel now that although I might not change everyone’s mind about some of the problems I have with our world, I do have one very important advantage over other people. I have the power to communicate, and to promote the ideas and values that I choose. Using the craft of graphic design allows me — and anyone else — to communicate more strongly than with just words.

I work at a university because I enjoy being in a environment where profit is not the root of motivation. Now I would like to work harder to apply my beliefs in other work I do, and to use my skills to help the people whose beliefs I admire and support.

Well. At times, I have questioned my ability to seem passionate and sincere about something without coming off as hokey or preachy. Let me know if I’m in any danger.

One other thing: I met many interesting and talented people at the conference, who made me feel like part of a larger community that believes in its work. I was fortunate to meet Doug Bowman, who runs his own firm, Stopdesign. Bowman’s work includes the recent fabulous redesign of the Wired News site, and I was pleased to be able to speak with him about some of the interests we share, like the idea that a site can obey web standards and still look good.

I also met a variety of designers involved in education — students and teachers alike. They fertilized the seed I planted myself awhile back that I might want to return to school at some point and augment my education in communications (generally, the study of the intersection of media and society) with a better grounding in the principles and execution of design. Maybe not just graphic design, but rather design as a more broad concept: the future needs to be designed by someone, and if I don’t participate in that, I will be disappointed with my contribution to the world around me.

Seems like I have my work cut out for me.

Previously: Breaking Windows with Apples

Subsequently: Much Ado About Moolah

October 2003
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