do graphic designers do all day and why do they do it and what does
“graphic design” even mean?!????!!1!?</h1>
<p>An investigation into the practices and ideologies of graphic design
in 2023–24 though practice-led artistic research and ethnographic
methods. I held graphic design in my hands using ethnography, toolmaking
and performance as research methods. I examined how a designer spends
their time in everyday life, this designer, me, as well as you, what are
we doing? What are our worldviews, belief systems, mythologies and
ideologies?</p>
<p><em>What do graphic designers do all day and why do they do it and
what does “graphic design” even mean?!????!!1!?</em> is an assessment of
what the term “graphic design” means to its practitioners today. Through
experimental ethnographic research methods and the development of
reflexive tools, the project highlights and questions the boundaries
that exist around this apparent category. The research focuses on my own
practices as well as other people and groups that identify with “graphic
designer” as a label. The research was both conducted by and shared with
interested parties in the form of the tools themselves, as well as a
series of performances. There is no strict distinction between the
research and its publication. The tools were released in an iterative
cycle throughout the process of the project, and the research is
conducted through the performative use and development of these
tools.</p>
<p>This research is carried out in three intersecting methods:
experimental ethnographic research, reflexive tools, and performative
research. Keylogging, performance of personal work habits, interviews
about the manual work of “immaterial labourers”, and dream analysis are
combined in order to uncover less obvious and less discussed aspects of
what a designer is and does in their daily life, as entry points to
their worldviews, belief systems, mythologies or ideologies. The methods
were developed in an iterative process that reflected on findings from
the previous prototypes. The research took into account its own
publication as part of one process.</p>
<oltype="1">
<li><p>Experimental ethnographic research methods: I documented my own
practices as a graphic designer for nine months. Sometimes based on
technical observations of my interaction with my tools, primarily my
laptop computer and the software on it. I conducted interviews with
designers. I recorded the interviews. I had prompts to open the
discussion such as reading material and weird tools to try with them. I
will carry out auto-ethnographic research using experimental methods
such as mouse tracking and unusual annotation methods. I shared the
results of this research as a series of interactive publications (tools)
with a small but selected audience of people who are involved in these
processes and who would benefit from it.</p></li>
<li><p>Reflexive tools: Software and hardware tools that explore the
boundaries of “graphic design” as a category. For example at the
boundaries between graphic design and other disciplines. At the
boundaries between work and play, or between design and art. These tools
malfunction in order to explore what it even means to be working. The
tools aim to highlight what a graphic designer does by interacting with
their user in ways that the designers standard tools do not (for example
an interface to connect musical instruments to the designers workflow),
or conversely by amplifying how the designer usually interacts with
their tools (for example a keylogger to celebrate and focus on the use
of the keyboard). The tools are digital in nature and involve software
and hardware interventions into the graphic designers work.</p></li>
<li><p>Performative research: I see all the methods above as having a
performative element. For example the ethnographic-slash-performative
act of answering my emails on a large screen in front of an audience,
research which was carried out as part of this project at Leeszaal,
Rotterdam West on November 7th 2023. By showing directly the work
practices of graphic designers to an audience, or their interaction with
the tools mentioned above, I am publishing through performance the daily
activities of designers and my aim is to show these practices without
the conventional lenses they are seen through. To be contrasted for
example with how graphic design is presented on behance.net or in a
bookshop, this performative approach will highlight the mythologies and
practices of the graphic designer.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I made this to explore why designers make design, based on Clifford
Geertz’s ideas of why humans make culture: “to affirm it, defend it,
celebrate it, justify it and just plain bask in it” (Geertz, 1973). This
exploration will also involve less constructive actions like
participating, dissociating, questioning, protesting, destroying and
disregarding. There is a disconnect between the narratives about
“graphic design” and the effects it is known to have on its audiences,
practitioners, and society in more general terms. I am attempting to
“loosen the object” of graphic design (Berlant, 2022), to make the
definition less defined and maybe more useful or easier to engage with.
This shit could be better. Its urgent for the people being exploited by
it, to break the inequalities it serves to maintain, to expose what it
hides, to improve things that are definitely working but not in a good
way. Design can hide and reproduce inequalities in its output and also
dominate workers in its practices. This research starts primarily from
the bodies and actions of the practitioners so will primarily engage
with the effects on and by these bodies.</p>
<p><imgsrc="imagename.png"
alt="The result of a tool that connects musical instruments to a pen plotter, using an arduino module. I created this tool to cross the boundary of “graphic design” as a discipline separate from music." />
<imgsrc="imagename.png"
alt="A performative tool that measures the laziness of the designer as they work and graphs it on a pen plotter. The less the designer uses the mouse, the longer a line the pen plotter will draw." />
<imgsrc="imagename.png"
alt="A performative autoethnographic research of graphic design practices, in this case answering emails using Google’s Gmail service. Leeszaal, Rotterdam West, November 7th 2023" />
<imgsrc="imagename.png"
alt="Collective performative dream re-enactment at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, Netherlands. February 5th 2024." />
<imgsrc="imagename.png"
alt="Collective performative dream re-enactment at Art Meets Radical Openness, Linz, Austria. March 11th 2024." />
<imgsrc="imagename.png"
alt="Keyboard of things designers have said." /> <img
src="imagename.png"
alt="keylogging research, recording the buttons a graphic designer presses while working" />
<imgsrc="imagename.png"
alt="do you ever dream about work? online research" /></p>
