Month: February 2022

Critical Enquiry

Our critical enquiry centered around the cover of the New York Times reporting 100,000 coronavirus deaths. The stylistic choices made by the editors served to underscore the magnitude of the death toll, and led us to a discussion about grief and its different manifestations across the course of the pandemic. In essence, our work tells the story of the pandemic through the lens of grief. Disinformation as a reaction towards uncertainty and the loss of normalcy, quotidian distractions meant to fill time otherwise spent pondering mortality, actual grief from loss, and the bereavement of those whose lives are affected daily by the aftermath of the disease.

Annotated Bibliography

DiSalvo, C. (2015). Adversarial Design. Cambridge: MIT Press.

The purpose of inquiry, according to DiSalvo, is to create “an understanding of a situation so that one can better make decisions about or otherwise act on that situation” (DiSalvo, 116). In the context of this project, this definition allowed us to frame the conversation about our chosen object, and work with more specificity and intent. Our critical question arose from both our individual positions, informed by our lived experience of the pandemic, as well as our research into grief and the different ways it could be used as a lens to interrogate our story. Each reference and practice we chose gave us an avenue to explore and clarify our purpose, allowing us to create a project that felt coherent as a whole, while also giving each individual the freedom to design work that felt authentic to their own practice.

Harvard Business Review (2022). That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief. Available at: https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief (Accessed 23 February 2022).

By confronting readers with a wall of names on their front page on May 24, 2020, the New York Times was literally manifesting the nations’ collective grief at losing 100,000 individuals to the coronavirus. This dovetails with the various manifestations of grief outlined by David Kessler in this interview, which became the foundation of our critical inquiry for this project. Using grief as a lens to examine the pandemic, it is possible to understand the narratives and reactions that arose in its wake. To begin with, anticipatory grief can be seen as a driving force of disinformation. Denial becomes a coping mechanism, allowing people to channel their grief into something that feels active and gives them back their sense of control. Anticipatory grief also ties into the escapist behaviors if lockdown; people filling their time with mundane activities, so as not to confront the anger, frustration and fear of the loss of general safety. Real grief, as experienced by those who lost a loved one, plays a central role in the narrative of the pandemic, as well as the bereavement of survivors whose lives are irrevocably altered by lingering disabilities caused by the disease.

Laranjo, F. (2014). Critical Graphic Design: Critical of What? Available at: https://modesofcriticism.org/critical-graphic-design/ (Accessed 23 February 2022).

The three modes of criticality in design delineated by Ramia Maze and cited by Laranjo in this article were top of mind when I approached this project. A thoroughly critical reflection of my first set of experiments guided my work and forced a deeper meditation on its significance and potential. An exploration of typography-based projects created the foundation for my final outcome, which consciously pushes the use of type and design to elicit sentiment. Finally, the project itself is an expression of a social phenomenon, grief, as experienced both individually and collectively over the course of the pandemic. Combined, these approaches enhanced my understanding of the design process and yielded work rooted in a more nuanced and informed position than what I had previously produced. Perhaps, as the author posits, criticality is inherent to good design and therefore does not need to be parsed out as a specific term outside of the practice. It is, however, helpful to understand the ‘how’ in order to better produce the ‘what.’

Pattee, E. (2020). ‘Covid-19 makes us think about our mortality. Our brains aren’t designed for that.’ The Washington Post. 2 October. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/covid-thinking-about-death/2020/10/02/1dc0f7e4-c520-11ea-8ffe-372be8d82298_story.html (Accessed 24 February 2022).

The human brain is hardwired to avoid confronting mortality, especially our own. The behavior that stems from death reminders like the pandemic, are virtually identical to the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, sadness and acceptance. According to psychologist Jeff Greenberg, “What we are seeing is literally the predictable result of pervasive reminders of death” (Pattee, E.) This is the foundational concept of our book and is reflected in the structure of the narrative and design of the visuals. The goal in our work was to demonstrate the different facets of bereavement, showing that it is not just about the death of a loved one, but a more expansive, collective sentiment that underpins the tragedy of the pandemic. Even if death was not a part of an individual experience of the pandemic, death reminders, the looming sense of mortality, drives specific behaviors that were unique to the pandemic and the overarching themes of our project.

Sho Shibuya Sunrise from a Small Window: A Selection from 2020 (2022) [Exhibition]. Isetan the Space, Tokyo. 7 January 2022-14 February 2022.

Sho Shibuya’s work translates New York Times headlines into art using the cover of the paper as its backdrop. The ongoing project began as a daily ritual during lockdown, in which the artist would paint the sky outside of his window. It then evolved into a conscious engagement with the news printed in the paper. The works are appealing and captivating in their aesthetic, while also being sharply observant. In using Shibuya’s work as an anchor to begin our exploration of the paper, we were able to create a visually harmonious project from the outset. It also helped spark a conversation about how to communicate complex concepts through minimal design, and the role color plays in setting a tone. It also prompted thoughts about the role, format and longevity of newspapers, and how by turning them into art Shibuya subverted their purpose as single use objects. This in turn led us to the idea of turning our project into a book, channeling the subversion of the object into a work of permanence and thus remembrance.

Tiravanija, R. (2014) Untitled (We Have the Light) [Lithograph]. Available at: https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artwork/66803/Rirkrit-Tiravanija-Unttitled-2014-We-have-the-Light (Accessed: 25 February 2022).

Rirkit Tiravanjia’s work is anchored in narratives of resistance and social critique. Much of his work involves writing messages in all caps over newspaper, whether it be an entire page or a series of pages stitched together to create an enormous backdrop. The tension between the large scale type in bold colors and the newspaper behind them, speaks to the contentious relationship between information and truth. It is also an exercise in the power of typography, showing how words acquire meaning and intention depending on their context. This practice allowed us to delve deeper into the narrative potential of using typography as a function of design, rather than a means of communication.

The goal of this week was to build on the process of creating figurative work, tying to blend the aesthetic quality of the tape experiments with the line quality of the acetate transparencies.

Using only transparencies, I attempted to work with both the negative and positive space of the page, using layering as a way to create definition, planes and shadows.

These outcomes brought together the process that had been building over the past three weeks, demonstrating a strong consideration of replicability, an interplay between the sponteneous veining of the paint and its deliberate placement, and a specificity in aesthetics.

This process has the potential to be further refined to create more fidelity, using layers and more minute additions to build the contours of a face. There is also the possibility of shifting the gaze to other objects, to further develop the capacity for figurative representation.

This week I developed a combination of two previous experiments, the constellation and the typographic exercise.

The goal was to create four, newspaper-sized visuals that encompassed the design choices made by the newspaper cover that inspired them, but also transcended the paper to become narratives of grief and overwhelming loss.

Each is composed of a short quote from the Walt Whitman essay over a black background, and uses words and dots to speaks to a specific aspect of how humans both feel about and rationalize death.

The first plays with the dichotomy of opposites, of black and white, the here and there, life and afterlife. The words on the page refer to the ubiquity of the dead, their repetition creating an infinite pattern that is self-reflexive of the content.

The second is an American flag made up simply of the words, ‘The Infinite Dead’ repeated, blurred, and backlit for effect.

The third outcome speaks to the idea of darkness, a void, the empty space of a deceased loved one. The words are stark, “the dead, the dead, the dead – our dead,” calling for a recognition of the dead and empathy for the living.

The last outcome is evocative of outer space, a constellation of stars and words arranged into a form, winged, bright and powerful.

Using grief as a lens to examine the pandemic, it is possible to understand the narratives and reactions that arose in its wake. Our book, “An Incalculable Loss,” does just that, preserving the story of the pandemic, while also subverting the form of the newspaper story that inspired it.

To begin with, anticipatory grief can be seen as a driving force of disinformation. Denial becomes a coping mechanism, allowing people to channel their grief into something that feels active and gives them back their sense of control. 

Anticipatory grief also ties into the escapist behaviors if lockdown; people filling their time with mundane activities, so as not to confront the anger, frustration and fear of the loss of general safety. 

Real grief, as experienced by those who lost a loved one, plays a central role in the narrative of the pandemic, as well as the bereavement of survivors whose lives are irrevocably altered by lingering disabilities caused by the disease.

The cover design of the New York Times is geared towards eliciting empathy, sharing the individual grief of bereft families with the nation and inviting participation in the remembrance of the dead. 

In fact, the body copy of the front page is a list of 450 names of people who passed away, followed by their age, place of residence, and a short description of their life, personality or achievements.

The first experiment I ran this week was to draw portraits of families mourning their loved ones, based on Reuters images that had appeared in various news outlets.

The simplicity of the line and the starkness of the color palette, were reminiscent of the cover and meant to underscore the poignancy of the moment captured. 

The drawings also picked up of the themes inherent to the design and copy of the paper itself. Each name listed is not just a person deceased, but also a family in mourning.

The word ‘incalculable’ in the paper’s headline serves two purposes: the first is to underscore the inability of the human brain to make sense of large numbers, and the second is to describe the pain of losing a loved one. 

This second experiment hinges on the word ‘incalculable’ and seeks to visually quantify the names on the front page using a dot to mark each one.

The most successful iteration of this experiment was the white dots on a black background, which created a pattern reminiscent of a constellation of stars.

Prior to the pandemic, the United States had only experienced this level of mass casualties twice in its history, first during the Civil War and then again during the Second World War. Given the current political and socio-economic mood of the country, the Civil War felt like an apt parallel to draw on.

In researching writings about grief and the experience of the war, I came across an essay written by Walt Whitman titled, ‘A Million Men, Too, Summ’d Up – The Unknown.’ Though it had been written in 1875, its words remained as relevant and poignant today.

For this experiment I used one line from the essay, which reads, “- the dead, the dead, the dead – our dead” and created a visual that used those words as an echo of the paper’s headline.

This week I focused on figurative work, using various methods in an attempt to render faces.

Initially, I used masking tape to block specific parts of the screen, creating faces by foregrounding the negative space of the page. The outcomes were interesting in their individuality, each imbued with a personality created by the impromptu interaction of overlapping paint.

Though far from exhibiting true fidelity, these abstractions of the planes and lines of a human face were readable as such, achieving the goal of creating figurative work.

Pushing the screen printing process further, I created a series of stencils using acetate transparencies. I drew a simplistic portrait of a face on the transparency and then carved the lines and shapes with an exacto knife.

The goal was to achieve more curvilinear shapes and further explore figurative representations. With these outcomes the faces lost some of the depth of the previous portraits, but achieved a more nuanced, intriguing quality.

Creating work that is figurative and easily replicable is an intrinsic part of the medium of screen printing. This week, my work explored the potential for replicability and began looking at the use of line as a way to build layers and shapes.

For this set of iterations, I made seven black squares of the same size, using the same amount of paint, applied in the same place on the screen.

The differences in the copies came from excess paint that had become enmeshed in the screen, as well as the number of times the squeegee was run across the paper. The red circles were added to underscore the differences in the copies, while still unifying them as a series.

The facsimile quality of the replicas created by the ghosts of the enmeshed paint, created an interesting effect that questioned the idea of quality in copied images. What does a replica owe to its original? What is the value of the replica? What is the relationship between the two? 

The second set of iterations focused on the use of line and color. Applying masking tape directly to the screen, I was able to create and replicate different patterns. The deliberate use of negative space came to the fore during these experiments. Depth through layering also became a feature of these outcomes, further expanding my understanding of the process of screen printing.

Throughout this week, the dynamic between intentionality and spontaneity inherent in the rudimentary form of the medium started to coalesce into a process in and of itself. I began to understand how the paint would behave under certain parameters, and was able to take some control of the final outcome using a combination of specific gestures, paint amounts and placement, and tape.

The progress of the outcomes this week clarified a process with the potential to push further into figurative work.

The spontaneous veining of the paint, coupled with the intentional solidity of the lines, created a set of tools that could be employed with increased specificity to generate more complex work.

There also emerged a distinct aesthetic quality that created a sense of compositional cohesion that anchored the work as a whole.

The first week of this project was about learning to use the medium and understand the potential and challenges of the process.

This weeks’ work focused on working with color and shape to experiment different outcomes, with the goal of narrowing down a process and color combination that yielded interesting results.

I settled on black, red and white as the colors I wanted to further explore, as I found that they worked best within the context of the medium. I used various ready-made stencils and paint application techniques, to explore different aesthetics.

My practice this week was anchored in the idea of limitations as a way to understand design. In essence, the success of this project meant discovering the parameters of the medium and exploiting its capacities. As such, a preconceived outcome was an impossibility. Rather, the medium, through experimentation, led the way to uncovering a workable process.

These iterations were made using paint mixed with glossy medium, which was applied on a screen and printed seven times without adding paint or washing the screen.

These iterations were made by applying red, white and black paint across the top of the screen and then printing seven times also without adding paint or washing the screen.

This way of working is antithetical to the screen printing process, in which the screen is washed after each print. Working this way fulfilled the objective of exploring the limitations of the medium, and helped me work more confidently with the tools at my disposal.

The organic quality of these outcomes brought to the fore the intrinsic tension between the deliberate nature of applying paint and running a squeegee across the screen, with the spontaneous way in which the medium produced outcomes. 

Regardless of the intention, the element of surprise always remained, becoming an integral part of the aesthetic.

This week I continued to experiment with methods of working with screen printing, using tape to create outlines directly on the screen as well as carving acetate stencils. As with the previous week, I continued to struggle with the limitations of the process and became interested in researching how other designers take advantage of trying conditions to inform their work.

What is Design? a 1969 interview with Charles Eames helped build on the framework outlined in Adversarial Design as Inquiry and Practice, that I referenced last week. The conversation with the designer, further expanded on the idea that constraints, far from detracting from a design, are an integral part of both the process and the outcome.

The excerpt below encapsulates this idea:

“Q. Does the creation of design admit constraint?
A. Design largely depends on constraints.

Q. What constraints?
A. The sum of all constraints. Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem – the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible – his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints – the constraints of price, size, of strength, balance, of surface, of time, etc.; each problem has its own peculiar list” (Eames, 15).

By definition, constraints restrict a practice. Eames describes the constraints as either personal in character – willingness, enthusiasm – or external – price, size, time, etc. By delineating the parameters of a project, it is possible to devise a suitable methodology that will in turn, lead to a satisfying outcome.

Furthermore, design, according to Eames, is “a plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best accomplish a particular purpose” (Eames, 14). When the plan is well thought out, and the arrangement maximizes the potential of the elements, it becomes the best possible outcome that suits the proposed purpose. The limitations of a project provide the foundation for the plan, making them the starting point for any successful design.

In my experience of this brief, this approach has been an imperative. Identifying the narrow path where I could freely experiment allowed me to feel in control of the process and produce work that clearly evolved from its first iteration. I am certain that without this discipline, I would have wasted both time and energy trying too many ideas without knowing where to land or how to move forward. Understanding design on Eames’ terms gave greater clarity and focus to my process, creating a narrative to anchor my inquiry.

Eames, C., Neuhart, J. and Neuhart, M. (1989) Eames Design. New York: Abrams.