In the first dialogue, Deshna clearly raised the interaction between economy and design across different periods, as well as the wider possibilities of integrating the project itself with graphic communication design—an issue I had previously overlooked in my work. Among the many materials and references she recommended and shared with me, the one that most attracted and inspired me was the website Design Declares UK. The site calls on designers, studios, and institutions to acknowledge that we are in the midst of an ecological crisis, and to commit to using the tools and resources of the design industry to “reimagine, rebuild, and repair” the world. It emphasizes considering environmental and social impacts in projects, improving design processes, promoting sustainability together with clients, and measuring one’s own impact. In addition, Ken Garland’s First Things First Manifesto had a significant influence on me. In it, the author reflects on and protests the role of designers within consumer society, helping me to realize that design should not merely be a tool for manufacturing desire, but should instead be a cultural practice concerning the future of society.
Unlike the project author myself and the tutor who is familiar with the development of my project, the most distinctive and effective aspect of this dialogue was that the interlocutor, as a graphic communication designer, observed and analyzed my project from a completely unfamiliar outsider’s perspective. This further helped me break through the limitations of my previous thinking. Specifically, this took the form of proposing new, concrete, and closely connected research directions—such as categorizing economic development trends to refine and classify the project, thereby highlighting the distinct differences in how economy and design interact in different periods. By contrast, in my earlier research, I had only investigated and analyzed consumption data related to daily necessities, and my final outcome merely translated the phenomena and data in a neutral manner. The underlying reason for this may be the nature of the project theme itself—consumption—which carries certain professional barriers and has relatively low direct relevance to graphic communication design. Furthermore, since the research questions of the project were too broad without a specific and clear entry point, its final presentation was inevitably limited in scope.
In the second dialogue, I communicated with a professional working in the field of economics. By comparing the period-specific materials and data he provided with the consumer product packaging I had collected from corresponding periods, my thinking was further stimulated. Moreover, he reminded me not to consider issues in isolation: when reflecting on the relationship between economy and design, it is also necessary to take into account the influences of politics, technology, and intellectual culture. For example, in the periods of the Arts and Crafts Movement and the International Style, the expressions of design were bound to differ drastically, and should not be rigidly tied to the economy alone. Likewise, the differences in expressive power between the era of letterpress printing and that of digital printing must also be factored into consideration.
Leave a Reply