Three recent events in graphic design have resonated far enough beyond our little community to draw considerable commentary from the mainstream media and public sector: Wolff Olins’ London 2012 logo, Arnell’s Pepsi re-brand, and Arnell’s Tropicana packaging. These three events, through disparate in the reasons for the commentary they generated all nod to a larger concept of graphic design’s place in the public eye.
In the summer of 2007, the graphic design community got its biggest buzz that anyone could remember in a long time with the release of the 2012 London Summer Olympics logo, designed by Wolff Olins with a pricetag of roughly $800,000. Though the press release called the logo a “powerful, modern emblem, symbolizing the dynamic Olympic spirit and its inspirational ability to reach out to people all over the world,” almost immediately following its unveiling, scores of would-be designers and citizens began online petitions calling for a repeal of the entire identity package. Many complained that the identity held no relevance to London’s modern culture or history, others were quoted saying it looked like it was lifted from a 1980s Dire Straits music video. An early poll on the BBC website showed more than 80% of the votes giving the chunky, jaggedly stacked logo the lowest possible rating. British newspapers compared the new logo to a swastika and graffiti and ran their own replacement logo. London mayor Ken Livingstone, refusing to endorse the logo on the grounds that no studies had been conducted on its impact, stated, “If you employ someone to design a car and it kills you, you’re pretty unhappy about that. If you employ someone to design a logo for you and they haven’t done a basic health check, you have to ask what they do for their money.” Ultimately, the public moved on from the London 2012 logo fiasco (despite some continued rumblings about its overwhelming appearance throughout London) but ironically, 20% of London’s adidas stores’ sales have been for 2012 Olympics product even though the product takes up less than 5% of retail space. Go figure, people buy what they hate.
The Arnell Group’s Pepsi re-brand. This was met with equal outrage, although for largely different reasons than the Olympics package. Pepsi recently repositioned itself as a brand that “refreshes itself” as the ad campaign suggests, in line with major events in American history. In fact the company has apparently had an image for nearly ever generation of modern American history, the new being just the most recent in the evolution of the iconic red and blue circle. But the logo itself, though somewhat controversial, was not the real source of the public outcry. It instead came back to the price tag for the project, which figured in the tens of millions. The leak of a 27-page internal document onto the web didn’t help either: the “thinking” behind the new brand direction and identity design compared the new logo to the Parthenon, the Mona Lisa, the golden section, and the universe as a whole. The piece entitled,Breathtaking, points out (amongst many other “facts”) that the “emotive forces” of the identity “shape the gestalt of the brand identity” through “symmetrical energy fields.” Articles ran in periodicals such as the New York Times,Newsweek, and elsewhere analyzing the laughable hubris of the entire campaign.
The buzz over the Arnell Group’s Tropicana packaging redesign, however, has trumped them all. The new design aimed to be clean, refined, and decidedly higher-end. A new color-coding system for juice types and new language such as “high pulp” replacing the folksy “lots of pulp,” was so complicated that it required its own website explaining the changes. To say that the design missed the mark with its user is an understatement. People complained that they could no longer find Tropicana products in their stores, designers and citizens alike likened the packaging to a generic brand and asked why the famous, and apparently well-liked, orange-and-straw image had been removed. The packaging fiasco lit up every design website and even made it to the national news. Individuals on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter formed groups petitioning consumers to stop purchasing Tropicana products unless the company reverted to the old package. Feeling the pressure, Tropicana decided to do just that, with the new-old package coming back into the stores only months after the makeover had taken effect.
With graphic design appearing on the radar of so many people who normally wouldn’t give it a second thought, I suppose we, as a community, should be happy, right? But does this attention represent a step in the right direction—away from what Jessica Helfand writing on Design Observer, calls, “the design ghetto” and toward a broader respect for the profession? In her essay “Graphic Design Spam” (November 17, 2008), Helfand goes on to lament that for the general public, “there is no difference between graphic design and the graphical arts,” and concludes, “maybe there should be.” Helfand’s concern that the public doesn’t understand the difference between real graphic design and the “graphical arts” of your average sign and symbol maker speaks to a long-established vocational and technical stigma suffered by graphic design – one that has not been helped, she argues, by the wave of new two-year online graphic design programs. As these program’s ads bombard in-boxes, touting myriad design career options (Want to work in the exciting creative field of the Graphic Arts!?), recipients imagine that they, too, can painlessly and quickly become professional designers (and thus cannot help but question how major corporate remakes like Pepsi’s could possibly cost so much). Many designers, in considering this vocational stigma, have compared perceptions of the design profession to that of doctors and architects. Doctors and architects may mess up, too, but when is the last time you heard someone say they could perform heart surgery better than a doctor or design and construct a building better than an architect? You simply do not. When it comes to graphic design, however, the public often proclaims “I could do it better than that,” to the extent that graphic designers find themselves fighting for respect and attention continuously and in vain.
This public perception, however, is not entirely without reason. Rather than fight it, designers might see it as an opportunity to distinguish what really sets graphic design apart.
We have two problems here: the only time graphic design seems to garner any attention is when it fails. And the masses think it’s a no-brainer anyway. People say they could have created a “better logo than that” because that’s all they see, and ultimately, all they think graphic design is: logos, letterheads and website design. To the contrary, the real work graphic designers do, for the most part, is ephemeral, transient, and invisible to the average person. If architecture is the creation of our structures and habitats, and industrial design is the creation of our tools and products, then graphic design is the creation of agents for our ideas and communication. At its essence, graphic design is the most human and personal form of design, but how can we actually establish this as truth, if the public with whom we communicate believes it is a superficial veneer?
One answer has to do less with design than with designers. At the top levels of graphic design, the community’s celebrity personalities have taken on a very lofty and patrician approach. One famous designer has been called the profession, the “medicine of the visual disease,” and others have credited themselves as “architects” in their projects. Graphic design, unlike, perhaps, medicine and architecture, should not be an elite little club. Graphic design is democratic design; it needs to reach out to connect individuals and exist always as a collaborative venture. The very fact that the public has such a great outcry when graphic design fails only underscores how involved the user should always be. Given the clutter of contemporary communication we can’t afford the egoism behind creating a “Frank Gehry” or “Louis Sullivan.” This is not what graphic design is or should ever aspire to be. Making graphic design a tool for authorship and personal notoriety only degrades its impact on our society—modern culture already has enough narcissism and personal exhibitionism. This is not to say there is no room for personal expression and passion in graphic design but it should shine through in the intellect and contextual beauty behind the world and not through visual illustration or typography “owned” as a trademarked style.
The real solution to graphic design’s image problem lies in our education system. At a time of exponential social change, never before has the mass media been more interested in topics like “design thinking,” “design as partnership,” interactive design, and communication methods in an age of information overload. If graphic design ever hopes to divorce itself from its superficial vocational stigma, now is the time, and our design schools (the accredited ones—RISD, SVA, Yale, Art Center etc.) are the place. It is here that we can practice the “partnership” model of getting outside our egos and plunging into the client’s world and here that we can explore diverse media and become more aware ourselves. My education has taught me the importance of graphic design is not determined by how well I can manipulate computer software (which is constantly changing anyway) or how slick a CD cover I can design (an embarrassingly simple assignment), but rather how well I can formulate a way to look at, analyze, and communicate ideas and messages artfully, while at the same time recognizing the needs and wants of the end user. Over the past three years I have manifested this way of thinking through sculpture, design, typography, writing, photography, and speech. The most important experiences I have had at school have not been in my studio classes but rather as a result of my studio classes. By being involved in interdisciplinary pursuits with non-designers, I have had the opportunity to translate the approach I have fostered in the studio in an entirely different, but equally relevant, venue. Design schools need to empower their students to have an equal appreciation, or at least empathy, for disciplines other than design. If we continue to treat design school as a vacuum, tomorrow’s designers, who could be instrumental in the health of human communication and culture, will not have the tools to treat design as partnership.
If design schools, and the community as a whole, can understand that the relevance of a graphic design education not only lies in the instruction of design principles and techniques but also in a more holistic perspective on the world and its problems. Graphic design will find itself at the crux of the solution to much more than simple logo design and “making things look good.” Graphic design now has the opportunity to be an integral connector and creator of society more than history has ever demanded before—designers just need to be prepared to take on the responsibility.