There have been many heated debates over the use of technology in graphic design. Some people laud the computer as a driving force behind the democratization of design. They say that the computer has made expensive and cumbersome tasks, such as typesetting and photo editing, more cost effective and approachable. Indeed, the learning curve of setting type on a page has gotten considerably more forgiving since the days of devils and typesetters. Yet, opponents of this argument state that the computer has made graphic design too easy and has opened up the floodgates for millions of sub par designers to flow through and saturate the industry with bad design. Many professors at RISD go so far as to ban the computer from the first few projects of a graphic designer’s sophomore year, forcing them to “use their hands” in some desperate attempt to retain the human qualities that can make a piece compelling to the eye. Certainly, there are pros and cons from both sides of the argument. However, no matter which side you fall on, there is no denying the fact that the opening up of graphic design’s principle tools through computer programs, namely Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop, has made it easier for designers, both good and bad, to create pieces quickly and cheaply. However, using a computer program as your principle tool produces an often-unrealized and devastating side effect: predictability.
So what is it about using your hands or analog processes that creates unpredictability? The short answer is that humans and analog machines are very capable of making mistakes. Sometimes, these mistakes ruin your work, forcing you to start over. However, other times these mistakes create beautiful surprises that make pieces more human and more successful. Mistakes like this are virtually impossible while using an Adobe product because the programs are built to streamline the graphic design process so designers get what they expect every time they sit down at their desks. The presence of the computer and Adobe products is so permanent that it would be foolish of me to try to usurp the power of such a great leader. But what if there was a way to create digital processes that made mistakes? What if these processes were built so that they even encouraged mistakes? How would this change the ways in which designers interact with software and how would this affect the final look of their work?
To answer some of these questions, I have set three principle goals for my project: 1. Create new mark-making tools with no precedent for the images that they can draw 2. Increase the distance between human and final image by placing an intermediary device between the human hand and the canvas 3. Create small, temporary communities (systems) that depend on successful collaboration between human and device as well as between multiple humans
My interest in computer programming is not to create a thoroughly accurate system that is capable of mimicking real world techniques. Adobe has taken care of this for me and I thank them everyday for it. Instead, my interest lies in the concept of creating a system that provides feedback to the designer in real time and punishes a user for trying too hard to control it by getting increasingly more troublesome. This desire stems from working with real physical processes such as analog photography, letterpress, and holography, all of which are capable of producing beautiful unpredictability if the designer allows the system to give feedback and react.
My main tools in building these reactive systems will be Processing and Arduino. Both are free, open source programming languages that are being widely used around the world to produce pieces both commercial and non-commercial in nature. It is important that these programming languages are open source because they encourage collaboration and sharing within the community of developers, allowing an intermediate programmer like myself to borrow snippets of code from more advanced programmers. This is the nature and beauty of open source. However, the concept of reactive systems did not start with Processing and Arduino. During the mid 20th century, the work of psychologists, biologists, physicists, and many others began to explore the concept of systems that are self-referential, self-aware, and self-organizing. This work culminated in the creation of Cybernetics, or the study of the structure of systems that specialize in communication, control, and feedback. In 1973, anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson developed a theory that included the investigation of the human and mechanical participants within a cybernetic system. They called it Second-order cybernetics, or the cybernetics of cybernetics. Second-order cybernetics embodies the concept of reactive systems in that it seeks to recognize that every participant (in my case, the designer and the computer system and possibly other human or machine participants) is reactant within the system. Gordon Pask, an English psychologist, also developed a collection of ideas called Conversation Theory, which consists of examining the architecture of exchanges of information from human to human, human to machine, machine to machine, and machine to human.
I believe that a cybernetic approach to graphic design will allow designers to use computer systems to create unpredictable pieces if they allow the system to become participant in the creation of visual output. The idea is not to remove anyone from the equation (as some people seek to remove the computer from the designer’s life and work) but to make it so that no one is passive in the process. Every move the designer makes affects the system and vice versa. This interaction has the ability to create pieces that are unexpected, alive, and beautiful.