Week 3: Lecture 1 – The effect of globalisation on design
Continuing to explore design on a Global context, this week’s lectures focus on the effect globalisation has had on design practices world wide.
The Case Studies below begin by asking the question How has Globalisation affected your business over time?
Globalisation is everywhere (no pun intended), news reaches us within seconds through all platforms of social media and 24 hour news channels. News from social, criminal, political and industrial worlds can still be happening as we hear about it and what we hear the most tends to be the bad news but what are the positives?
‘It’s unstoppable’
Simon Manchipp
Although the situation of each practice we viewed is very differently, the overall effect of globalisation is seen as positive. If a practice has offices around the globe it allows for large-scale collaboration, they are no longer a stand-alone. Work can be passed around as required to perhaps more suited designers who work in the USA, or mainland Europe, with much better interconnectivity and speed.
However, one strong opinion that came out is that it’s still better to communicate face-to-face, and the benefit of a smaller world through technology means that this is more possible than ever. ‘Live’ interaction can save a lot of time, effort and money. Face-to-face discussions can help develop a professional relationship, make it easier to develop a project or deal with a problem, you no longer need to physically visit the other party as Skype calls or Facetime, etc., are now run-of-the-mill, won’t have an effect on budgets and aren’t a big deal to organise.
It’s nice to travel though, and travel is also pretty straight forward. To meet in person could be seen as a higher level of commitment and trust, showing what you’re prepared to do to work on a project or help things run to smoothly. Travel can also bring unexpected opportunities, in Sarah Boris’ case, travelling to new places to exhibit brought her more exposure and opportunities which otherwise wouldn’t have happened.
‘It brought the opportunity to face local people, tell them about my practice in London.’
Sarah Boris
Lecture 1: Reflection
Each case study gives us a lot of insight into the effect globalisation has on the design industry, but what effect can it have on the design work being produced? Inspiration from different cultures relative to a project is easier to find, and different skills and opinions from a more diverse group of people will bring in different results, but we need to make sure we’re always going to look somewhere new for inspiration, if all designers look at the obvious resources available we’re all going to end up looking the same.
Non-designers are more design aware through the amount of media available, people are also far more critical and happy to point out errors via social media. This can lead to designers having to have more responsibility to think about the different cultures, even if a product isn’t being designed specifically to work globally. Social media and the possibility of instant global access means good research is still needed to avoid any clashes or ridicule which could come from how other cultures read certain symbols and gestures.
Lecture 2: The Effect of Globalisation on Design
What is the scope and what are the boundaries of graphic design today? Current and future?
Harriet Ferguson of Pearlfisher reflects on graphic design practice globally and broadly.
Collaborate for:
- Inspiration
- Visual Culture
- Future?
Inspiration – does that mean imitation?
Inspiration is the process of mental stimulation to get things started, especially when doing something creative. It doesn’t mean that you’re planning to copy what you’ve just seen, it could be the act of a person, a sound which triggers your thinking or an ad concept which keeps things simple – its says to you to keep things simple.
When to collaborate?
Collaboration brings different skills and opinions. A more diverse range of people brings more diverse ways of thinking, creating a set find more varied approaches to solving a problem whereas cutting yourself off from the input of others can sometimes mean you miss the obvious. Due to online communities, the world in getting smaller so a designer needs to be more aware of cultural differences to meanings; the public are more design-aware because of this easier access.
Colour for instance, has different meanings to different cultures. Red: in western cultures red is the colour of passion and excitement. It has both positive and negative associations — danger, love and excitement.
Eastern and Asian cultures Red means happiness, joy and celebration, however in the Middle East Red evokes feelings of danger and caution. Some also consider it the colour of evil.
Brands which work better globally by keeping a simple ID
Their brands are instantly recognised, even without their name, the symbol is all they need to show.
In Apple’s case, even their stores are consistent in terms of their identity. The architecture of the building is obviously going to be different, but the way it is dressed make it obviously an Apple store, even without a mass of graphics, products and their name on display.
The store shown above is in Los Angeles, but it’s design would fit anywhere.
Brands need to be authentic and have principles which they stick to. Lots of key brands are going back to basics. Brands such as Karma Cola keeps things simple, they have a strong tone of voice and strong set of principles that as consumers we can relate to.
Karma Cola is a brand which which gives back to the communities where their ingredients are grown, they only use organic cane sugar and a real cola nut grown in Sierra Leone and they only use sustainable packaging, no plastic.
Brands can lose their key meaning with a ‘one size fits all’ approach, so:
- Own the story
- Unique and simple
- Think global, act local
Be genuine. No bull…
Workshop Challenge: Task 1
Explore the categories of the D&AD winners and consider how this impacts on your views of design terminology, consider the overlaps and points of change, difference and similarity.
By Pencil:
D&Ad Award Winners 2019
We can’t fit everything under “Graphic Design” that would mean only one pencil. Design and Art Direction being where the name originates, would just mean two.
Since the D&AD awards began in the 60’s more and more categories have had to be introduced: student awards in the 1970’s, product design, music video and photography in the 1980’s, digital categories were added in the 90’s and broadcasting and mobile marketing from 2008. As technology progresses it’s inevitable that still more categories will be needed.
There are 35 main categories in the 2019 D&AD awards, most are categories we would expect to see and use to define the traditional disciplines within the design industry, such as animation, book design, branding, etc., we can easily relate to those and the kind of work that they would hold. Some of the categories overlap as we’d expect, Art Direction being the largest umbrella, fits almost all the other categories as it covers anything also shown in print, digital, film and marketing sections. Branding and Graphic Design also overlap with many of the others because of their now generic meaning, but why do we need so many categories? As the design industry and technology evolves and the common disciplines develop, fragment and cross over, we get new ways to create new things and, in the context of a competition, they need to either fit into an existing category to be judged or result in a new one having to be added to the list.
“Creativity for Good”
The new category: “Creativity for Good” shows us when a new category is necessary. The sub-categories show us where similar content may have sat previously: advertising, design, service and product, but with the extra level of meaning that the work brings it deserves to become a new category. They aren’t adverts trying to sell goods or holidays (not directly at least), but they’re there to bring a problem to our attention which we could quite easily help to try and fix. Using the Rang-Tan ad as my example, we can see how successfully the harm caused by the palm oil trade was brought to our attention.
The vast majority were unaware of the range of everyday products containing palm oil such as bread, chocolate, shampoo, cosmetics and bio-diesel. The original animation for Greenpeace was adopted by the Iceland supermarket chain, edited for TV and scheduled to be aired as their Christmas advert, the ad was banned from UK TV for being too political. Iceland took the ad online and it went viral, viewed over 65 million times on social media, seen as more than 700 news pieces and endorsed by major celebrities.
These results show us how society is responding to important political and social messages by choice, and the work which triggers this amount of reaction and learning needs to be acknowledged.
Workshop Challenge: Task 2
Language in the area of graphic design:
List 10 different types of graphic design practice today.
- Typography
- Layout artist
- Web design
- Type design
- Advertising
- Editorial design
- User experience
- Exhibition
- Corporate ID
- Logo design
Graphic design is no longer a single task profession, with today’s technology graphic design sits as the keystone to the other areas which would previously have been seen as a separate discipline.
For example, the internet and web design: when websites started to be seen as something companies had to have, there would be more studios specialising in designing for the internet. Now, design studios and graphic designers are expected to have the skills needed to produce client sites as standard. The one-stop-shop is what’s expected.
Breaking the Boundaries of Graphic Design
Let’s now consider classic design models and definitions, and what breaks these boundaries. We believe in graphic design as a term but what are the areas that you believe fit under the umbrella of graphic design?
Choose a piece of design that breaks these definitions – and come up with a new set of terminology that might assist in describing this work.
Chosen piece: Charlie Lindsay & George Bartlett – Text from the Trenches
These ads are so simple, we’re used to seeing letters from the trenches depicted with their old-fashioned language and tattered edges. Their age distances them from us, they’re from someone we don’t know.
Reading them them as a text message brings their meaning to the 21st Century giving them a greater impact, this triggers stronger emotions in us and we can feel start to feel an empathy with the people who originally sent and received them, the messages stop you in your tracks.
My new term to describe this type of work would be ‘Reactive Design’.
They’re not just for you to look and read, they’re there to make you feel as close to those people as possible, a connection to the past. Realising that you just can’t imagine how it must have felt to receive such a letter.
Reflection
The Texts from the Trenches shows us that you don’t need a lot of information to get a message across. The content on the posters is the absolute minimum, there’s not even the need for a call to action to make sense of them, they’re simply to trigger an emotion or a realisation in the reader. Bravo.
