Chen & Vermaas: Witnessing Design

What is a designer? What is the public notion of this group of professionals whose presence is mostly behind the scene?

After years of practicing design, my mother still tells people I make drawings, needless to say I do not remember the last time I drew. My mother’s inability to differentiate art and design is amongst the many odd situations I’ve encountered when the subject of my profession is in the light of discussion. I’ve had people who showered me with words of admiration, as well those who scanned me from head to toe with eyes of suspicion. This leads me to question how does the public look at designers? Are we being categorized as Martians? Do we still have two eyes and two arms? What are the misconceptions of our kind out there? And why the misconceptions?

Our profession is often categorized as a ‘creative’ profession, which makes one ask the next, what is ‘creativity?’ One who cannot ‘create’ often views the act of ‘creation’ as something magical, something that falls off the sky just as how a prophet receives his message from his Supreme Being. As something that cannot be reasoned or rationalized, and only a fortunate few are blessed with this gift. Nevertheless, how does the ‘creator’ view his/her own act? Can a ‘creator’ attempt to explaining this act of ‘creation’ logically as how a mathematician clarifies an equation? And is it possible for one to learn how to ‘create?’ One needn’t argue that most children are creative; the world around them is still open to their interpretations. Children make free associations by combining the elements known to them in unexpected ways. Could this be what occurs in our mind—as adults—when we create? Simply seeking for the unexpected combinations of the known elements, trying to fill in the knowledge gaps?

Being ‘creative’ is only a part of our design profession, not its entirety. The myth of the designer as the sole creator, laboring away in a secret chamber to announce one day his/her creation to the world, is attractive but far from reality. Design is mostly problem solving. It starts often with the ‘what’—the problem—to end with the ‘whom’—the end-user—. The quest for the appropriate solution is not a solitary act; it is shared and witnessed by many. We can see the designer as a part of a larger mechanism at work; to realize a design successfully a designer needs to be especially skilled in performing his or her presence—in collaborations and in social interactions—with the other parts of the mechanism. The various social interactions might demand us to perform different ‘identities’, because we can find ourselves in all types of situations. There may come a time when we need to perform as a salesman, a psychologist, a diplomat, an entertainer or more. No matter what that identity is, the goal is the same, in search for the most appropriate solution.

What impact does the designer-commissioner relationship has on the outcome of the design? What are the elements of concerns in this relationship?

A commissioner is one who grants a project to be realized, often the initiator of such a project. Naturally, he/she is often the first social interaction a designer is confronted with. Both share the responsibility of keeping this delicate relationship in balance; like a slow dance, each needs to know his and her steps. Having a clear hierarchy in this ‘slow dance’ can be constructive in realizing a project successfully. If all individuals involved in the project have the power of decision, the project can result in a lack of direction. What is profitable to the project is for the commissioner to perform his/her presence as a leader, one who guides a process that fosters free and open exchange of ideas and knowledge. In response, the designer’s presence is one of an attentive visual aide, carefully analyzing the problem in search for the appropriate solution.

However, the terms of the relationship between the designer and the commissioner are not universally alike. Despite the fact that our world today is increasingly global—with advances in technologies that threaten to diminish our cultural differences—, certain elements remain irreplaceable, such as, our social identities. These days, we can learn to speak the same language, to dress alike, to live in similar architecture, to consume the same products; however, to think and act alike demand investigation beyond the surface. Our sense of social identity of who we are is deeply rooted. Every society has its own set of unwritten rules and code of conducts, which defines partly how the designer and the commissioner perform their presences. Our office is a melting pot of three cultures, Asian, American, and European. The social knowledge of these three cultures is a benefit to our interactions with commissioners of different cultural backgrounds.

The Asian designer-commissioner relationship, a generalization:
In Asia, the commissioner is often the ultimate authority. A designer can be seen as an ‘employee’ hired to carry out the task. The designer—as a good Asian—follows the order, mostly prefers not to question ‘why’ and to utter ‘no’ is an unnatural act. I once witnessed an event whereby a commissioner had changed the design to a point that it was no longer recognizable by the maker herself. The commissioner’s ‘redesigned’ version was to be executed, that was the order. The designer sat in her chair, with tears and sympathy from her fellow colleagues; she collected the strength to execute the commissioner’s order. She did not put up a fight for her design, her cultural identity held her back from saying ‘no’ to the commissioner.

The American designer-commissioner relationship, a generalization:
Due to the large size of the economy, stakes are higher in America; books don’t get printed in some thousands but in such quantities that fill up pallets and containers. The higher the economic stake, the safer the design approach becomes. The marketing department plays often an important role in the shaping of design. With their charts and graphs filled with digits on profit and statistic studies; the commissioners are often timid in taking bold gestures in the communicational means. American designers do, nevertheless, receive more artistic space and freedom in exercising their skills than their Asian colleagues. However, partly due to the design firms’ own charts filled with digits on their profits, challenging the commissioner’s decision is not a common act.

The European designer-commissioner relationship, a generalization:
In Europe, to be more precisely the Netherlands, where a clear top to down hierarchy on the work floor is often absent, challenging the decision of the authority is not unusual. Designers are at times treated as equals by the commissioners. Dutch society, in comparison to many other societies, has higher regards for the cultural arts. Although most commissions come from the business sectors, in comparison to other parts of the world there is in the Netherlands a large quantity of governmental subsidized projects. Designers are sometimes encouraged, by means of subsidy, to explore and to be experimental. This helps explain the Netherlands’ current highly praised status on the global design scene. There is however a downside to this, Dutch design at times can drift away to objects of art rather than design, especially projects realized by subsidy funding. Such designs often fail to communicate and cannot find a function within the society apart from posing in magazines of similar nature. When such occurs, the commissioner and the designer are both responsible for the outcome.

What happens when the slow dance takes on an interesting switch? When the designer dances the steps of the commissioner and vice versa.

Both the designer and the commissioner share the responsibility of ensuring a healthy social working environment, which is needed to guide a fruitful discussion. Each is responsible for stimulating enthusiasm in the other. With enthusiasm, comes a light and positive sphere where interaction and exchange of knowledge and ideas can easily surface. Thus, the commissioner thinking along with the designer and vice versa, the designer giving input on the commissioner’s domain.

At our office, we sometimes enter the meeting room with a box of visual proposals that some of our commissioners refer to as ‘the box of goodies’. In the box are carefully constructed prototypes, such as three-dimensional visualizations of our thoughts where the perfect solution has to yet assume its form. These prototypes are mostly for the purpose of illustrating several ideas, for this reason the prototypes are plain and free of excessive visual details, leaving space for imagination. The commissioners, with their expertise, are invited to take part in the design process and to add another ‘interpretation’ to the design other than that of the designer’s. Most commissioners take up the challenge and start to work with the ‘unfinished’ graphic elements, searching for an unexpected combination and thus bearing the role of the designer. It is intriguing for us to witness this process, to observe how the commissioners work with the ingredients and the rules provided by us. The outcome of such excursion is often one that leads to unexpected and thoughtful solutions.

It is at these times—when the designer’s and the commissioner’s role cross path with each other—that the process takes an interesting twist. Our office had designed a series of posters in promoting an Amsterdam high school to schoolers in their last year of elementary education. A colourful chair with a ‘welcome’ sign dominates visually the poster; its concept is significant in two ways.

Firstly, the chair tells the potential applicants, the elementary schoolers, there is a place for them at the ‘Open Day’ and possibly the coming six years of their educational life. Secondly, the ‘welcome chair’ implies that every student at this school is seen and respected as an individual. The concept of the chair was inspired by the philosophy and the positive sphere of the school. In return, the chair became a representation of the essence of the school. Where upon, during the ‘Open Day’ speech to the parents, the school director sat on the stage performing his own presence in a similar chair as one portrayed in the poster, to proclaim the philosophy of the school.

Not all designer-commissioner relationships are sensible; naturally the contrary exists as well. Such as bad chemistry, which can simply arise without an apparent cause as in any human interactions. Or between first time commissioners and first time designers, when each still has yet to learn of his/her role in this social dance. There are as well commissioners whose vision of the final form is all too absolute, so that the designer becomes no more than the executioner of the commissioner’s ‘design’. Or the contrary, designers who hijack the project as a means of their own self-expression. The result of such ill relationships is often a product that is either lack of inspiration or one that ceases to communicate. In such a situation, none is a greater victim than the end-user.

Is the presence of the manufacturer complicating the existing designer-commissioner relationship?

Designers do not ‘make’, not in the literal sense. We rely on the manufacturing industry to materialize our conceptions. Although we do have certain knowledge of the manufacturing process, we are by no means connoisseurs in this domain with all its range of varieties. Thus, like an anxious parent handing the child over to a caregiver, the designer prefers to select this caregiver as one with a great sense of dedication and responsibility. However, in some situations, the manufacturing party can either be appointed by the commissioner or the commissioner assumes full responsibility of the production, such as with most publishing houses equipped with their own team of experts in this domain. There are nevertheless pros and cons to this. The advantage of an in-house production team from the commissioner makes the designers’ job easier; simply handing over the production information and doing a quality control check in the end, with one channel of communication and a clear hierarchy between the commissioner and the manufacturer.

On the other hand, if the designer were to bear full responsibility of the production with a by the commissioner appointed manufacturer, possible complications can arise. To start with, the dedication and the quality of the manufacturer can be uncertain, especially when commissioners base their selection of the appropriate manufacturer on the financial aspects only. Furthermore, the hierarchy and the channel of communication are less clear. The back and forth of this threesome often results in miscommunication and a lack of hierarchy in leadership, which generates complexity in how each performs his/her presence.

In most situations, the designers are responsible for selecting the manufacturing partner. What is notable of this particular designer-manufacturer relationship is—from the point of view of the manufacturers—the designers assume the role of the commissioners, representing them in their absence and bearing the responsibility for the production. Such a role-play can take place when trust is established between the designers and the commissioners.

Manufacturers are often the last in the chain of process; the role they play is crucial, yet their credit is more than often undermined. Perhaps for the reason or the assumption that manufacturers do not ‘create’ or ‘initiate’ but ‘execute’. However, a good manufacturer is one who aids the designer in the search for a solution to mass-produce the design; he/she provides not only the service but the creative use of knowledge as well. It is always a pleasure for our office to partner with a manufacturer who after seeing our design would remark, ‘But if we were to do it this way, then...’ Or ‘Have you thought of trying this...’ The design benefits from a manufacturer who, apart from execution, also questions and participates in the design process.

Precisely how does the designer make his/her decisions in the process of design; what leads him or her to the final design solution? In other words, where are the ideas coming from?

There are many aspects that play a role in how all decisions to a design is conducted or how an idea is conceived. To start with, how designers approach problems are comparable to how doctors set about with patients, and how both arrive at their diagnoses. The designer, like the doctor, listens with care to the stories of the patients (the commissioners); in their stories are important clues for making initial diagnoses, which then direct to possible solutions. These clues set off a series of raw ideas. The ability to detect these clues or keywords is a trained skill that doctors or designers acquired by experience, and by having knowledge on the subject. This is just the first step, the initial diagnoses need to be checked and tested before proceeding onto the next phase.

Creativity, as stated earlier, is only one of the aspects of design. How designers access creativity is partly explained by the ability of making free associations. This ability is a skill largely acquired from training. Thus, one of the tasks of design education is to nurture this skill of free association; there are various methods aimed at achieving this goal. Methods such as brainstorming, mind mapping, Six Thinking Hats, and more are designed to train the mind to let loose, to challenge the status quo in making the next step.

There is as well inspiration to speak of. Inspiration and idea are all around us if we know where to seek and how to recognize it. If one were to look in the common place, the visual outcome can be expected as the expected. On the other hand, if one were to search for ideas in domains that are either unexplored or unrelated to the researched subject, and to translate the finding back into the research, one has a better chance of arriving at a surprising result. For instance, hardware stores or a walk in the park might be better sources for ideas than the ones printed in design books. Flipping through design books limits the mind to the visual solutions of the others. It is better to use design books for the purpose of having knowledge on what is already out there, thus, similar or identical design solutions can be prevented—if that poses a problem—. And the commissioner can be protected from producing a product that already exists in the market.

After the conception of a design is settled, the aspect of the visual surface treatment comes into play. ‘Beauty’ is an argumentative and controversial subject. How beauty is defined is neither universal nor timeless; there are social, cultural aspects involved, as well as, personal tastes and generational differences. At some point in the design process, a designer will need to synchronize aesthetic, editorial content, and functionality. At our office, what we keep in mind when balancing these three aspects is that the latter, functionality, is of our primary concern. The role of aesthetic is to attract, if necessary, and to radiate value. Aesthetic can even emerge from functionality, an object that functions well both in its content and in its mechanism can start to look beautiful. Being subjective, aesthetic does not have a distinct set of rules to follow, apart from generalizations such as refined proportions. Functionality, on the other hand, can be guided by the Gestalt Laws on visual information; with the basic principles such as simplicity in forms, clarity in editorial organization, recognizable structure, clear hierarchy and so on; to help the users at better accessing the design.

Another aspect that effects our design decision is the user’s ability to comprehend and process the content. The typography and layout of the scheme our office has created for the ‘YUTPA framework’, is an example of where the user’s ability to process this complex and varied information plays an important role in shaping the visual outcome. The scheme’s complex content calls for an as clear and as visually accessible structure as possible. There are 16 different elements presented in this scheme. The editorial decision by the writer to group these 16 elements into four chunks is an appropriate one. The reason being, there is a limit to the capacity of the working memory of an adult; seven elements is the maximum. To make it easier or faster to comprehend, these seven elements can be further grouped into chunks. In the visual structure of the ‘YUTPA framework’, the colour and placement of the four chunks support this knowledge. Each of the four chunks in the scheme contains four elements; for the readers to comprehend the data and to avoid confusion, it would have been better if the number of elements in each chunk were unique numbers instead of the number four, which is identical to the number of chunks.

Do the end-users have a presence in the design process? Being the ultimate client, what impact do the end-users have on the design?

It is a peculiar notion the end-users of the design will mostly remain unknown to the designers. They are anonymous and their appearances concealed. The knowledge of where, when, and how the end-users receive the design is often not at the designers’ disposal. Although we, the designers, may observe several individuals interact with the design—mostly through marketing testing on the target groups—, but to witness them all simultaneously to have a survey or a clear picture, is unthinkable. The existence of the end-users is without a doubt; they may come in the tens, hundreds, or tens of thousands and in different ages and genders. Who they are is defined by the nature of the project; studies may at times be compiled on their behaviors and likings. How the end-users are to react and interact with the design is the primary concern of those involved in the creation process.

The relationship a designer has with the end-users is, in general, a one-way relationship. The conception of the end-users is omnipresent, regardless of the fact their physical presence in the design process is mostly absent. For every project, we are to draw up in our mind hypothetical end-users base on the general characteristics of the target group. These hypothetical end-users are to perform their presence in our subconscious, over where they are to be the devil’s advocate to our design decisions through out the process.

Besides that the end-users do not make the decisions, they are presented with the design in its final completion. There are, however, ways of involving the end-users to participate in or to witness the presence of a design process. Our office had attempted in achieving this with the design of a poetry booklet. For the design to be in its completion, a circular silhouette representing the ‘sun’ had yet to make its physical mark on the half title page (the first page). This was to be done in several ways. The end-users could either lift the cover slightly to let in sunlight through the circular die-cut on the cover, or by rubbing with the finger against the circular die-cut hole; the grease darkens the ink and forms the missing silhouette. Naturally, there will be end-users who either overlook or are insensitive to this design element. When there is no participation from the end-users, the circular silhouette of the ‘sun’ can be conceived by another factor: time. Over time, the chemical reaction of being exposed to sunlight will result in bleach of the ink on paper, thus, the presence of sunlight leaving behind its mark to complete the design.

How does a designer look at the work of his or her fellow colleagues? What are the issues of concern?

‘Good’ design or ‘bad’ design, there is not a checklist with a set of criteria for making this judgment. Furthermore, what one declares as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is based on a set of variables such as personal taste or for the moment itself. Judging the level of ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ of a design is a mental exercise performed by the designer when witnessing the work of another; apart from that, there is as well the story behind the design. The story of its editorial content, its design decision, its production journey, and the relationship of those involved are aspects that at one point or another has had their effect on the final visual outcome.

A visually trained and experienced designer is able to perform a visual autopsy of another’s work in a matter of seconds or minutes. This quick deconstruction is composed of series of analyses to see the underlying editorial structure, the story told, and the visual measures that were taken to evoke the narrative effect. When we witness the work of another, we are being presented with the final solution. We dissect the steps made by another designer—in mutual collaboration with his/her commissioner and various manufacturers—to arrive at the beginning, which is—in fact—the design process in reverse. We are to end at the beginning, where the problem stated by the commissioner should be revealed. If the design does not imply a problem, it is either a bad visual solution or a design that is unneeded and, therefore, a ‘bad’ design.

Self-witnessing is vital to human social interaction. So what happens when a designer fails to witness his/her own presence? And for a designer, is this self-witnessing to be present at all times?

To be engaged in a situation where one is to interact responsibly, challenges one to witness one’s own presence. The sense of identity and the awareness of one’s own self guide our presence in human interactions. For a designer, this witnessing of presence occurs on two fronts. Socially speaking, the presence of ‘self’ is essential to the designer’s interactions with the others; this self-witnessing may be effected by the gender, the cultural, and social identity of the designer. On the other hand, design itself asks of the designer to eliminate his/her own ‘self’. Design is not about the designer, nor is it about the commissioner or the manufacturer; it is about how the problem is solved for its end-users. It is the designer’s fundamental responsibility to ensure this. Therefore it is the gender, the cultural, and the social identity of the end-user that are of relevance, and not of the designer’s. In the pursuit for the appropriate design solution, the designer is to be a responsible witness by being his/her own devil’s advocate, to be unselfish and invisible.

Eliminating one’s ‘self’ is a challenge, after all, we started out in this world with the ‘I’; it is one of the first words we could utter. The world swirled around us, with our mothers and fathers industriously tending to our every need. We were the center of the universe until one of the other ‘I’ brutally snatched away our toy from the sand box. When the ‘self’ is not extracted, designers can make too many assumptions based on their own behaviour and thinking. Such prevent designers from anticipating other possible situations of how the end-users might interact with the design. For instance, the feeling of disorientation and frustration is common for users of websites. Many websites fail in the basic principles of providing a clear overview of the ‘whom’, the ‘what’, and the ‘where’ of a site; partly due to designers who make too many assumptions on the user’s behaviour, unaware the ‘making’ is not the same as the ‘using’. The hypothetical end-users they have in mind often resemble themselves.

Apart from the call for designers to be unselfish, there may come a time when it is appropriate for the design itself to take on the same act, to be invisible in able to function. Take the design of a novel as an example. A reader has only one interest, which is to read, to plunge himself or herself entirely into the written world. There should be no obstacles that interrupt and divert the reader’s attention. The typography, in other words, is to be invisible for the printed words to come to life. The job of the typographer is to ensure this presence of invisibility by eliminating typographic flows such as widely spaced words, long text lines, small type sizes, illegible typefaces, a page ending with a hyphenated word, and much more. The typography of a novel is designed to appear as ‘not designed’; like an invisible machine at work.

In the past decades, there has been too much media spotlight on the ‘creators’—such as books that put designers on the pedestal—. This may be one of the causes for the misconceptions of this profession. To be your own witness is also to have a sense of responsibility towards one’s duty. The nature of our duty places our presence behind the stage; the performer is the design. A successful design is to perform on its own without its ‘creator’. Its ‘creator’, as in other professions, does not work with a magic wand but with earnest collaborations and with perseverance for problem solving. Most great designs are the results of such. If we, the designers, were to put our egos aside and leave the stage, the design could get a better chance to proof itself.