Jun

30

Brand Wagon: Part Four, Final Part.

Filed Under Told You So 

Moholy Nagy Mass Psychosis

PART 4 FINAL PART I accept that, depending on who you talk to, to be an artist in this day and age is basically understood as someone who lives and works below the poverty line–spending time making amusing cartoons for family and friends’ enjoyment. These are the people designers should keep watch. These people, are the ones who will question an artists worth, mainly because it so often is completely opposite to their living and working world, and most likely makes them uncomfortable (in its unfamiliarity) of how artists, and designers, function. These are the same people who may have initially pressured designers to succumb to a new kind of title or categorization (rebranding) in the first place. When it comes to selling these people on ideas, service and opinion, no doubt, they will require the most amount of education and instruction. These people will have to be reminded how artists are a contributing member of society and that together, through collaboration, will generate works beyond any individual effort. These people can be assured that working visually and intelligently is the only way to access an audience, globally, and that meticulous strategy (or design for those staunch pragmatists) will be the difference between confusion or communication. These people will appreciate how the multiplication of the work generated, will not diminish its artistic integrity, but instead, establish it as an affordable, accessible commodity (because of its artistry!) These people must accept their role, not as critic, or client, but as patron–a Patron of the arts.

If designers can maintain to individuals outside of the agency or community that they are practising artists, utilizing time-honoured traditions and techniques, with old and new technologies at their dispense, in an effort to realize a shared goal (which by the way, is not always communication) then rebranding (and all its paperwork and frequent flyer points) can be put to rest. In this case, rebranding isn’t necessary to change an outsider’s perspective or attitude. It will only confuse the issue more while simultaneously (and needlessly) creating a hierarchy within design and designers and separating them and their field further away from the arts (it’s called creative thinking people, and it takes on many shapes and forms)–the very thing that designers are being compensated for in providing their work.

Design and art share the same thinking, discipline and execution and today, also a similar aesthetic. Trajan or Carol Twombly? Marketer or Medici? The point is, identity never changed, neither did responsibilities or the work involved. Sometimes it was more modern than ornate, other times it was more visual than typographic. Essentially the entire process and person behind it, remained the same. Somewhere along the line (the history timeline?) however, either designers told themselves, or others told designers that what they do, and who they are, just isn’t enough, and thus couldn’t be compensated in realistic terms. No, not especially when anyone can get their hands on the computer programs the pros use and the ad is going to be recycled anyway. Why did perspective change? When did it change? Did rebranding the identity of design the first time around, help to solve the designer dilemma or actually cause it?

In Sinclair Lewis’s book, Babbitt, the character of the same name, rebels from society’s expectations and standards, only to later bow to its social pressures. I would hate to think that with the idea of moving the industry forward, rebranding what designers are, again, would in fact, displace them backwards to what society may already believe of the professionals and the industry. But, it is my hope, that returning back to a solid foundation, the arts, that artists (not designers) will in fact move forward by upholding their authority and position. Designers take heed: don’t let (Design?) history repeat itself. Don’t give in to (rebranding) conformity. But most of all, don’t be a Babbitt!

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