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DesignIssues: Volume 30, Number 2 Spring 2014
116
Reviews
Leslie Atzmon
Review of Icograda’s Iridescent and the Design
Education Manifesto 2011
Iridescent: Icograda Journal of Design Research 1,
no. 1 (2009-2011), edited by Max Bruinsma and
Omar Vulpinari, (Beijing, China: Kingee Culture,
October 2011), 215 pages, color images, paperback.
Icograda Design Education Manifesto 2011,
edited by Audrey Bennett and Omar Vulpinari,
(International Council of Graphic Design
Associations, October 2011), 83 pages, color images,
(pdf accessible at www.icograda.org/education/
manifesto.htm).
Founded in 1963, Icograda is a well-respected pro-
fessional communication design organization that,
according to its website, represents over “200 orga-
nizations in 67 countries and regions.” Icograda
has a worthy mission: to promote interdisciplinary
collaboration and a collective voice in the field of
communication design. So I was keen to review the
introductory issue of their new print journal Iridescent
(2009-2011) and their recently revamped 2000 Design
Education Manifesto (2011). I have divided this review
into two separate discussions: Iridescent and the
Manifesto; but, I will also offer broad comments that
address both publications.
Iridescent: Icograda Journal of Design Research
Produced by Supervising Editor Max Bruinsma and
Editorial Director Omar Vulpinari, Iridescent presents
a selection of peer-reviewed, design research pieces
culled from Icograda conference papers that were
previously published in the online version of the jour-
nal. The editors’ intent is to reprint the “gems” that
were written by international authors or that discuss
international themes. Iridescent does indeed offer a
wide range of international voices on a spectrum of
topics. This laudable intention, though, unfortunately
becomes a project that reads more like a babble of
international views and themes.
This is in part because the essays are uneven
in their tone, and in part because the editorial struc-
ture of the journal is inadequate. Neither Vulpinari
nor Bruinsma gives the reader much to go on about
the overarching goals of this journal other than featur-
ing “practitioners and scholars worldwide.” A lucid
editorial strategy spelled-out up front would have
been very helpful to the readers of this publication.
Indeed, a lack of clear vision has been one of the big-
gest shortcomings of many communication design
book-length publications, and unfortunately Iridescent
is no exception.
For a journal without a didactic secondary
level of organization (such as editorially glossed the-
matic sections) there are just too many essays. It’s pos-
sible that Bruinsma and Vulpinari made a conscious
effort not to be too heavy-handed in their interven-
tions, but I am sorry to say that Iridescent suffers
from a serious case of “editing lite.” There seem to be
some intrinsic clusters around which they could have
based an organization (e.g., groupings of essays on
Chinese communication design, or on pedagogical
experiments); instead, we just have the vague and
unhelpful division of the journal into “Education Net-
work Conference 2009 Papers” and “AgIdeas 2011
International Design Research Lab Papers.”
A number of the essays suffer from similar prob-
lems: vague concepts, unsubstantiated generaliza-
tions, and lack of critical rigor. Typos and misspellings
are scattered throughout. English isn’t the mother
tongue of many of these authors, and I earnestly
applaud those participants who had to unpack com-
plicated ideas in a foreign language. But the editors
should have paid more attention to both the prose and
content in each essay. Zhang Peng Chuan’s essay,
“Regional Traits and Mobility of the Design Culture
in Ancient China and the Starting Point for Design
Education in Contemporary China,” presents the ways
that specific regional traits of ancient China—such as
millet-based agriculture or Taoist practices—helped
shape Chinese design culture. The topic is fascinating,
but much of the historical information in the first
seven pages was extraneous; editing this material
would have produced a more robust essay. The article
titled “The Approach of Guangzhou Academy of Fine
Arts: Design Education Based on Regional Traditions
and Cultural Diversity” sounded promising, but the
piece was almost indecipherable. The essay was so full
of jargon and unclear assertions that I couldn’t get a
purchase on the thesis.
doi: DESI_r_00267
DesignIssues: Volume 30, Number 2 Spring 2014 105117117
Still, Iridescent includes some gems, largely about
pedagogy, that present compelling ways to engage
students in international issues and causes. In “To
Unveil and Motivate: Curriculum Principles and Case
Studies Inspired by the Aspen Design Challenge,”
Anne Ghory-Goodman parses the implications of
three case studies in which students worked in self-
driven group projects to address the global water cri-
sis for audiences that are “separated by demographics,
education, and immediate need.”
1
Some diamonds in
the rough hold great potential, such as Antoine Abi
Aad’s “Visual Transliterations of Oral Combinations
of Languages in Lebanon.” Abi Aad works with stu-
dents to translate into typographic form the French/
English/Arabic mixed languages that are common in
spoken Lebanese. Deborah Alden’s “A Fading Tradi-
tion: Design as a Portal to the Discovery of One’s Own
Cultural Heritage” describes a situation in which stu-
dent projects breathe new life into vanishing Singa-
porean traditions.2
Icograda Design Education Manifesto 2011
The Design Education Manifesto 2011 was draf ted
in response to both the original 2000 Icograda Design
Education Manifesto and changes in the field of visual
communication over the last ten years. The Mani-
festo presents several pertinent themes: technology,
inter-disciplinarity, cross-disciplinarity, design
research, entrepreneurship, and design management/
design thinking.
Editor Omar Vulpinari notes that the two days of
intensive workshops on the future of design education
that were held in 2010 in Jinan, China, helped to estab-
lish both Eastern- and Western-based objectives for
the draft Manifesto. Co-Editors Audrey Bennett and
Vulpinari rightly argue in the updated Manifesto t hat
design thinking and writing has been Atlantic-
focused, but they proffer the unsubstantiated claim
that there has been a “shift in focus as designers
around the world begin to adopt Eastern ideologies.”
3
It would have been useful to see some corroborating
evidence of this controversial declaration.
In 2011, the Editors asked 23 international de-
sign education experts to contribute essays on the
future of design education and to give feedback on
the draft Manifesto content. The final Manifesto
includes a section on the definition of communication
design, a section on opportunities in and challenges
to the discipline, a section that describes the role of
communication designers, and a section on the future
of communication design education—all with an
international twist. World design is now a hot contem-
porary topic. To its great credit, Icograda has focused
on international aspects of communication design
from its very inception.
From the Table of Contents, it’s clear that the
Icograda Design Education Manifesto 2011 marshals
some of the best thinkers in the field to respond to
both the content of the 2000 Manifesto and a range
of changes in communication design over the past
ten years. I have two big problems, though, with the
Icograda Manifesto. First, it needs a gutsier Intro-
duction, one that actually unpacks the challenges
facing contemporary communication design. This
Introduction would push beyond obvious assertions,
such as the claim that the future of graphic design
pedagogy is dependent on overcoming obstacles.
4
It
would elaborate upon such unarguable points as a
need for more sustainable materials.5 The Introduction
for this Manifesto ought to challenge and provoke its
readers with a detailed, manifest vision; instead, the
essay authors are left to do this job. A number of the
essays are engaging, but without editorial adjudica-
tion the project is mostly shapeless and ends up being
a list of essays written by some very smart people.
Second, as with Iridescent, there are way too
many essays. Redundancy is perhaps inevitable,
but including essays that are either too strident or
not incisive enough—is not. Hugh Dubberly, for exam-
ple, appropriately puts pressure on the Manifesto’s
weakly argued thesis that we focus on our responsi-
bilities to each other. Dubberly, though, makes whop-
ping and unsubstantiated claims about objects giving
way to “networks of interaction and communities of
systems,” and design schools becoming irrelevant.6
Halim Choueiry’s essay is too glib, and Kirtri Trivedi’s
piece merely states the obvious about the democratiza-
tion of design. I suspect that the Manifesto would prob-
ably have been better, and even more capacious, if it
were shorter and more pointed.
Over the past ten years, communication design
has struggled to find and express a diverse, formida-
ble voice. Icograda’s Iridescent and Design Education
Manifesto 2011 are a step in the right direction. Despite
their shortcomings, I applaud both projects for cham-
pioning international issues in communication design.
DesignIssues: Volume 30, Number 2 Spring 2014
118
1 Anne Ghory-Goodman, “To Unveil and Motivate:
Curriculum Principles and Case Studies Inspired by
the Aspen Design Challenge,” Iridescent: Icograda
Journal of Design Research 1, no. 1 (2009–2011): 30.
2 Antoine Abi Aad, “Visual Transliterations of Oral Combinations of
Languages in Lebanon,” Iridescent: Icograda Journal of Design Re-
search 1, no. 1 (2009–2011): 64.
3 Icograda Design Education Manifesto 2011, 6.
4 Ibid., 7.
5 Ibid., 8.
6 Ibid., 79.
Cameron Tonkinwise
Becoming Human by Design by Tony Fry (London/
New York: Berg, 2012), ISBN: 9780857853547,
272 pages, non-illustrated, soft/hardcover ($29.95).
On the one hand, design is a word that suggests strong
intent, if not the strongest; it speaks of comprehensive
planning, the thought-out project of materializing
something. To do something by design is to be as
deliberate as you can. On the other hand, designers
are service providers, only ever responding to the
briefs of others in ways that are empathetic to the
context of those situations.1 No one seems to like the
idea that designers are (other people’s) problem-
solvers anymore; so instead, they are cast as user-
centered co-designers, inspired by immersive research
into everyday activities. This kind of human-centered
research-led participatory design would appear to be
the very opposite of the original intent of the word
desig n, and certainly the sort of sustainability-cen-
tered, imperative-led designing that Tony Fry has been
prominently advocating.
In fact, there is something slightly embarrassing
about many aspects of the practice of design in this
regard—or at least, there should be. The notion of
design signals some of the most fundamental questions
of our current condition:
•Intelligent design—to what extent is the
universe ordered, by some higher causal
agent, or just in its emergent properties?
•To be human is to design—does the capacity
to design differentiate humans from
animals, making us either more valuable
or more dangerous?
•What we design, designs us—how is the nature
of human-being redesigned by the artificial
environments that we humans design to be
our habitat(s)?
And yet, to what extent are these issues at the fore-
front of design discourse? Some have interrogated
the relation between design and evolution (John Lan-
grish,2 Jan Michl,3 Jennifer Whyte,4 and also Mika
Pantzar;5 and form generation by algorithmic evo-
lution remains dominant in architecture), but design-
ers are not, as a matter of course, confronted with
debates about neo-Darwinism when learning their
craft. Similarly, everyone knows Herbert Simon’s,6
or Victor Papanek’s,7 broad insistence that anyone
engaged in intentional improvement of their situa-
tion is a designer, but designers rarely study why or
how humans make and plan their making, in the
philosophical, anthropological or even psychological
sense. More significantly, in some ways, designers
should have all heard versions of the Winston
Churchill quote about the buildings that we shape in
turn shaping us, but the mechanisms of those influ-
ences are mostly limited to unexamined descriptions
of affordances; designers rarely study the enactive
perception and distributed cognition that allows de-
signs to be nudging forces on habitual activities. Com-
pared to the scale of these fundamental design
questions—questions that could be summarized with
Clive Dilnot as the question of a naturalized artifi-
cial8—the techniques that design students learn in
studios and the kinds of things they read and write
about in design studies classes, and the sorts of dis-
cussions, if any, that professional designers engage in,
are woefully inadequate.
Becoming Human by Design is a corrective to
this situation. Where Tony Fry’s previous books (in
what is being cast as a trilogy) made clear what
designers need to do (Design Futuring) and the politi-
cal philosophy that justifies those actions (Design as
doi: DESI_r_00268
DesignIssues: Volume 30, Number 2 Spring 2014 105119119
lives. Heidegger’s early existential critique started
from the fact that, though human existence is defined
by its capacity to question the why and wherefore of
that existence, we spend most of our time fleeing from
these kinds of deathly questions, occupying ourselves
instead with the less anxiety-inducing job of just cop-
ing with being thrown into equipmental activities.
The ethics that come from this kind of ontological ar-
gument is the ancient imperative: “Learn to become
what we are.” We must choose our fate (the Nietzs-
chean version of this maxim—and Nietzsche is more
present in Becoming Human by Design than Heidegger
in fact). This is meant not in the comedic sense—that
what we choose becomes our fate—but in the tragic
sense—that we have no choice but to choose what is
fated us.
So for example, Becoming Human by Design argues
not only that we are monsters, in Bruno Latour’s sense
(though Latour is strangely absent from this book);
10
but also that what it is that gets hybridized with de-
signed things is in essence animalistic. We are more
the mash-ups of animals and designs than we are
the ideal types humanists extol. The human of Hu-
man-Centered Design is invariably the exact opposite
of that ontological characterization; it is a timid ver-
sion of the human with mild consumer desires, not
animalistic passions, and only ever instrumentally
distanced relations to devices, not enmeshed projec-
tions. From the perspective of this designer-animal,
Human-Centered Designing looks profoundly conser-
vative; with such an ontic version of the human at its
center, it can never countenance species-threatening
issues like sustainability. Could Human-Centered
Designing ever comprehend for example, how our
concreted urban settlements might start to retreat
from climate change impacted coasts?
Sustainability then demands that we will to be
so much more than the human of Human-Centered
Designing. To survive, we must choose to be differ-
ent—different from how we are in our unambitious,
pluralistic democratic consumerism, and more like
how we are in essence. We must choose, with animal-
istic fervor, to be more by design. And the way to
choose that essence is by designing it into existence.
As with much of Tony Fry’s writings, this is not
an easy book to read—not just because the subject
Politics), this last book contextualizes those impera-
tives within these fundamental questions about
the nature of being human. The book explores the
interrelation between those three questions: Because
what we humans design then redesigns us, we have
co-evolved with what we have designed. This makes
the task of design, especially designing sustain-
ability—or more accurately undesigning unsustain-
ability—incredibly difficult, involving the redesign
not just of our built environment, but of our ways of
thinking and being.
Much of Becoming Human by Design makes use of
recent paleontological work on the evolution of tool
use by early humanoids; or more accurately, research
that suggests it is not that primates first evolved the
intelligence that then allowed them to begin to make
their own tools (beyond making use of that which
was lying about affordantly); rather, tool use by pri-
mates altered the nature of their evolution toward
increased intelligence. This means that human intel-
ligence is not primary and distinct from the mere
application of that intelligence in designing. Rather,
human intelligence is inseparable from design; it
is something that is the result of designed artifacts,
environments and communications; it develops in the
new worlds made possible by those supplements.
The ‘are’ in the sentence, “We are by design,” is
therefore not instrumental, as in, “how we are in the
world tends to involve the use of tools”; it is ontologi-
cal. Our existence lies with and through our designs;
we exist only ever in the space cleared by our designs.
Importantly, this sentence also does not mean
that we are masters of our destiny. Being by design
does not equate to being able to design our existence,
because it also means that we are always being de-
signed. With reference to the Anthropocene,
9
for in-
stance, one might say that the condition of the planet
these days is more determined by human activities on
the geo-, bio- and climaspheres than by those spheres
themselves; but this clearly does not mean that we are
in control of spaceship earth.
This is why Tony Fry’s approach to design has
always been explicitly Heideggerian. That a condition
is ontological may mean that it is necessitous, but that
does not necessarily mean that we pay (adequate) heed
to that condition in how we go about our everyday
DesignIssues: Volume 30, Number 2 Spring 2014
120
matter is difficult. It needs to be supplemented now
that the work of Bernard Stiegler is becoming more
available in translation.12 And I have at times worried
that there is something uniquely human missing
from Tony Fry’s ontological approach to sustainability:
the capacity to act voluntaristically, without or even
in spite of necessity.
13
But these are differences with-
in the same imperative—an imperative to think
and practice design at the scale of its consequences
and so responsibilities.
1 A good account of the dilemma of design being ‘of service’ is
Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman, “The Design Way: Intentional
Change in an Unpredictable World” 2nd Edition (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2012).
2 John Langrish, “Darwinian Design: The Memetic Evolution of
Design Ideas,” Design Issues 20, no. 4 (2004): 4–19.
3 Jan Michl, “On the Rumor of Functional Perfection,”
janmichl.com/eng.rumor.html (accessed January 17, 2014).
4 Jennifer Whyte, “Evolutionary Theories and Design Practices,”
Design Issues 23, no. 2 (2007): 46–54.
5 Mika Pantzar, “Domestication of Everyday Life Technology:
Dynamic Views on the Social Histories of Artifacts,” Design
Issues 13, no. 3 (Autumn, 1997): 52–65.
6 Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial (MIT, 1981
[1969]),129.
7 Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World (Chicago, IL:
Academy Chicago Publishers, 2005 [1971]).
8 See for instance Clive Dilnot, “The Critical in Design (Part One)”
Journal of Writing in Creative Practice 1, no. 2 (June, 2008).
9 Will Steffen, Paul J. Crutzen and John R. McNeill, “The
Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great
Forces of Nature?” Ambio 36, no. 8 (December, 2007): 614–21.
10 See John Law, ed., A Sociology of Monsters (London:
Routledge, 1991).
11 See the work Tony Fry is currently leading under the title
“The Urmadic University,” www.theodessey.org, accessed
January 17, 2014.
12 Stiegler’s three volume, Technics and Time (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press), draws on the same paleontological literature as
Becoming Human by Design, which makes only passing reference
to Stiegler. Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epi-
metheus (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998); Technics
and Time, 2: Disorientation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2009); Technics and Time, 3: Cinematic Time and the Ques-
tion of Malaise (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).
Similarly, the concerns about entertainment technologies that are
central to Tony Fry’s Design as Politics are also the starting point
for Stiegler’s Disbelief and Discredit, The Decadence of Industrial
Democracies (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2011).
13 See Cameron Tonkinwise, “I [heart] Sustainability (Because
Necessity No Longer has Agency),” Design Philosophy Papers,
Issue 2 (2011).
Deborah Littlejohn
Women in Graphic Design 1890-2012 edited by
Gerda Breuer and Julia Meer, designed by
Julia Meer (Berlin, Germany: Jovis Verlag GmbH,
2012), ISBN 9783868591538, 608 pages, illustrated,
hardcover ($55).
In 1971, the art historian Linda Nochlin asked, “Why
Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”1 Her
question spurred a sustained scholarship effort in
art history with the goal of recovering the names
and works of female artists conspicuously missing
from the professional journals and historical texts.
In like-minded spirit, Gerda Breuer and Julia Meer’s
Women in Graphic Design 1890–2012 aims to emend
a similar omission: In essence the book asks, “Why
do apparently so few women feature in the history
of design?”
This bilingual edition (German and English)
originated from a multi-year research project at the
Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany. Although
English readers not fluent in the German language
may be disappointed to find some texts without Eng-
lish translation (and those that have been translated
are only brief abstracts), this shortcoming does not
overshadow the wealth of four color, page-sized repro-
ductions featured within the book’s 600 plus pages.
Many of the names and designs represented will be
new to American designers.
Straightforward and adeptly designed, the hefty
volume is divided into four main sections: Essays,
Interviews, Documents, and Short Biographies. Infor-
mative writings in Essays and Documents set the
tone for 12 interviews with prominent women design-
ers, and broadly frame the wide selection of historical
and contemporary work. Writings shed light on the
various ways that patriarchal structures and other
restrictive practices in the profession serve to normal-
ize their dominance.
Breuer and Meer’s Introduction is a useful over-
view of the complex issues—past and present—
surrounding the gender debate in creative fields,
and ground the theoretical framework of the book
within their particular critical perspective. The
authors’ reflections on their experience teaching
female students will sound familiar to many design
doi: DESI_r_00269
DesignIssues: Volume 30, Number 2 Spring 2014 105121121
educators. It is notable for their discussion of the
recent claims by younger generations—that the debate
over gender equality—has become obsolete. Breuer
and Meer maintain this stance is perplexing as few
women have achieved professional recognition on par
with their male peers—even though women now com-
prise a large percentage of the graphic design work-
force. While the book does not broach the subject
in-depth, the undergirding question here is the notion
of “fame” and its oversized influence on how design-
ers define professional success. How is “fame” mea-
sured? Who decides and by what mechanisms are
status and achievement recognized and awarded?
Women in Graphic Design effectively challenges
the reader to re-examine not only the conventional
narrative of graphic design history, but also, what con-
stitutes the work of the graphic designer. Although the
selection of design projects and the names represented
are, by the editors’ own account, incomplete (and
focus on Western designers), they are balanced in
that they represent a range of voices and practices:
current and older generations; art direction and sole
proprietor; posters, type design, publications and
interactive media. The book is especially recommend-
able for design educators, as many of the institutional
structures that serve to exclude women in the upper
echelons of the profession, whether conscious or
not, are replicated—indeed, initiated—in the studio
culture of design schools.
Over the years, graphic designers have only
sporadically asked the question that Nochlin posed
to her colleagues in the art world. When they do, the
result is an exciting list of new names and works of
design—a worthy endeavor in its own right. Unlike
within the field of art history, however, the posing
of the question did not result in an entirely new
branch of inquiry in design history or a prodigious
body of scholarship. Indeed, with the exception of
architecture, not much has been done to empirically
examine the participation of females—or males,
for that matter—in design professions. The lack of
breadth and stamina in graphic design research
impedes the development of the profession. As
Breuer and Meer explain, their research was severely
hindered by the scarcity of source material and
the “paucity of institutions that can determine his-
torical memory.”2 Efforts such as Women in Graphic
Desig n are commendable, not because they answer
the question why few women appear in the standard
design history narrative—they are worthwhile for
calling attention to the fact. If we want a satisfying
answer, it may be time to change the question: “Where
Are All The Graphic Design Scholars?”
1 Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”
ARTnews, January (1971): 22–39.
2 Gerda Breuer and Julia Meers (designer), eds., Women in Graphic
Design 1890–2012 (Berlin, Germany: Jovis Verlag GmbH, 2012).