Design & Society

"Society" is a term for grouping a large mass of people living together in a location or organized system. Designers normally target society in part. Society can be divided by political, ethnic and class groups that relate to the ways design is received or used. Communication design is the most far reaching across society because it can be virtual. Because of the great reach of communication design, there are great implications for how one's design will influence others.

The Expectation Effect is a term used to describe communication design strategies that build the hope of the receiver. Communication that sets high expectations, such as phrases “life changing” “possibility”, inspire receivers to a temporary positive reception. The expectation effect only lasts as long as the product delivers on the expectation. This is especially important for branding. A company cannot have a logo if it does not correlate to the product. “Fed Ex The World on Time” works because they deliver globally but fails when consumers realize foreign offices have limited delivery hours and delays.

Exposure Effect suggests that the more something is seen or heard the more it will be liked. The Eiffle Tower by Gustav Eiffle or Louvre Pyramid by IM Pei are classic examples. Society as a whole may be resistant to the new because only a select number are working in progressive designs. After the new becomes old it is no longer a source of discussion. The exposure effect is also important with ideological designs. When a design asserts a political position, like a propaganda campaign, that too can in time go unquestioned. There is a questions as to whether the ideas are accepted and integrated into life or simply ignored because they are familiar – this is the question of advertising!

The exposure effect can make something so familiar we do not see it anymore, as with the image of Che Guevara that has been over-exposed.

Framing is the manipulation of information presentation. In communication design it is the order of words, size and format. 95% fat free creates a different response than 5% fat rich. An old fashioned glass bottle for yogurt creates a different impression than an opaque plastic container. Each step of design is a frame or layer for what is communicated.

Guy Debord was a writer who was part of a group called "The Situationists." They explored found and manufactured "situations" of life such as the order of the streets and environment. Debord created an influential text in 1967 called The Society of the Spectacle. The book was developed into a film and is based on a critique of the contemporary system of capitalism.

Society of the Spectacle starts by explaining that the world is an immense accumulation of images. In many ways this is like a manifesto of communication design. There is however a totalitarian control of all media, mainly through television, and now the internet. Mass media and advertising are owned by powerful people who sell the ideology of advanced capitalism in the way that religion was sold in the past. Debord actually sees the transition from Orthodox icons to Propaganda posters to capitalist media.

The false reality of the spectacle is called “false consciousness”. Debord proposed that people now build relationships through the spectacle, meaning you may talk to someone about a movie, but never talk with them as a person. “The spectacle is not a collection of images but a social relation mediated by images.”

Excerpts:

Today’s media shows a fake reality in order to mask the capitalist degradation of human life.

The spectacle presents itself as a vast inaccessible reality that can never be questioned. Its sole message is: ‘What appears is good; what is good appears.’ The passive acceptance it demands is already effectively imposed by its monopoly of appearances, its manner of appearing without allowing any reply.

The alienation of the spectator, which reinforces the contemplated objects that result from his own unconscious activity works like this: The more he contemplates, the less he lives; the more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understand his own life and his own desires.

The spectacle is the ruling order’s nonstop discourse about itself, its never-ending monologue about of self-praise, its self-portrait at the stage of totalitarian domination of all aspects of life.

The constant decline of use value that has always characterized the capitalist economy has given rise to a new form of poverty within the realm of augmented survival …

With consciousness of the great spectacle of media, the challenge for design is how to retain a creative vision, answer to the tangible reality of receivers and raise user consciousness of values and power. All design has values and ideas to communicate. Since Debord we have a postmodern understanding of images as both original and re-used. This means the the original message of the spectacle can be altered. The active use of spectacle images for one’s own reactive purposes is appropriation. This is whenever a creator steals an image and then modifies the meaning.

Richard Prince is perhaps the best known appropriation artist. In the 1980's, he took existing photos from media and shows them as his own. His best known work is the cowboys of Marlboro presented without the logo.

In the tradition of caricature, Perez Hilton reacts to the spectacle and alters some of the photos he presents but he still advances the spectacle in general by focusing on celebrities and hype in a passive aggressive, powerless way that provides no new framing as a blog is not a legitimate critique.

Shepherd Fairey established himself as alternative designer. He was part of the skate scene and began the "André the Giant Has a Posse" “Obey” sticker campaign in the 1980’s. The phrase was appropriated from the movie They Live by John Carpenter which itself critiqued the upper class as aliens in hiding. Fairey’s stickers were read as youthful anti-establishment or anti-spectacle. But Fairey was then hired in 2008 to design the poster for Obama. The image was returned back to the systems of power.

Graphic designer Barbara Kruger created many anti-consumerist images until in 2008 when she was hired by the department store Selfridges to use her images as advertisements.