by Giuliano Tedesco

Social Design Zine, vol. Uno, Andrea Rauch, Gianni Sinni, LCD Edizioni, Firenze 2005 (pp. 464, € 38,00)

Online at the aiap.it website since 2003, Social Design Zine falls midway between the electronic journal and the blog. It has been remarkably successful in achieving its aim as a discussion forum for Italian graphic artists, with contributions coming from both the famous and the aspiring. This book covers the experience from its beginnings to June 2005. It focuses on graphic art and on “social” visual communication with far-reaching criteria — basically anything not linked to commercial clients: news of sporting events and exhibitions, political comment, public service campaigns; erotic manga and cartoons featuring the Pope; military uniforms, street signs and flags. Efforts aimed at procuring material from non-Western cultures have had good results. Another area that has received special attention is linked to writing and its relations with visual communication, in a broad perspective not restricted to the formal aspects of typography but exploring the social and linguistic implications of subjects such as ethnic differences, geopolitics and the availability of texts for the dyslexic and sight-impaired (with a fine contribution by Erik Spiekermann). The selection of works addressed is extensive and not obvious, and the decision to deal with a wide range of arguments and formats has borne fruit.

Texts dominate and this is where the trouble starts. The pictures, left with less than half the overall space, often become hard to interpret and even totally incomprehensible in some cases (in many of the posters shown, for example, the text that completed the visual part is reproduced so small that it is indecipherable). Editing and a rigorous selection of the texts published online would certainly have improved this publication. In many articles, the critical interpretation of the visual material is inadequate. In contrast, comments on value and political aspects abound, inspired by a “defence of the orthodoxy” that shows little faith in the reader. Is it really necessary to repeat that the war in Iraq was wrong every two pages, even taking into account the climate in which the original pieces were published? The introduction by Mario Piazza (the creative director of Domus who wrote on the publication of Social Design Zine articles on these pages in 2004) promised much less and gave much more: “Making the subject of ethics routine in the trade”, without dogmatism and without indoctrination. Piazza highlights one of the old defects of traditional public service graphic art in Italy, the gleeful tendency to “dumb down”. Social Design Zine does not fall into that trap but it succumbs to another predictable risk — that linked to the Italian love of turning politics into a phenomenon that lies midway between tribal belonging and a heated football debate in the pub.

Designers have as much right as anyone to rattle off certainties on the top systems, globalisation and preventive war. But their greater communicational power brings greater responsibility and they should make more effort to conduct thorough research and offer critical considerations, and not make do with TV chitchat. Otherwise they will be doomed to reason by clichés such as “Bush is a cowboy incapable of any complexity” (a piece of information offered more than once by Social Design Zine). It is not that the perhaps more restricted ethical issues specifically concerning the profession are all banal and not worthy of discussion. The call for vigilance made in the poster “First Things First” in 1964, which signalled the risks of an alliance between the creative professions and the promotional needs of the commodity system, still applies and is more topical than ever. Indeed, it required no great changes when reissued by Adbusters in 2000. In Italy, the risk of the “treason of the designers” is only a less burning matter inasmuch as commercial clients attribute designers with less importance and less power (vice versa, the Italian centrality of institutional clients corresponds to the focus of Social Design Zine on the absurdities of public competitions). But given the degree to which designers are expected to participate in the commercial system — and this involvement is destined to grow as time passes – ethical considerations, as a concern shared by an entire professional category, are still insufficient.

Besides this, it is a priority for anyone working in the graphic arts and advertising to learn to interpret and deconstruct the meanings and implications of visual design (their own and that of others) with increasing clarity, studying the evolution of the relationships between visual language, communication frames and social contexts. This also falls strictly within the scope of a designer’s professional skills, but it requires a semiotic and political culture, an ability to understand social facts and media strategies that goes beyond the technical know-how of design. Only some of the articles published here make a contribution towards this learning process. The decision to repeatedly offer political clichés (anti-Americanism does not exist, it is only a convenient accusation made against anyone criticising the doctrine of preventive war; anti-Semitism exists but there is too much inopportune talk of it today; and so on) will please the converted and annoy the others. However, the problem lies less in the contents, or simply in the fact that clearly demonstrable claims prevail over reasoned comments, and more in the opportunity wasted. Social Design Zine is a good sourcebook, full of important stimuli and should certainly be recommended for the complete and varied projects amassed, which only lack adequate critical apparatus. It can also be recommended for its ability to give more space to analytical and informative articles, such as that on the political use of cartography, and, with regard to the blog form in general, to reduce the “flows” mentioned by Steven Heller in his excellent opening piece.

Giuliano Tedesco Journalist