‘The languages have always been close together,’ says Paola Antonelli, curator for Design and Architecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, ‘but the difference between art and design is in the intention, and how you declare yourself. Whether you call yourself a designer or an artist, if you are working for someone else or making your own artistic gesture.’ But self-definition is no longer straightforward. Appropriation and deconstruction bloomed in the postmodern atmosphere of the eighties, and have continued to evolve: art has turned to techniques originally used for commercial purposes to further its vocabulary; it has also borrowed the use of public venues and formats such as billboards, posters, wallpaper, and even t-shirts. Design, on the other hand, keeps one eye on the blank paper in front of it, and another on the visual worlds represented by galleries and museums; making use of art’s formal qualities, and also being influenced by its fabric of thought.
But although at the beginning this
borrowing of forms and ideas was mostly incorporated into design to fit its
own purposes, now many designers are edging towards that grey area where
disciplines merge and become indistinguishable. Because, these days it
seems, design can also be a tool for social reinvention and self-expression.
In fact, an interesting recent development in the academic world is to
regard the designer as author: students are encouraged to design their own
ideas and develop a personal body of work, instead of only developing work
for ‘clients’. And although this might seem like an insignificant change, it
marks a new form of conceptualising design that is bound to have
repercussions in the not-so-distant future.
Already many professionals are pushing forward the idea that design must not
only be a marketing tool, but a way of producing a new kind of meaning. The
First Things First 2000 design manifesto (an updated version of a 1964
declaration) was signed by many prominent designers. ‘The scope of debate is
shrinking,’ it read, ‘and it must expand. Consumerism is running
uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part,
through the visual languages and resources of design.’
James Victore is a good example of a graphic designer who constantly weaves between the worlds of art and design. Victore is best known for his self-financed posters that he puts up on the streets of New York, dealing largely with polemic issues such as racism, the death penalty, the AIDS crisis, and the ‘Disneyfication’ of New York City. He works with strong graphic ideas and visual wit, and uses bold imagery to get his ideas across. ‘I constantly try to infuse artistic vitality in my work,’ he says. His mission has clearly been successful: his posters hang in the permanent collections of the Louvre in Paris; the Library of Congress in Washington DC; and Zurich’s Museum für Gestaltung. But far more telling of his success is the fact that police have on occasions been ordered to tear down his posters, which they consider to be ‘politically incorrect’: in other words, striking a bit too close to the truth. (New York police ripped up his Celebrate Columbus – depicting an American Indian with a death mask – on Columbus Day.) Victore believes that there are many conversations waiting to be had, and that graphic design can provoke automated minds into giving certain issues deeper consideration. ‘Maybe it will not change the world but, hey, if you can affect your little corner of the world, if you can make one single person on the street stop and think, it was worth it.’
Elliott Earls is another gifted and multifaceted graphic designer who is interested in creating and proposing new languages. Earls says that design has its own process and methodology; on a functional level, it is typography, layout, textual communication, and the ways images are constructed. But he agrees that some designers – and artists – work in an overlapping territory: ‘If you remove the client from design, then you have art.’ Of course, some designers (like himself) sometimes work without clients, and some artists work on commissions, so the boundaries blur again. ‘It is true I exist in a grey area, where design overlaps with many other disciplines; I love mixing it with many things, like music and performance. Mainstream design completely discounts what I do.’ Working with new technologies and incorporating these into his own performance, experimenting with video, poetry, music and design, has made it difficult for Earls to find a niche for his work. (Atlantic Records was thinking of signing him as music artist; in the end they passed up on the offer because his DVD was too ‘artistic’.) ‘When you do work that crosses the boundaries, it does not fit into mega-economic structures, and they do not know what to do with you. The media cannot deal with it: they do not have people qualified to deal with it, so they discard it.’ But he thinks that it is possible, though it might be harder, to find a place for oneself anyway: ‘I couldn’t care less about labels. I am just creating my own work, and then throwing my own events, hoping that they catch on. It is a weird situation: things do not get better or worse, and I can only follow what feels right.’ The academic world is one such place: Earls is artist in residence at Cranbrook, a world-renowned art school. There, he not only encourages his students to experiment with the different media available, but also sees that other disciplines – like painting and sculpture – are making use of graphic design.
Besides being more concerned about social issues and experimenting with new languages, another interesting trend in graphic design is the increasingly complex images that are being created by some high-profile professionals. Take Martin Woodtli. Ask anyone who knows about screen-printing techniques, and you will hear that he performs modern-day miracles with his work. His use of fine lines, the way he deals with colour and the complexity of his images are impressive. Woodtli has certainly taken design into artistic realms; it has often been said that he exhausts the many possibilities of computer technology and print techniques, using 3-D software to create obsessively detailed, highly idiosyncratic imagery. As do many other designers, he works for clients, but also takes time to develop his own personal body of work; his experimental book, Woodtli, has been hailed as a masterpiece in design.
These designers, and many others, are helping to change the way the world perceives graphic design. And although most design we encounter will still litter our visual landscape with an endless repetition of empty images and clichés, it is reassuring to know that designers like Victore, Earls and Woodtli are out there, challenging and expanding the limits of design’s purpose and substance. Because, in the end, maybe the question is not what to call oneself and one’s work, but rather to constantly search beyond our borders; to achieve maximum self-expression, using any and every technique available. As William Blake said: ‘I must create my own system or be enslaved by another man’s. My business is not to reason and compare; my business is to create.’
Gabriella Gomez-Mont is a freelance writer and artist. She is also the founder of Toxico, a contemporary art and culture foundation based in Mexico City