Design as Service

Design as Service / by Thomas Ockerse

When considering the social responsibilities of designers it becomes obvious that design in its ideal sense is truly and act in “service” of humanity. Not in the demeaning sense of that word but in its most noble sense like those who practice healing. I imagine that this notion immediately offends many designers, or aspiring designers. After all, not many want to be a “servant” to anyone. It may also suggest a return to the objective, impersonal mode of “modernism” which robe has been undone over the last decades via post-modernism, and the ....

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Having observed the egos at work in our field, and those young ones who strive to become designers this concept seems almost antithetical, a paradox perhaps in that we expect designers to be “creative” not unlike artists.

This is a gist of this paper, and the author will dig into this question more deeply.

First a couple anecdotes.

1) The designer was commissioned to design a poster announcing a symposium for architects. Understanding that the conference centered on questions posed by post-modernists to provide a provocative discussion among the most avant-garde practitioners of that time and others, the designer responded accordingly. A central aspect of the poster was the title as a typographic configuration that reflected the ideas superimposed on a photographic image. The commissioner of this poster, a cutting-edge architect and primary instigator of this event, took offence at the poster and the title in particular. Simply analyzed, it did not fit his idea of a conventional poster, expecting the title large and straight forward at the top, the image in the middle, and text details at the bottom. The designer (amused by the irony of that person’s inability to shift his unconventional views for architect to that of the conventional poster) was able to make him appreciate that this design provided a necessary interface as a dialogue (in the true sense of that word, wherein the various contributions in it helped bring to light the essence of something) about the event. Appreciation turned to praise.

2) A magazine designer once used a photograph (of three men) upside down in a spread. The publisher threw a fit, arguing that this was disrespectful to the photographer and that he would not want to reader to have to turn the magazine upside down. The designer tried his best to explain the reasoning behind this but could not convince the publisher and it was decided to table the decision until another time. A week later the publisher happened to call the designer, to ask him how he liked his decision to change the title references to the articles in the magazine on the contents page. Totally enamored by his creative act the publisher proceeded to explain that the magazine had a responsibility for helping others see the world in a different way, and not to feel restricted by conventionalism. When the designer matched that idea with the photographic action, the publisher promised to look at it again. After a more didactic illustration of the significance of this upside-down photograph in relation to other components and the whole idea of the magazine the publisher agreed to accept this decision. Not only that, having understood fully the deeper significance of this and its implications, he became a enthusiastic advocate if the act and would not have accepted otherwise.

In each case the designer had acted thoughtfully and with a deep sense of personal commitment to the design process. The actions unfolded from a holistic understanding of the idea content and the interrelationships of who it was to serve and why. And this is what this author would say encapsulates the act of design as a socially responsible act.

When we speak of “social responsibility” our thoughts are drawn immediately to issues — political, economic, environmental — that concern society. They usually draw us into the arena of social activism. That seems only a narrow view in that it reflects more the specific notion of responsibility — not necessarily the heart of it. Although working in relationship to tasks that draw us into the activist arena, in which we tend to come face to face with what matters to people and things and what it means to be human the tendency remains too much for us to look outward, and not enough inward. In fact, it is not unlikely that the individual working on such an activist project is made to feel good about this “altruistic” activity — only to become egocentric and offensive the next moment toward another.

Social responsibility is about being aware, as aware as you can possibly be. It can be said that awareness is the maker of reality. While all the world and everything in it is our teacher, the student is the one to learn.

The essence of being is about finding yourself in relationship, for being is relationship.

Life is a constant process of discovering and defining relationships: the conscious relationship of ourselves to each other, to the larger picture of our world and its objects and events, to humanity, and to our higher aspirations. In this process, being conscious is a key factor, for without it we know nothing, we have nothing, and we are nothing.

Each of us is a knower (the “I AM”) in the process of knowing. But the observation of relations is fundamental to the principles of knowledge. We cannot know unless we realize other things, what you are not, as the known. Furthermore, when we come to know things we know them by virtue of their inter-relatedness to other things, and to ourselves. Things simply cannot exist, and therefore cannot have meaning, unless we perceive them and understand them in terms of their relatedness to other things. Knowledge, then, constitutes the result of a process in which our phenomenal world of things and their activities among each other, act as mediators: to each other and to ourselves. Knowing is to link the external to the internal.

The mathematician and logician, Charles Sanders Peirce, a remarkable American thinker at the turn of this century, understood this process deeper than most of us. He viewed this knowing from the phenomena of signs. He realized that what we see, hear, or otherwise sense or note in our phenomenal world, and come to ‘know’ at some level of sensation or significance, exists always as a result of a mediating process. He called this process semiosis in which three elements factor into a triadic mediation. The first, he named Representamen, which is the thing we generalize as ‘sign’ but which is merely the mediating vehicle in our phenomenal or material world, and therefore only acts as sign. The second he named Object, which is the idea, thought, spirit, essence, or specific consciousness we derive from this mediation.

The third he named Interpretant, which involves the conditions, motives, associations, and context that we bring into this mediation which cause the relations to bring about its specific meaning or significance. The result of these tri-relatives is what we call a sign. Nothing can be a sign unless it has these three factors brought into its triadic relation (nothing is a sign, although everything is potentially a sign!). The Interpretant factor as the root of thought and the root of meaning is the key to his model and sets Peirce apart from the linguists. After all, that simple attribute as the root of thought is most obvious when we realize that nothing can exist entirely by itself but can only be known in relation to other things.

Knowing then depends entirely on how we mediate relations: what we bring into relation to what we mediate, from our internal world of knowns to the external world of other mediating entities. All this processing and mediation is only possible through signs.

Peirce, like the Greeks, identified this sign phenomena as semiotics: the science (or knowledge) of signs; but being a logician he also noted that semiotics was in fact the “logic of relations.” In other words, we obtain knowledge from the observation of the relations within our phenomenal world, internalizing these relations to give them specific meaning, but at the same time realizing that all that we observe is in fact accomplished in some sort of symbolic sense. In that way we have rendered all our so-called ‘realities’ as illusions – which they really are.

Furthermore, in that sense, we each make up our own worlds of so-called reality, and unfailingly we each see things differently from each other since all we know inevitably modifies what we become conscious of and how we become conscious of our world. The cliches of “everyone has an opinion” means that everyone has a point of view, as each of us stands in a different spot – physically and metaphysically.

This is then truly the unique diversity of our world. Eastern thought held this perspective for ages, and all that is available to us from ancient wisdom (no matter what part of our world) utilizes the same principles. Yet, one major aspect stands out in Eastern observation: the relation of the knower to All, whatever we may choose to call it, Cosmos, Life, God, or that which is the One, the Real, the Eternal. This consideration reflects our possible range or levels of conscious capacities, from low to high, from our so-called physical world to the more unseen world of emotions and thought and to the even more intangible world of what we call the spirit or soul. Thus, from the concrete to the abstract, from matter to spirit, from Form to Life.

I think we all agree that no matter how sensitive or insensitive one is, and no matter what philosophical or even religious position we may align ourselves with, these levels of consciousness exist. We know this with some degree of certainty, if only somewhere deep inside, intuitively, and in spite of our difficulties to describe the spirit, essence, or even feeling. Yet, recognizing this as a truth in consciousness helps us confirm the fact that all is known only through symbolic forms, or as Peirce calls it, through signs. Peirce saw our universe as a perfusion of signs. From this we can also deduce that what we ‘see’ is not the ‘Real’ but only a temporary manifestation of thought and consciousness, an illusion as an existence; and that, what we don’t see, is in fact the permanent, the Real, or as the ancient wisdom has proclaimed, the One.

I said before that no thing or sign can exist without some other thing or sign. This reflects the external world and the perfusion of signs in our universe. However, we each also carry a world of knowledge within us, and all that we become conscious of externally is also mediated by that what we know internally. How we each look at our world is through these colored spectacles of inner knowledge. Everything we become conscious of is then colored by viewing our world through the spectacles that are ourselves. Still, we are part of a larger whole. “No man is an island complete unto himself,” as John Donn said in his famous poem.

We are conscious entities, but we seem to be at the same time part of a unified whole, a single consciousness. Ecology is but one example that shows this as true. There is no question for me that our humanity and all that lives is One, and that therefore we are as responsible to each other and to all there is at least as much as to ourselves.

Seeing now what life is in terms of its big philosophical picture, we can begin to look at parts like design and its values and ethics.

While we tend to generally measure design responsibility by the utility of objects and their inability to maim or kill (unless the product is meant to), we only vaguely address the product and how we influence the mind by it (i.e., to cause construction or destruction in it). We assume it is “practical”—and therefore realistic —if we measure such responsibilities according to our physical world. We are now slowly realizing that this so-called physical “reality” remains problematic, awkwardly limited, and we sense that there is, that there must be, more to it than that! And so, we slowly edge toward that which is not so physical and observable, over into the spiritual realm where morality and ethics exist.

To live within this world with increasing consciousness is critical to our design process as we strive toward the good of our society and humanity. Design-thought should make its way into this consciousness process. Because of the nature of design, we naturally become conscious observers of ourselves, and of others; observers of actions and behavior; observers of authorship and motives for doing; observers of the inter-relatedness of things to other things. Design, then, becomes no longer merely a way of life, but a metaphor for Life. To summarize what practicing designers do and why:

1 - Designers make purposeful products, simple or complex.

2 - The purpose of such products reflects a definite need and orientation.

3 - That need originates by a client, a person or organization.

4 - Orientation is motivated by that need; that is, to serve a user or audience.

5 - Designers, outsiders in this situation, are invited to participate, as experts in planning and forming expression for what is needed, theirs are the products to serve that purpose.

I assume we can all agree on this simple generalized picture. But now let’s look at this from the phenomena of sign. We already identified the fact that such products act merely as signs (Peirce’s Representamen), which serve in their manifested forms, thoughts, and ideas intentionally to serve their purpose. The sender (as knower) of these thoughts and ideas must therefore find a way to knowingly express and manifest his known, so that the form can potentially become mediated by the user to reveal its intended purpose.

That seems easy enough to design, because if we know what we want to say and who we want to speak with, we simply choose the right sign system to serve as intermediary for this process. But there is a problem: how can we assure the kind of mediation that results in the certain knowledge in the consciousness of the user that it was designed for, when the world that we live in is so elusive and so open to interpretation? The answer is simple: we can never be certain, but the designer hopes to bring together in some harmonic play those things that are essential to the various levels of vibration that direct a consciousness toward a certain orientation and special significance. I use the word vibration for that is the method of access – light is vibration, sound is vibration, music is vibration, color is vibration. Remember physics class and the concept of wavelength – wavelength is vibration.

If semiosis is seen as an abstract model for the process of knowing, then we can also use it as a model for knowing design. The design process must, after all, incorporate or prepare for all sign potentials that the product was designed to serve. No product is merely one sign, but a system of signs, and, as stated before, mediated by other signs. Therefore, to design is to require thought about relations in a special way. This is where society truly depends on the expertise of designers: to help establish and connect relations minimizing ambiguities and vagueness. Professional expertise, then, requires designers not only to have skill in forming expressions, but to know clearly why designers serve, and how and who they serve.

Designers are no longer just the tinkerers of beautifully crafted or otherwise artistically expressed objects. We are, as designers, truly called upon to serve our fellow man, to serve humanity. The personal has the characteristic of being “clouded by desire” in the making objects of art for their own sake, instead of seeing the action impersonally as a service to the user, society, humanity! Designers have the real opportunity to work unselfishly in the service of humanity — if they can only release themselves from their usually selfish needs for personal expression. Since in the end the products of graphic design involve the user’s mind, therefore thought itself and subsequent action, this service reflects a critical role in the human evolution of consciousness.

As graphic designers we are in fact instrumental in the teaching of knowledge, in teaching toward our progression and perfection. Not that other utilitarian objects (such as tools or architecture) have necessarily less consequence in this; but because graphic design necessarily assists in the processing of thought (messages, information, ideas, voice of spirit) graphic design vibrates and stimulates the mind and our intellect perhaps more obviously than other material objects. This, as you may realize, places us in a rather responsible position. Not merely to assure the beauty of form in our products but more importantly, to assure us of the beauty of motives for such products, the higher levels of Interpretants that motivates our thoughts and actions.

Furthermore, the virtues of professionalism require designers to critically examine and select from the dual nature of all things, according to their good versus bad. This also means to understand the very causes and motives that spark such duality, and to have the capacity to select knowingly the good as impulses for right action.

What exactly does it mean to set up ‘impulses for right action’? Right for whom? Right for the client, of course, but equally right for the user and recipient of the designed object, right for all those affected by this product, for humanity, for our world. Not for the designer, since the designer, called in as an outsider to lend a service of professional expertise, is expected to act in a detached way so as to be capable of right action and not become discolored in his vision and duty to serve. This objective involvement becomes the critical point, the nature of which is still much misunderstood by many designers today because we continue to perceive ourselves, and find ourselves perceived by society, as some sort of creative artiest. But this objective, or dispassionate involvement is the very thing that makes our service a form of spiritual endeavor that most of us hope for but fail see. Designers must become inspired by the essence or spiritual nature of that which they are concerned with. To be inspired is to be part of the essence, its life, its living quality, its unifying aspect, its spirit – that which unifies instead of separates.

We are deceived by the thought that design is ‘art’ in the same way we have come to think about the so-called’ fine arts,’ or as they prefer to call it in the Netherlands the free arts. Since designers serve others and do more than apply visual language, they are neither free-artists nor applied artists. Of course, designers have skills and understanding in giving form to the visual, with all the beauty and spiritual purpose that form can have, and the obligation to make that form as perfect as anything nature exemplifies for us. They thereby help make our world the perfect environment in which we can live with all our aspiration for perfection. But beauty of form is limited if it can only serve the purpose of form and our phenomenal world of form. And craft and technical expertise is equally limited if it only serves that singular purpose of production. Moreover, form for form-sake is dangerously seductive since it can so easily make us believe, by virtue of its concrete realism that it must be ‘meaningful.’ Finally, form as the result of designers’ self-serving ideals illuminates a deception. We find so much of this today, with designers eager to develop stylistic forms as if they were merely speaking to other designers. This only confuses, distracts, and misdirects a deceived user!

When we understand that products and things have only transitory meanings but the potentials to serve in much larger capacities then it becomes obvious that we need address not only the sense of perfection we find in craft and form, but also that for thought and knowledge. Therefore, we designers have a much broader obligation than the fine artist, higher maybe, which is to help think what appears best for all humanity, at all levels of thought and action. As objective outsiders in the marketplace or for the dissemination of information we have an obligation in our service as designers to be the guardians of good and the conscience of humanity in many respects, because we are directly responsible for either polluted thought or the enrichment of our thoughts, pollution of humanity, or the enrichment of humanity, pollution of our world, or the enrichment our world. These are all things that concern design in general, but they are equally relevant to the teaching of design. In the same respect we teachers have an even greater responsibility, truly awesome in scope and possibilities: to guide the future of humanity, to help to develop the capacities in our students for their (design) service to humanity.

Design means to learn, and so it follows that it must also teach when knowledge is shared through the products we help form. Our pedagogical responsibilities, or ethics and values in graphic design education, follow naturally in parallel to what I have said about design. To assure ourselves of this potential good and keep ourselves in line toward that purpose we have an obligation to follow the simple suggestions for all good conduct and noble living. We find these statements in many places, from ancient wisdom to modern philosophy and religions. As guides for human life they all tend to advocate that one becomes a beneficent force in nature, in humanity, in our world.

(May want to include here the American Indian set of directives)

As a professional it is critically important to place yourself out of the picture of your service. As artists this is not easy to do, since the tendency for artists is in fact to work very much for the self (at least, in our more modern perception of art and artists). But those who are unselfish in their action know very well how thousand-fold more satisfying that action is, than if it were filled merely to satisfy the self. We must learn to strive for such ideals in action and evolution, and not work for the products we will produce. In our activity we must learn the nature and purpose of contemplation, because in essence that is the very nature of design. To contemplate means not merely to come to know about something intellectually, but to become one with that very thing.

To get to know something does not merely mean to fix your attention to it, but to actively and intensity come into a co/mmunion with it. To know something intellectually is merely to limit thought to its components or functions, or to its political or economic perspective, or to its form, or to sensation; but to know it from a contemplative sense means that you have given up yourself in it and become one with it in its totality, yet without having become lost yourself in it or lost your individuality.

This holistic but unified identity is also called love. Love has no desire or intention to exercise power over anyone or anything. Love tolerates limitations, in fact welcomes these as enrichments that allow us

to gain understanding through new viewpoints, and insight! This is knowing at a higher level than the intellectual form of knowledge. The power of the intuitive offers wisdom, synthesis rather than analysis.

In a recent article entitled The Contemplative Look Raimundo Panikar, a Professor at the University of Santa Barbara, wrote: “Love is at the root of knowing. This is a discovery that most human traditions have made. To love is to be catapulted towards the beloved. Without knowledge it has the danger of alienation. It is not true love. But knowing without love is not true knowledge. It is only grasping, apprehending, appropriating, ultimately a robbery, a plunder. Ecosophy should ‘know’ this. To truly know is to become the thing known without ceasing to be what we are.”

A key to this kind of knowing also means to experience the known, not merely witnessing or envisioning it. In design this means to act only after you have placed yourself in the position of the sender, as well as the receiver, as well as the mediating form, as well as the world in which it is to work. From that holistic vision and understanding and from your higher motives for action, the right motives for action can take place, and form will follow with spiritual grace.

If by ‘art’ we point to its lofty meaning of the spiritual contribution of mankind, then only in that sense of bringing yourself into this contemplative experience within the situation, altruistic and entirely empty of personal ambition, will the designer become capable of producing truly artistic and creative action. Only from this will the product have the potential capacity for all that was hoped for, and possibly more. Only then can such a product become a meaningful thing in our phenomenal world.

To quote Plotinus, the Roman sage from our third century: “The soul cannot see beauty unless it first becomes beautiful itself, and every man must make himself beautiful and divine in order to attain the sight of beauty and divinity.”

This is the high goal we must set for ourselves. Virtuous and seemingly impossible, but nonetheless necessary, a truth we can at least aspire to.

As Einstein said: “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.... Try not to become a man of success, but rather to become a man of value.”

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CONCRETISM

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Design as Service

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word AS image: verbivisual

word AS image: gestalt perception

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word AS image: designer’s voice

word AS image: poetics of form