Abstract

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.

Presenters

Christopher Lee
Assistant Professor, Undergraduate Communications Design, Pratt Institute, United States

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

Design Education

KEYWORDS

Immutable, Money, Typography, Currency, Writing, Document, Management, Governance, Colonialism, Coloniality

Digital Media

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