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<div id="content"><h1
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id="what-do-graphic-designers-do-all-day-and-why-do-they-do-it-and-what-does-graphic-design-even-mean1">What
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do graphic designers do all day and why do they do it and what does
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“graphic design” even mean?!????!!1!?</h1>
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<p>I cut my thumb so every time I type i can feel it in my nerve
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endings. Not true, it’s my left thumb so I don’t type with it. Not true,
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I feel it anyway. Why are most of the function keys on the left of the
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keyboard. What’s so functional about pressing buttons. Stephen Kerr is a
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designer and musician based in. Have you ever loved an instrument? The
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Ctrl key broke like four times since I moved here. I have one more
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replacement because I bought a bunch of them but at some point I gave up
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and use an external keyboard. I dunno I’m more confused than ever. It
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was something to do with dreams and working. It’s the middle of the
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night I’m writing this on my phone. If I had a dream this is when I
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would be writing it. The memory is fuzzy: either I don’t remember or it
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didn’t make sense in the first place. It was something to do with
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fuzziness and memory no wait. Phones don’t have keyboards in real life
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third doesn’t make sense. I’m trying to type but I don’t think I can get
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it on the way to the office for the weekend and I think it was a good
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idea to do it and I was thinking about you and I was thinking of you and
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the kids in the morning and I was thinking about you and I was in the
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same place as a friend of mine and I was in the car park and we were in
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the car park and we were in the car park and we were in the car park and
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we were in the</p>
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<p><img src="imagename.png"
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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." />
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<img src="imagename.png"
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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." />
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<img src="imagename.png"
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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" />
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<img src="imagename.png"
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alt="Collective performative dream re-enactment at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, Netherlands. February 5th 2024." />
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<img src="imagename.png"
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alt="Collective performative dream re-enactment at Art Meets Radical Openness, Linz, Austria. March 11th 2024." />
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<img src="imagename.png"
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alt="Keyboard of things designers have said." /> <img
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src="imagename.png"
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alt="keylogging research, recording the buttons a graphic designer presses while working" />
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<img src="imagename.png"
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alt="do you ever dream about work? online research" /></p>
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<p>An investigation into the practices and ideologies of graphic design
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in 2023–24 though practice-led artistic research and ethnographic
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methods. I held graphic design in my hands using ethnography, toolmaking
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and performance as research methods. I examined how a designer spends
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their time in everyday life, this designer, me, as well as you, what are
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we doing? What are our worldviews, belief systems, mythologies and
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ideologies?</p>
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<p><em>What do graphic designers do all day and why do they do it and
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what does “graphic design” even mean?!????!!1!?</em> is an assessment of
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what the term “graphic design” means to its practitioners today. Through
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experimental ethnographic research methods and the development of
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reflexive tools, the project highlights and questions the boundaries
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that exist around this apparent category. The research focuses on my own
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practices as well as other people and groups that identify with “graphic
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designer” as a label. The research was both conducted by and shared with
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interested parties in the form of the tools themselves, as well as a
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series of performances. There is no strict distinction between the
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research and its publication. The tools were released in an iterative
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cycle throughout the process of the project, and the research is
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conducted through the performative use and development of these
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tools.</p>
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<p>This research is carried out in three intersecting methods:
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experimental ethnographic research, reflexive tools, and performative
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research. Keylogging, performance of personal work habits, interviews
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about the manual work of “immaterial labourers”, and dream analysis are
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combined in order to uncover less obvious and less discussed aspects of
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what a designer is and does in their daily life, as entry points to
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their worldviews, belief systems, mythologies or ideologies. The methods
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were developed in an iterative process that reflected on findings from
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the previous prototypes. The research took into account its own
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publication as part of one process.</p>
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<ol type="1">
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<li><p>Experimental ethnographic research methods: I documented my own
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practices as a graphic designer for nine months. Sometimes based on
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technical observations of my interaction with my tools, primarily my
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laptop computer and the software on it. I conducted interviews with
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designers. I recorded the interviews. I had prompts to open the
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discussion such as reading material and weird tools to try with them. I
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will carry out auto-ethnographic research using experimental methods
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such as mouse tracking and unusual annotation methods. I shared the
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results of this research as a series of interactive publications (tools)
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with a small but selected audience of people who are involved in these
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processes and who would benefit from it.</p></li>
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<li><p>Reflexive tools: Software and hardware tools that explore the
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boundaries of “graphic design” as a category. For example at the
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boundaries between graphic design and other disciplines. At the
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boundaries between work and play, or between design and art. These tools
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malfunction in order to explore what it even means to be working. The
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tools aim to highlight what a graphic designer does by interacting with
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their user in ways that the designers standard tools do not (for example
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an interface to connect musical instruments to the designers workflow),
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or conversely by amplifying how the designer usually interacts with
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their tools (for example a keylogger to celebrate and focus on the use
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of the keyboard). The tools are digital in nature and involve software
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and hardware interventions into the graphic designers work.</p></li>
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<li><p>Performative research: I see all the methods above as having a
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performative element. For example the ethnographic-slash-performative
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act of answering my emails on a large screen in front of an audience,
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research which was carried out as part of this project at Leeszaal,
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Rotterdam West on November 7th 2023. By showing directly the work
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practices of graphic designers to an audience, or their interaction with
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the tools mentioned above, I am publishing through performance the daily
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activities of designers and my aim is to show these practices without
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the conventional lenses they are seen through. To be contrasted for
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example with how graphic design is presented on behance.net or in a
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bookshop, this performative approach will highlight the mythologies and
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practices of the graphic designer.</p></li>
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</ol>
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<p>I made this to explore why designers make design, based on Clifford
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Geertz’s ideas of why humans make culture: “to affirm it, defend it,
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celebrate it, justify it and just plain bask in it” (Geertz, 1973). This
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exploration will also involve less constructive actions like
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participating, dissociating, questioning, protesting, destroying and
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disregarding. There is a disconnect between the narratives about
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“graphic design” and the effects it is known to have on its audiences,
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practitioners, and society in more general terms. I am attempting to
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“loosen the object” of graphic design (Berlant, 2022), to make the
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definition less defined and maybe more useful or easier to engage with.
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This shit could be better. Its urgent for the people being exploited by
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it, to break the inequalities it serves to maintain, to expose what it
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hides, to improve things that are definitely working but not in a good
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way. Design can hide and reproduce inequalities in its output and also
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dominate workers in its practices. This research starts primarily from
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the bodies and actions of the practitioners so will primarily engage
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with the effects on and by these bodies.</p>
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