Writing and Research for Graphic Designers

(Ray)

(Fogra 29_WF)Job:08-28858 Title:RP-Writing & Research for Graphic Designers

#175 Dtp:225 Page:116

110-133_28858.indd 116 8/30/12 4:47 PM

(Ray)

(Fogra 29_WF)Job:08-28858 Title:RP-Writing & Research for Graphic Designers

#175 Dtp:225 Page:117

110-133_28858.indd 117 8/30/12 4:47 PM

Writing & research for graphic designers

(Text)

116

CASE STUDY:

The language of design imperialism

maria popova

Blogger and writer on design for Wired UK and The Atlantic

(Originally published July 29, 2010 on Change Observer,

http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/feature/the-language-of-design-imperialism/14718/)

I go to a lot of conferences. Design conferences, tech conferences,

media conferences, cross-disciplinary conferences. And the worst

of them are always the ones brimming with panels, on which a

handful of industry heavy-hitters sit around for an hour, throwing

opinions at each other that oscillate between congratulatory and

contrarian but inevitably dance around a hermetic subject of

collectively predetermined importance. The problem with such

panels is that they regurgitate existing viewpoints held within the

industry bubble about issues framed by the industry paradigm,

often in buzzword-encrusted language that offers little substance

beyond the collective fluff-slinging.

Over the past few weeks, the design community has

witnessed the virtual version of an industry panel. Ignited

by Bruce Nussbaum’s controversial, and some may say solely

for the sake thereof, contention that humanitarian design-

ers are the new imperialists and followed by a flurry of

responses ranging from insightful, fact-grounded retorts to

righteous indignation to argumentative defensiveness, the

debate has brought up some necessary conversations, but it

has also become a platform for near-academic discussion of

an issue tragically removed from the actual cultural land-

scapes where humanitarian design projects live.What’s most

worrisome and ironic about the debate is the almost complete

lack — with the exception of a few blog comments here and

there — of voices of designers who work in the very regions

and communities in question, those loosely defined as the

“developing world” and the “Western poor.” Worse yet,

entirely missing are the much-needed multidisciplinary

voices whose work is the cultural glue between design and

its social implementation — anthropologists, scientists,

educators, writers.

Yes, writers.

Because if designers are the new imperialists, the delusional

white-caped superheroes Nussbaum calls them out to be,

design writers are their giddy, overeager sidekicks, complicit

(Ray)

(Fogra 29_WF)Job:08-28858 Title:RP-Writing & Research for Graphic Designers

09-C67944 #175 Dtp:225 Page:116

110-133_C67944.indd 116 9/22/12 11:26 AM

section 4

learning from experiences writers discuss their writing

(Text)

117

in disengaging from the very communities in which humanitar-

ian design is meant to be manifest.

The way we talk and write about these issues is incredibly

important. As [Nussbaum’s] excellent Wall Street Journal article

argues, language shapes culture and cognition in a powerful

way. The very vocabulary we use in this debate is incredibly

flawed. We can’t even come up with a fair way of describing

the communities in question. We slide across a spectrum of

political quasi-correctness and tragic generalization, from the

near-obsolete for reasons of clear condescension “third world”

to the hardly better “developing world” to Alex Steffen’s

alarmingly geo-generalized “Global South” to the depressingly

hierarchical “bottom billion.” These lump terms not only

dehumanize entire classes of people, but they also fail to

account for the vast cultural differences between the various

microcommunities within these brackets. Political, anthro-

pological, ethnic, religious, and sociological differences that

would explain why, for instance, the XO-1 laptop from One

Laptop Per Child, once hailed as a pinnacle of humanitarian

design, was embraced in Paraguay and reviled in India.

We talk about working “in the field” as the ultimate litmus

test for true “humanitarian design.” But the notion of “the

field” flattens out an incredibly rich, layered, multiplane social

system in which these design projects and products live. No

We slide across a spectrum of political quasi-correctness

and tragic generalization, from the near-obsolete for reasons

of clear condescension “third world” to the hardly better

“developing world”. . . .

wonder we consistently fail to design what Emily Pilloton

aptly terms “systems, not stuff.”

I’d be curious to know how these communities and cultures

verbalize their own sense of self and identity. How do you say

“bottom billion” in Swahili? How does “the field” describe

itself in Aymara?

Even the term humanitarian design bespeaks a fundamental

limitation—incredibly anthropocentric, it fails to recognize the

importance of design that lives in a complex ecosystem of hu-

manity and nature, society and environment, which are always

symbiotically linked to one another’s well-being. When even our

language exudes the kind of cultural conceit that got us in our

climate crisis pickle, there’s something fundamentally wrong

with how we think about our role in the world — as designers

and as people.

In a brilliant SEED Magazine article from 2008, authors

Maywa Montenegro and Terry Glavin make a convincing

argument for the link between biodiversity and cultural

diversity. “Pull back from the jargon,” they caution, “and

the essence is simple: Homogeneous landscapes—whether

linguistic, cultural, biological, or genetic—are brittle and

prone to failure.” But a key point of failure in today’s global

design landscape lies precisely in the jargon: We need to invent

new ways of writing, talking, and thinking about concepts of

(Ray)

(Fogra 29_WF)Job:08-28858 Title:RP-Writing & Research for Graphic Designers

09-C67944 #175 Dtp:225 Page:117

110-133_C67944.indd 117 9/22/12 11:26 AM