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Writing & research for graphic designers
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for reflection, as well as neatly prescribed archives to work with and a body
of literature dealing with your topic to consult. The other main advantage
of design history to a writer is the fact that your subjects can’t talk back or
be offended by your critique. Writing about contemporary design culture
often means having to go head to head with individuals who you consider to
be implicated in harmful or inane design activity; that’s tough for everyone
involved, but absolutely necessary for the evolution of a robust and publicly
useful design-critical literature.
Who do you write for, when writing design criticism?
I love this question because it’s one I’m obsessed with. I think writers often
have the sensation of writing into a vacuum and not knowing if their words
have hit home in any meaningful way. I’m a Ph.D. candidate at the RCA
and my research examines the dynamics of design criticism in the United
Kingdom and the United States since the 1950s, focusing on design criti-
cism’s relationship to its publics, which include designers, manufacturers,
consumers, and policy makers. Throughout my project I am interested
in the impact of, or response to, design criticism—how its provocations
are met, received, and acted upon by their audiences in a kind of critical
circuitry. So I’m looking at letters in magazines and newspapers, comments
on blogs, customer responses to Amazon product reviews, visitor comments
at exhibitions, and audience feedback at conferences which, in the case of
the 1970 Aspen Design Conference, took the form of student protests which
forced a change of direction in the following conferences.
What do you say to your students?
With my students at D-Crit I’m constantly posing them with the challenge
of how to engage the broadest possible audience in the deepest implications
of design. We spend a good deal of time becoming proficient in different
media—different carriers of criticism such as radio, documentary, exhibi-
tions, and even animation, book clubs, or boat tours, and exploring how
they might help us engage our audiences. I’m currently excited by the
potential of the VH1 Pop Up Video format for design criticism.
And who are you writing for?
In abstract terms, I am writing for a rather eclectic dinner party of readers—I
can almost see them awkwardly gathered around a table together—which
includes the designer Michael Bierut, whose Geiger counter for nonsense is so
finely tuned; Reyner Banham, the late design critic and historian who is my
hero in terms of writing, subject matter, and approach; author and sometime
design critic Nicholson Baker; my Mum, who needs to be able to summarize
the gist of the piece to her friends in the village; the cab driver I spent last
night’s trip home trying to convince what was so important about design;
my Ph.D. supervisors David Crowley and Jeremy Aynsley; as well as the
protagonists in the story, be they the designers, manufacturers, or other
decision makers involved in the project under discussion. No wonder I never
feel satisfied with my writing!
In more specific terms, with each commission I’ll try to picture a typical
member of its likely readership—a general interest piece in New York
magazine demands a perky, authoritative tone designed to catch the attention
of a reader who is standing up on a subway train while texting and checking
out the guy who just stepped into her carriage, and has only a passing interest
in design. A piece in an academic journal should be written to last—with
attitude, but not in a style so pronounced that it doesn’t bear rereading—
for a young curator who can actually put my research to some good use.
Where can we find good writing on popular design?
Historically, the founding father of this type of writing is Reyner Ban-
ham, who redefined the scope of design criticism in the 1960s by treating
artifacts of everyday experience such as crisp packets, surfboards, ice cream
trucks, and sheriff’s badges with the same seriousness as canonized design.
He wrote columns in general interest magazines such as New Society and
New Statesman in the late 1950s and 1960s, and made his subject matter so
accessible and his critical process so visible that he empowered the casual
observer to comment on their own designed environment. Today, you can
find good writing about popular design amongst Amazon product reviews,
as I have discussed in a piece published on Design Observer, but in general
you really have to search for it in novels, in the pages of The New Yorker
or The London Review of Books, or in online columns of The Atlantic Cities.
What skills should one actively cultivate for good design writing?
Most of the qualities I value in good design writing are the same as those
necessary for good writing about anything: humor; a good sense of rhythm
and pacing; a playful relationship to language; engaging narrative with a
killer first paragraph; a clear sense of the writer’s stance and perspective;
excellent reporting which highlights all kinds of details only accessible
through face-to-face interviewing over time; the canny knack for identifying
a good story and the social adroitness to get access to its main players; deep
historical knowledge both in terms of the subject matter, but also in terms
of other pieces written about this subject; and razor-sharp analytical skills.
The writer who specializes in design also needs to have some other qualities,
and these include the ability to see, to really see, design, and unpack the layers
of its production and intentionality for the benefit of the reader. I would argue
that all of these skills can be acquired, provided the student is prepared to
embark on a lifelong project of learning and relearning. The one aspect
of design writing I really struggle with, in terms of how it might be
cultivated—is taste. An unfashionable subject, of course, and one that you
might think is at odds with my deep interest in the everyday, and yet I believe
it underpins good writing about design just as an unplaceable spice—an
ineffable flavor—makes a good dish sublime. How to discriminate between
what is good and bad aesthetically can be developed through practice,
I suppose, but learned taste does not have the same dimensionality or
plausibility as its near relative, which is taste that is innate, felt, lived,
and inescapable.
(Ray)
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section 2
surveying the diciplines
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63
3
Business
Business writing comes in many forms (no pun intended): very
officious, somewhat officious, less officious, and all the nuances in
between. Many handbooks and guides have been published on the
craft of writing acceptable business communications. I prefer The
Graphic Design Business Book by Tad Crawford because it situates
business text in the context of practice. But virtually any book
or website that summarizes how to communicate with clients,
prospective clients, and the public will do just as nicely. The
key to this genre of writing is balance.
The “voice,” which I’ve touted as essential to good writing,
is not to be overdone in business writing. Still, some of the
other tenets are. Know who you are writing for (whether you’re
writing a letter, proposal, report, etc.). Maintain a tone that
does not drown the reader with jargon or presuppose the reader’s
ignorance. Intelligence, brevity, even a modicum of wit is essen-
tial for good business communications. With that as a guideline,
common sense should prevail. This is a case where the
facts and “nothing but the facts” is a pretty good mantra.
The following essay by the design writing eminence,
Ralph Caplan, about ordinary language and writing skill,
can be applied throughout this book. But as a primer for
writing about the design business, it is inspired. Read
and learn.
pArT Three : BUsiness
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