Clean New World: Culture, Politics, and Graphic Design
July 1st, 2004by Maud Lavin
ISBN: 0262621703
This book a collection of essays, each of which considers what design says or doesn’t say, and why that may be. Lavin’s concerns range from 1920s German magazine layouts to mid-1990s web writing projects. She positions designers as would-be/could-be cultural critics, and investigates how it was or might be possible for designers to pull this off without biting the hand that feeds them — she does not fail to recognize graphic design is, most of the time, a client-dependent and product-driven endeavor.
I found Lavin was more “on” in some essays than in others. I didn’t find the web-writing chapter to be as cool or revolutionary as she did (or as much about design) but that may be because this type of material becomes dated so fast, and because I probably know more about web design now than she did when she wrote about it. Similarly, I am not convinced that getting people to understand the limitations of software agents is or should be primarily a visual and hence graphic design issue.
On the other hand, her points about how graphic design has been used in the abortion debate — to limit the terms of debate — were spot-on. Her consideration of the roles of women in graphic design, from inclusion of an essay on ringl + pit to providing space for contemporary women working as designers, were also valuable. Lavin is unafraid to say what she really thinks, from questioning why the commercial work of “fine artists” is given short shrift when considering the body of their work, to disagreeing with a design hero such as Paul Rand.
This book is different from traditional academic approaches in that it is more concerned with real-world practice than with theory, and I really appreciated that. [I also appreciated the more standard academic book trappings: clear footnotes, decent index, and well-labelled illustrations.] Because Lavin doesn’t divorce theory from practice, she was successful in getting me to question the motive of the messages I receive in advertising, and to help me in thinking more critically about the role of design and designers in visual culture.
Lavin asks good questions about visual communication. Recommended, and for people with a particular interest in graphic design, visual culture, and/or advertising, highly recommended.
