Published in Emigre, no.65 August 2003, pp.124–127. Dear Emigre Emigre 64 was promoted as a renewal of the journal’s past commitment to theoretical content and ideas. To this end, the journal revisited past writers and asked them to comment on the current state of graphic design. I suppose critics, like typefaces and fashion, are subject to the potential distortions of repetition. And like other closed systems, two symptoms of inbreeding come to mind: irst, the emergence of startlingly novel mutations and second, the increasing lack of itness of each successive generation. The authors had it half right, graphic design writing does sufer from an anemic lack of content, but in their lament over the state of graphic design the authors reinforced a situation already at hand. The most provocative—and disturbing—aspect of Emigre 64 is that while it claims to critically challenge the state of contemporary design, it essentially functions as a conventional “how to” style guide (pun intended). For graphic design to evolve a critical discourse, it must shift from a preoccupation with styles to questions of representation, agency and human values. Much like Walter Benjamin’s allegory of the diference between the practices of the magician and surgeon, critical writing does not leave its object untouched: the surgeon’s transformative ability occurs when she enters into her patient to reveal a new perspective previously hidden. Efective writing demands the same awareness of context: it cannot operate in a vacuum. Graphic design writing needs to develop its own techniques, procedures and venues for theorizing its place in the world. Questions of style are an intellectual dead end. In a parallel comparison, emerging architectural theory in the late 1960s began to challenge the impasse of a postwar architecture grown stagnant by a largely positivist functionalist doctrine and the leveling appetite of corporate commodiication. By introducing the conceptual tools of other disciplines that had already cultivated sophisticated methods to evaluate discursive production, architecture was able to re-evaluate and re-invigorate its own theoretical output. Over the past thirty-odd years, by focusing on questions of being, cultural politics and forms of representation, architecture efectively moved beyond journalism (read, “a discussion of style”) to produce a solid body of critical insight, one that relects architecture’s formal, socio-cultural and political domains. Graphic design ofers similar opportunities for investigation. Design history—history in general—is a record of events, human struggles and the recognition and recovery of individual and societal expression. It is not singly a succession of period styles as so many of Emigre’s established voices seem to perceive. Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby are able to practice in RCA’s Critical Design 3 Cabianca_Writing Unit precisely because an understanding of history has been established elsewhere. Granted, history classes should be more than a record of formal developments. They should also present a synchronic analysis of culture and society (one which expands discourse horizontally to place design in relation to literature, painting, politics, et al.), while unfolding a diachronic understanding of graphic design (one which evaluates formal development vertically through time). All of this requires a greater depth and breadth of understanding on the part of instructors and institutions. But institutions tend to reproduce themselves: if their own instructors and administrators are not equipped to provide a greater critical understanding of history and theory, how can one expect the same from design graduates? In fact, the most sought-after qualiication of new hires at design institutions is past practical experience rather than the ability to evaluate and expand critical discourse in graphic design. I applaud Kenneth FitzGerald for his courage to point a inger or two at design programs. Too often, while the advertised academic job description states that “cross-disciplinary ability is desired,” such ads in truth refer to applied mixed-media techniques of print, web and motion graphics rather than the ability to introduce advanced art theory, literary criticism, cultural theory or philosophy in the seminar classroom or design studio.* Contrary to the neo-conservative nostalgia expressed in Emigre 64, modernism has not disappeared, it has simply moved elsewhere—a fact not lost on my generation of designers. The historical avant-garde sought to reconcile the gap between technological production (civilization) and human expression (culture). To do this, they experimented with new forms believed to more accurately relect the “neue Sachlicheit” of industrialized production. A number of the authors fail to consider that it may not be possible to evaluate a contemporary modernism on the basis of formal resemblance or operative analogies given the radically changed state of practice since the 1920s or the introduction of desktop publishing, the web and television for that matter. Our technological revolution involves the computer, the internet and the video camera. Yet unlike the unornamented forms and rational geometries that the historical avant-garde emulated, contemporary technology has no obvious physical or visual analogue—its labor is digital. Generally speaking, one of the productivist aims of the historical avantgarde has been achieved: technology is ininitely available to society today. But at the same time, the dissemination of technology and the saturating efects of mass culture have eliminated disciplinary speciicity and individual aesthetic experience. Even though authorship and self-expression were anathema for the historical avant-garde, they serve a potentially critical purpose today: Authorship, or design signature, is a way for contemporary practices to imbue quality to a work. Despite the misplaced conceptions of social critics of design who dismiss the signature as a by-product of megalomania, the signature is in fact a form of critical Writing_Cabianca 4 resistance to the homogenizing and debasing forces of modern life. The irony of confusing a design signature with intellectually devoid formalism while selecting other irms as exemplars of content driven work is to mistakenly dismiss image for a lack of content—and alternately, to mistake image for content. While he may not appear on the Emigre 64’s radar, the most obvious conduit for this criticism is David Carson. Like Mies van der Rohe, David Carson is interesting precisely because he has not changed his creative output since he began his design career. But this comment is unfairly reductive. Again like Mies, Carson’s work has evolved by degrees, relecting his own shifts in focus and changes in values. Conversely, while Experimental Jetset, Graphic Thought Facility and Foundation 33 appear to reject expressionism, to suppress the intuitive and subjective in favor of a reduction to content driven systems, their practices hardly difer from those of the most celebrated artists. Foundation 33 recognizes a desire to claim authority over their own work by continually updating a record of design output on their website homepage—the contemporary equivalent to the artist’s signature. A more telling question would be to ask why, in the face of their own critical blindness, Emigre’s veteran critics can’t ind content in contemporary work but instead defensively manufacture categories of style? The activity of criticism is not one of judgment but an exercise in relations. I am not interested in setting limits to expression or proposing answers to the question of why designers choose the forms they do, mainly because I do not believe that such answers exist. I am interested in probing the meaning behind such choices. Critical writing begins by relecting upon the culture and society that produces the work under scrutiny. It opens up possibilities, proliferates meaning and mobilizes thought. This being the case, I look forward to output from the junior members of the theory and criticism club. Sincerely, David Cabianca *Since writing this, Parsons School of Design in New York has begun a search for a full-time faculty position in design history/theory/design studies: “Parsons School of Design is currently redeining the role of critical and liberal studies in the design curricula. At the same time, the University is rethinking its provision of humanities and core teaching across the undergraduate curricula, developing new initiatives in these areas. These developments are giving a new focus to design history and theory and design studies, both in relation to the studio curricula in Parsons and as an academic ield in its own right. Parsons School of Design and New School University have a very ambitious agenda for the next decade, including establishing design as a key intellectual as well as a studio discipline.” The faculty member will be associated with the Department of Critical Studies, however, not the School of Design. 5 Cabianca_Writing