A New Kind of Dialogue, Andrew Howard

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A New Kind of Dialogue, Andrew Howard apresentao Jan 2010 Clara Vieira

A New Kind o DialoguebyAndrew Howard

Essay rst published in the Canadian magazine Adbusters, issue 37, Design Anarchy, 2001Reproduced later (2002) in the anthology Looking Closer 4, Critical Writings on Graphic Design, Allworth Press, NY.


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Design: need, use and aesthetics

Design is not an abstract theoreticaldiscipline it produces tangible arteacts,expresses social priorities and carriescultural values. Exactly whose prioritiesand values is at the core o this debate.


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...we have reached a saturation point at which the high pitched scream o con-sumer selling is no more than sheer noise. We think that there are other thingsmore worth using our skill and experience on. Tere are signs or streets and build-ings, books and periodicals, catalogues, instructional manuals, industrial photog-raphy, educational aids, lms, television eatures, scientic and industrial publica-tions and all the other media through which we promote our trade, our education,our culture and our greater awareness o the world.

First Tings First maniesto, 1964, by Ken Garland

We propose a reversal o priorities in avour o more useul, lasting and demo-cratic orms o communication a mindshit away rom product marketing andtoward the exploration and production o a new kind o meaning. Te scope odebate is shrinking; it must expand.Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectivesexpressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources o design.

First Tings First Maniesto 2000


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Am I satisfed with design's place in society? How are my educational and proessional institutions supporting innovation in design?What can I do independently? Making these questions central to design criticism encourages the socialization o design advocatedby Andrew Howard in his Adbusters essay, A New Kind o Dialogue. It challenges us to aect change in our work - maybe even our society.

Context in Critique (review o Emigre No.64, Rant) by Dmitri Siegel


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...human needs have material limits. Tis is not good or the economic imperative. Tereore newdemands have to be created so that they can match the protable output o industrialised production.Tis is the inversion o supply and demand the myth that the production o goods is based on need.It is best done by dividing our needs, desires and activities into the smallest possible units so thatproducts and services can be created to satisy them.

A New Kind o Dialogue by Andrew Howard


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It is time to think again about designs social unction and the way it is determined by our culture.

Graphic design has a part to play in creating a visual culture that empowers and enlightens, that makesideas and inormation accessible and memorable. Many designers may argue that their job is not politics,and they would be right. But this does not prevent us rom developing ideas about cultural democracy.We cannot separate our work rom the social context in which it is received and rom the purpose it serves.I we care about the integrity o our design decisions, we should be concerned that the relations implicitin our communications extend active participation in our culture. I what we are looking or is meaningand signicance, then the rst step is to ask who controls the work and whose ends does it serve.

Tere is such a thing as society by Andrew Howard, eye magazine, 2001

We are encouraged to concentrate on the details o our activity to develop its internal logic. Tis is whatit means to be a good proessional. Tus we lose track o how things t together. In our allocated areas oproessional concern there is little time or the wider picture....Tere has to be a set o reerence points that lie beyond individual works or clients, some sort o guide thatcan locate our activity within a collective value system.

A New Kind o Dialogue by Andrew Howard


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...nowadays more and more companies and global businesses prioritize social commitment and responsi-ble action. All well and good, but a certain cynicism, the suspicion that it might all just be a clever market-ing strategy, nonetheless lingers among the public. Amongst all the fak directed at businesses, however, thequestion arises as to how much we are actually prepared to get involved ourselves.Graphic designers have a wide-ranging vocabulary or conveying content to other people and getting theirattention. Working or a good cause is generally not nancially rewarding, however; designers still sellthemselves best when they can shine with important clients, and at the end o the day, bills have to be paid.It was on the horns o this dilemma that ommaso Minnetti and Pasquale Volpe ound themselves whenthey decided in 2006 to combat their own rustration and the general apathy surrounding them....Good 50x70, which allows designers to get involved and use their knowledge or a good cause...seven aidorganizations drat a brieng on a globally relevant topic; designers can submit posters appropriate or thetopics, and a jury chooses the 30 best projects in each subject area. Tese posters are published in a cata-logue, shown in various exhibitions worldwide, and may be used by the aid agencies or their own commu-nication.

Its is possible that we wont go anywhere with Good 50x70, but i we manage to shake up graphic design-ers and the creative industry and show them how much power they have to change the world, then wellcertainly have achieved something.

ackling the Issues, Novum magazine 02/09


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Help!Social Appeals in Posters

2.9.2009 10.1.2010Plakatraum, Museum r Gestaltung Zrich


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"I want to make people think," says oscani in an interview in the Independent (December 16,1992). "I want them to remember a name." Tus social criticism is appropriated in the struggleor brand identication. "It [the advertising industry] persuades people that they are respected orwhat they consume, that they are only worth what they possess, says oscani, angrily upbraidingthe industry or corrupting society.Most advertising, he tells us, is based on the emotions and has nothing to do with the product.One can only wonder what graveyard crosses during the Gul War, a ship overfowing withreugees, an electric chair, children in Tird World slums, and a nun and priest kissing have to do

with expensive, multicolored knitwear? But even these are surpassed by oscani's idea or a"un" campaign about wie-beating or Guinness. What makes oscani's ever-so-radical ideas everso depressing is that his accurate critique o the advertising industry's eect on ouraspirations and sel-image appears to be o no help to him in establishing the link between theindustry and the economic ideology that spawned it.

Whatever his intentions, oscani's posters are merely a state-o-the-art marketing device masquer-ading as social conscience. It is extreme arrogance to throw images at people in the beliethat they need to be told what issues are o social importance.Radical work is never a question o presenting correct political opinions, but is concerned insteadwith the nature o the dialogue that is made possible between the author and the audience.

Tere is such a thing as society by Andrew Howard, eye magazine, 2001


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By ar the most prominent instance in this context is the ad campaign developed by the photographer Oliviero oscani or the ashion rm Ben-etton, one that earned worldwide attention. Te rm insisted that the advertisements were designed to provoke an awareness o social responsi-bility, the campaign was intended less to market its products and more to call attention to political issues, taboos, and social grievance. Critics,however, regarded it as unethical to exploit human suering to increase prot margins. Te controversy points up the way in which the Benettoncampaign, with its striking display o images o war, HIV/AIDS, death, racism, environmental degradation, death row inmates, suering o reu-gees, etc., had evidently transgressed unspoken boundaries....From the perspective o the economy o attention, certainly, the campaign was a resounding success: it transormed an Italian knitwear rm intoone o the best-know labels worldwide

Help! Soziale Appelle Im Plakat, Plakatraum, Museum Fur Gestaltung Zurich, Lars Muller, 2009

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A New Kind of Dialogue, Andrew Howard