Visual Communication Theory

In the nineteen sixties the Dutch airline KLM and the Dutch railwaycompany NS acquired a house style. The design agencies involved paid much attention to the development of the emblem of the house style and used a semi-scientific description of the design process as part of a rhetorical argument that justified the proposed result. At KLM this description showed an evolutionary approach while with NS it showed a more explorative approach. The semi-scientific character of the descriptions of the design process that the design agencies used can be explained in several ways.

"Until recently, visual communication was the province of highly trained specialists who saw little need for methodically and analytically explicit approaches to design, relying instead on creative sensibilities formed during their education and professional experience. The historical link between design and art education has reinforced notions of design as an artistic activity. This perpetuates the myth of creativity by placing undue emphasis on the formal characteristics of design, intuition, and self-expression, resulting in a preoccupation with design intent and outcome, what is called the mimicry of attitude and action.

With the availability of cheap personal computers and graphic software, the production of “professional”-standard visual communication by do-it-yourself enthusiasts is ubiquitous. Design intent and outcome is no longer the sole domain of the visual communication expert. In the past decade attempts have been made to address this problem through a renewed interest in design research. In visual communication this has resulted in the wholesale adoption of critical theory and semiotic analysis. Such tools alone, though useful in dealing with issues of meaning or critiquing ideologies, are poorly suited to the empirical dimensions of design practice. The preoccupation with intent, meaning, and outcome has been at the expense of exploring the world of design use—the realm of everyday experience. This highlights the problem of importing modes of inquiry from other disciplines without addressing the differences between design practice and the disciplines from which it borrows. For visual communication, as for design, the problem lies in the diKerence between the apparently analytical frameworks from which it borrows and the synthetic framework in which it operates. It is the difference between observing, documenting, and understanding aspects of the world (typical of social inquiry) and transforming this knowledge into a meaningful visual communication experience, beyond a presentation of well-crafted visual data with social commentary."

The concept of research for design has been characterised by the mimicry of borrowed research models for the practice of solving problems. Propositions for appropriate design research methodologies in general have drawn upon either 'the scientific' way or the field of sociology, without taking account of the epistemological implications of importing models for knowing the world. Add to this design's nostalgic attachment to the 'mystique' of creativity and one begins to realise that the intellectual pattern of design is riddled with paradoxes. In this article we will briefly critique this scenario and contest prevailing beliefs. We will then propose a model of research and of gaining knowledge from the world, through design, which reflects our experience that design practice is not only highly social and contingent, but also ideological.

This article seeks to explore the social and negotiated nature of design practice through an analysis of conversations held between clients and designers working on visual communication projects. Of specific interest will be the way in which these conversational participants try to control the outcomes of these conversations through the strategies of rhetorical substitution and subject positioning. I will argue that by regulating access to conversational codes these participants seek to regulate the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in the decision making process in an attempt to legitimate their authority. Thus the design process can be seen as producing a material outcome as well as a set of social relations both of which are inherently ideological.

Investigations into the role of theories and practices of observation and imaging is commonplace in a range of established intellectual endeavours. The potential of such investigations applied to photo-based image-making, in visual communication design, is significant, yet at this point, under realised. In this paper we advance the proposition that careful observation, in an iterative framework, is a necessary pre-condition for any intelligent and informed photo-imaging practice. We outline a curriculum approach that is premised on a process of research, concept development and project management, within a critical and iterative framework, using photo-observation as the key tool. In this scenario, photo-imaging is used to engage with the world and develop a knowledge of it that feeds into the development of the final outcome. In short, the (re)presentation or fashioning of the world— the central activity of design.

"Alexander (1964) and Jones (1992) argued that design-by-drawing was not up to the task of dealing with complex design ‘problems’. In a similar vein Lawson (1980, p18) argued that ‘problems’ which aren’t visible tend not to come to the design-by-drawers attention. To overcome this Alexander developed a ‘language’ of representation, based on mathematics, to help eliminate this subjective bias of designers in determining the key issues and relationships in complex design settings. Design Methods promoted a rational procedure of analysis / synthesis as the natural order of design to replace the intuitive model that dominated. On this basis Design Methods has long been regarded as flawed, however I would argue that the question of representation that Alexander in particular, and Jones implicitly, addressed was correct, though it remains unresolved.

Previously I have defined the “crisis of the artificial” as being the challenge that critical theory has mounted to the still commonplace view of design, as a largely natural and intuitive process, by examining the ideologically constructed nature of the design process (Roxburgh 2004). In this paper I will outline an expanded definition of this term that proposes that this crisis is also a result of design still not having a suitable ‘language’ through which to communicate, to ourselves, our perceptions and experiences of the complex world we live in and shape as designers. Using my ongoing experience of the potential of observational photography as a key research method for design, I will argue that a reflective, phenomenological perspective should inform the development of such a ‘language’. In this sense I am making a counter claim to Design Methods; that is that subjectivity is a necessary component for success in any design / research enterprise; and that visual communication design could play a central role in the development of appropriate forms of ‘language’ to represent complex design situations, despite the earlier perceived problems of drawing. This research is part of a continuing inquiry that asks the question ‘Can we see what we know first, in order to reveal what we don’t know?’"

Strickler argues that the growth of visual communication as an academic discipline can only occur if there is an “empirical bridge between theory and practice” (1999: 38). Such a bridge is also a precondition for the evolution of visual communication as a forward looking and reflective industry as opposed to one that simply responds to the dictates of the market. However, building this bridge is no easy task; visually articulate and practically oriented students are reluctant to engage with theories that may challenge their passionately held understandings of design. All the more so when the commonest mode such inquiry is conducted through is reading and writing. The challenges and problems of writing for visual thinkers has been well articulated by Grow (1994). That such students are resistant to forms that they are generally not well equipped for or confident in is hardly surprising. Couple this with a seemingly near universal questioning of the relevance of theory by aspiring practitioners and it would seem the odds are stacked against such an enterprise. In this paper we will reflect upon efforts to build this bridge through design theory curriculum using visual mapping tools drawn from constructivist education theory. The efficacy of these efforts is explored through both quantitative and qualitative student feedback.

"Mark Roxburgh’s research over the past decade has focused on the evolving conceptualization, discourse and development of research methodologies for design. This has lead him to question the historical pattern of design whereby the methods and epistemologies of other disciplines are used without addressing the differences between them and design. Design is a complex activity enmeshed in many aspects of our lives. In his article in Design Issues (1992), ‘Prometheus of the Everyday: The Ecology of the Artificial and the Designer’s Responsibility’, Manzini foregrounds the relational nature of this complexity by conceiving design (the artificial) as having an ecology. Roxburgh has written about these matters but his critique has conformed to the conventions of academic publishing and he has found articulating aspects of such complexity constrained by the limits of written language. Increasingly, in design, visualization is used to map complex relationships between things, ideas and actions. In this essentially visual essay, Roxburgh is attempting to graphically identify and explore the relationships of some of these concepts in a manner that echoes these trends and his own research practice. He is aware that sketches of complex phenomena, through a process of interpretation and abstraction, become somewhat reductive. The moments he draws on in crafting the depictions of his views are presented episodically rather than chronologically.
Roxburgh sketches out three key historical conceptions of design and the ramifications they have had on our perceptions and practice of it. He depicts these conceptions as being drawn from traditions outside of design and suggests that an alternative strategy may lie within design itself. This strategy calls for an engagement with what he calls the aesthetics of research. He suggests that it is imperative that design encompasses an aesthetic engagement with the world at all levels, and most importantly at the point of design research and conception, for our experience of design is fundamentally aesthetic. He is aware that there is an apparent irony in his use of non design theories to frame aspects of his view but this is a necessary strategy to critique the ontological assumptions inherent within the conceptions of design that he characterizes (one could even say ‘caricatures’). Roxburgh takes the position that there is nothing essentially given about design consciousness. Rather, the characterizations of design consciousness that he outlines all carry (usually implicit) ontological assumptions that may be inappropriate and/or limit design practice. The depiction of design that he offers is based instead on an alternative ontology. While this cannot be empirically verified (no ontology can), he proposes it as a way of extending and critiquing usual conceptions of design practice. No doubt this in turn will be found to have shortcomings of its own."

"Cuando los artistas soviéticos utilizaron el término “factografía” estaban inaugurando algo más que uno de sus muchos neologismos. Se referían con esa palabra a una nueva fórmula de la vanguardia de izquierda con la que intentaban hacer del arte una herramienta capaz de transformar las conciencias. Lo harían a través de un uso estratégico y revolucionario de la prensa, el fotomontaje, el cine y las exposiciones, y con ello estaban descubriendo el poder inédito de los medios para contar historias como si fueran “reales”. Aquella empresa realizaba la pretensión de Stalin de que los artistas fueran los “ingenieros del alma”, pero además sus consecuencias han configurado nuestra manera de ver el mundo. La herencia de la factografía en el arte y la política confirma que no se trata sólo de una categoría estética capaz de explicar el devenir del arte en el siglo XX, sino que nos muestra también cómo construimos nuestros relatos mediáticos en la actualidad.

English

Introduction

If we set out to tell the story of the 20th century in images we would find many photographs that are already part of an ineluctable iconographic heritage, something we all recognize as part of the visual chronicle of our time. Among those images we would undoubtedly find the Stalin regime’s retouched photos of certain scenes documenting the revolutionary process. Archives whose documentary character should have guaranteed an objective base for the narration of history were defiled to eliminate certain uncomfortable protagonists or to improve the appearance of the Bolshevik leaders. The case of Trotsky’s extirpation from alongside Lenin in some of his meetings is the best known but the list of characters erased from historical photos is much longer and is not limited to the Soviets. It affects other totalitarian regimes throughout the 20th century.(1) Such images would have to be shown in pairs, alternating the original and the retouched version in a sort of “find the differences” game. That game brings a comic character to the exercise of recognition, although it becomes grotesque if we consider the underlying situation, which mirrors the correction and transformation of confessions signed by tortured prisoners to fit an official version of the facts. The same process that mutilated bodies was applied to images, which thus echo the violence embodied in the totalitarian fantasy.

The construction of official truth has a high price and generates its own images. The history of the manipulation of images thus marks a permanent reversal of the presumption of truth we attribute to them. And we may well wonder whether, beyond these obvious cases, our current information systems are actually operating any differently than these crude distortions. Our comparative reading of different communications media would seem to guarantee greater contrast, but we find ourselves with an underlying suspicion of the testimonial aspect with which events are presented to us.

Nowadays, we have access to alternative contra-information systems—amateur journalism in private blogs on Internet, and databases with oral narrations by people who experienced critical situations in conflict areas. The diversity and polyphony of these new information flows seem to reinterpret traditional ways of telling stories. Miguel de Unamuno’s concept of “intra-history” takes on a new meaning here with the accumulation of anonymous narratives. But all of this is equally based on the mechanical registration of those stories, the representation of events through technical recording and broadcasting media. This constitutes a new way of writing facts, that is, a new “factography” that is specific to our time.

The subject of this book is the description of the manner in which certain avant-garde artists see the possibilities of mass media as a new field for experimentation that allows them to reinterpret their social function. As the title indicates, relations will be drawn between the 20th century’s historical avant-garde and a cultural state based on mass media. But this initial premise raises certain questions. Which avant-garde are we referring to? What do me mean by “mass media”? And, what type of relations are we establishing between those two terms?

When discussing the avant-garde, we will distinguish the general historical concept from its concrete manifestation in “isms,” alternating between the most abstract and general level and the most concrete—manifestations localized in history and subject to the peculiarities of a case study. We will approach the general notion of the avant-garde with the assumption that the only thing all early 20th-century “isms” may have shared was their propensity to probe the limits of art. The search for those limits obviously leads one to question the very notion of art and to draw significantly closer to everyday or real life. This could be the basis for a theory that would define the avant-garde as a project for approaching the practice of living, as opposed to “art for art’s sake,” or the esthetic distancing that characterizes art from other times. Following this argument, it is hardly surprising that 20th-century art drew so close to other activities that it was sometimes indistinguishable from them, especially once industry launched the massive production of images, defining its place in the mass media. But in our approach to this subject we will refer to a historical case study that is much riskier, though no less paradigmatic of art’s current directions.

We will begin with an episode that took place in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s: a series of projects marked by an exemplary use of the new creative possibilities offered by technology for recording image and sound—specifically, photography and film. These projects from the end of the constructivist movement were by artists, writers and theoreticians grouped around the Leftist Arts Front who defined what came to be called “productivism”—figures such as Alexander Rodchenko, Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, Boris Arvatov, Viktor Shklovsky and Sergei Tretyakov. Their heated debates generated some of the most important concepts in our current system of media representation. A well-known example is the series of debates about film cutting, and that same milieu saw the birth of documentary film as we know it today. Those artists and filmmakers, along with the theoreticians and writers, set the groundwork for reflection on these subjects that continues today.

While alluding to this specific episode in the art’s history risks making it a metonym for the notion of the avant-garde, the case of factography is paradigmatic of a generalized aspiration by art from the last 100 years in both its theoretical make-up and its works. This aspiration is embodied in the effort to know and transform everyday reality.

The mass media to which we will be referring are both the reflection and origin of those experiments, once they become generalized, institutionally accepted and understood by power and leading economic interests as a peculiar part of the market and politics. What was new in the 20th century was the construction of a public sphere totally mediated by such mass-media formulas. Those concepts affect the permeable separation between propaganda and information, indoctrination and education.

The questions debated by the Russians foreshadowed ethical paradoxes surrounding documentary images and chronicles that seek to faithfully reflect reality. The catch-22 in which the desire for truth becomes ensnared is rooted in the fact that this “reality” is no more than an imaginary creation, a technical representation. The Soviet artists coined a very revealing neologism for this at a time when art and literature was changing its orientation in order to begin using photography and film as the bases for production. That term was “factography,” a concept associated with documentaries, exhibitions and journalism that considers not only how images and sounds are recorded with new technology, but also how history is narrated using those resources. The grand narrative of humanity as told through innumerable stories is an area of interest to both art and mass media.

Factography will be the thread of this story, describing a path that could be seen as a zoom-out of history: from the details of the Soviet experience to the more general state of mass media in the age of globalization. The latter subject will be a final note that marks the arrival of a historical phenomenon whose complex development must be meticulously dealt with. In that same sense, our story moves from East to West, following a Western path of reception and reinterpretation of a phenomenon apparently distant in time and space. The direction of this journey and the broadening of our field of vision may help us understand the link between isolated minority events and those occurring on a global scale. An important part of this research seeks to show how information on the concept of factography has moved back and forth among art historians and theoreticians. Figures such as Walter Benjamin were to prove indispensable as the Russians’ teachings became part and parcel of a new way of understanding the artist’s work. And artistic questions were rapidly applied to others of a more general character that affected new ways of understanding reality through media.

The objective of the present work will be to trace a path through a largely forgotten concept that, nevertheless, has an enormous capacity to influence the history of art from after World War II. When we speak of the history of contemporary art, we are referring to both its character as a story and its successive practices. Some of the latter, especially conceptual art, reveal a not-always-recognized connection to factography, which also makes the latter an explanatory model for more recent manifestations. The objective of this research therefore includes a historiographic basis in its dialog with those who have described the nature of art in the last century. But beyond those internal avatars of the art world, it seeks to examine the nature of representation in our time, that is, how we construct our world through the media."

La fotografía ha sido desde su origen fuente de un amplio repertorio de especulaciones y literatura crítica. Sin dejar de ser un objeto cotidiano y artístico, lo cierto es que hay algo en la fotografía que atrae poderosamente a historiadores y críticos de la cultura. Y no es para menos, sobre todo si se tiene en cuenta que las preguntas sobre cómo vemos e interpretamos las fotografías afectan por igual a las imágenes efímeras difundidas por los medios de comunicación y a los formatos cada vez más “sólidos” y presenciales de la fotografía artística. Ante ese contexto, este libro investiga algunas de las razones por las que la fotografía se ha convertido en un campo imprescindible para el análisis de las prácticas artísticas actuales y su relación con el protagonismo sin precedentes de las imágenes en la sociedad de nuestro tiempo. Así lo solicita la proliferación de la fotografía entre tales prácticas, pero sobre todo el hecho de que las teorías que la rodean parecen reproducir, de un modo tan extraño como apasionante, algunos de los problemas fundamentales que afectan al arte contemporáneo en su conjunto.

In 1998 the School of Design (SoD), University of Western Sydney Nepean (UWSN) began running an offshore articulation programme in graphic design in partnership with the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art, Singapore (NAFA). The successful completion of this one year programme was built upon three year diploma studies and resulted in the award of Bachelor of Arts (Design) degree from UWSN. The primary focus in this article will be the curriculum and pedagogical challenges that were faced in developing and implementing the one year course. The most significant aspect of this was the relative freedom in moving away from the studio-based anecdote of design learning that dominates many post-secondary design programmes and the implications of this for design education.

This study focuses on the intersection of visual rhetoric with rhetoric of science by examining the rhetorical context in which natural science illustrators operate as they represent paleontology. Field methods were employed to study the rhetorical context in which paleontology becomes represented through art; this article reports the findings from the field study and contextualizes the study in rhetorical theories of invention and a discussion of social versus scientific facts. The research highlights some differences between what experts know and what public audiences perceive, offering insight into why those differences exist.

"In this paper I question the conventional assumptions around photographic observation as a research method and begin to articulate a framing theory for its use as such in design that privileges abstraction over realism. This in turn leads to sketching out a rudimentary sense of a phenomenological theory of photography.

If you would like a free copy of the book this is from - Light Relief Part (II) - message me with you address or email me at <mark.roxburgh@newcastle.edu.au> It has some great essays on photography by Roslyn Diprose, Craig Bremner and others."

"I almost flunked high school. Academic writing sucked. I liked making stuff and not thinking to hard about why. Perversely I eventually became a career academic in design and needed to start doing what I hated – academic writing. It was a struggle. I have crappy recall of written text, especially most of the dull stuff academics write. I quickly worked out I was a kinaesthetic learner and began to develop techniques for helping me remember what I’d read and to help me with my own writing. I came across the work of Sinatra (not Frank) on mapping and literacy. The light went on.

I’m in the death throes of my thesis and would like to share with you the techniques I have developed. They include:
• recursive writing
• visual mapping of the research process
• visual mapping of arguments and concepts
• diagrammatic interpretation of concepts
• making pictures to explore arguments and concepts
• strategic procrastination

Some of these are like techniques used by the Dadaists. How I conduct and record my research process is both methodical and creative. It has strong parallels with how I design. Rather than writing a thesis I’d argue I’ve designed it, though it is written. I won’t bore you with a written paper describing how I did this. That would be self-defeating. Instead I will show examples of the techniques I have used to design / write. You may or may not learn something about writing but at least you’ll see some pretty pictures.
"

Drawing upon recent theories of the social construction of technology, actor network theory, discourse analysis, cultural studies and design as rhetoric, I will argue that design practice is a form of cultural production that is social, contingent and negotiated. Furthermore, I will argue that these social circumstances relate to the roles that a range of 'actors', not just the designer, and the circulation of numerous codes through discourse, other than the codes of aesthetics, play in the negotiations that characterise the design process. Little attention has been given to these complex circumstances in which the design process is located and less still has been given to the specific negotiations that occur between the client and the designer within that context. This essay explores such negotiations through the analysis of two case studies.