Across Boundaries
Immutable: (re)Designing Graphic Design Historiography View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Christopher Lee
This paper gives an overview of motivations, findings, and preliminary outcomes of a project entitled “Immutable—A Mineral History of Currency and Typography.” This project rethinks graphic design’s historiography, centering the banal genre of the document and its entanglement with statecraft and colonial(ism/ity). This is framed as a ~5,000 year chronology, imbricating the developments of money and writing—from Mesopotamian clay tablets to distributed ledgers, like the blockchain. Immutability figures as design imperative and hermeneutic for considering a variety of techniques (material, technological, administrative, etc.) of securitization against the entropy of a document’s movement through space/time, and the political. The project’s pedagogical significance is premised on a contrast: Design educators tend to teach forms like logos, books, websites, etc., but not passports, money, property deeds, etc., in spite of these being, I contend, design’s most profoundly consequential forms. Today’s border politics—charged as a matter of having (or not having) the “right” papers—illustrates the urgency for designers to develop discourse and pedagogy to rethink the role and ontological conditions of the document, as an experimental, creative, and critical practice. As an alternative historiography, “Immutable” gestures both towards anthropologist Laura Nader’s call to “study up” (on those in power), and the radical educator Paolo Freire’s recognition of the “limit situation” as a productive condition. The project’s aim is to compel imagining, naming, and creation beyond the horizons of graphic design as a managerial, administrative, and colonial instrument that imposes its rationality upon what is sayable and thinkable.
Design Therapy: Supporting Veterans Transitioning Through The Use of CAD and CAM
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Efe Kutuk, Vito Zajda
Digital modeling and fabrication tools are used in myriad sectors from education to industry, enabling the creation of prototypes and even mass production. Given their wide usage, can CAD and CAM support the transition from soldier to student? Around 20% of veterans adjust independently, but the majority require support services. Veterans undergo different stressors that can trigger episodes of PTSD. In addition to traditional counseling, the use of CAD and CAM can help with stress management. Veterans can benefit from design therapy – imagining and creating whatever they want through digital modeling and fabrication. In this ongoing case study, design is a medium used to aid veteran students in stress management, academic continuity, and accomplishing career goals. Veterans’ proposed projects are structured on specific programs. After deciding the design brief and initial ideation, veterans have been assisted in using 3D modeling software and CAM platforms to create and fabricate their designs. In some cases, assistive devices have been produced to help veterans regain freedom, if suffering from a physical injury. The project is not intended to replace traditional therapy, but rather provide a new type of therapy. The long-term goal of the project is to introduce a remedy for those veterans who are at risk of being placed on probation or dismissed, where traditional methods of counseling are not working. The project is evaluated by reviewing veterans’ grades and timelines for graduation. This data determines whether this project is having an impact on veterans’ transition to higher education.
Designing for Advocacy: The Ethical Construction of Arguments
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session David Schmidt
Advocacy involves taking a stance and then supporting that stance with good reasons. In other words, advocacy relies upon good arguments. But what does it mean to make an argument? Unfortunately, in our increasingly polarized world, "argument" has become synonymous with "fight." This paper seeks to retrieve a notion of "argument" as a respectful, critical exchange of ideas, for the purpose of finding solutions to our shared problems. It shows that argument strategies presuppose particular design choices, meaning that there are different ways to conceive of and to construct arguments. The decision about how to design an argument for advocacy is itself an ethical choice, as different constructions of argument vary in their capacity to promote constructive, public advocacy. With good design, the arguments of advocacy can be ethical and effective. This paper includes specific examples of argumentation to convey the practical consequences of the argument design choices that we make.
