“How do you pair the work you are going to do to your position?” This was the first question Francisco Laranjo raised in our guest tutorial session. Ideological positioning, political positioning, and confronting the realities, what is my contribution in the future?
To investigate the topic of “value” and “consumerism” is like peeling the onion. The subject itself become more relevant when it’s textual. In my work from unit two I explored random through pixelating, value of art through manipulating, and consumerism through digitizing. Francisco suggested in order to move forward with my topic, I need to open up the subject even more. Who’s your work directed to? Are you making any comparisons? Are there different ways of representation? What are the questions you posting yourself? These are the questions he asked me during our dialogue.
Reflect on the conversation with the guest tutor, I engaged another conversation with Ronald Tau, who is a graphic designer base in Toronto and Beijing, about how he thinks of consumerism. He sees consumerism as a foundational bedrock in almost all social, economical, personal, and communal decision-making and actions. I totally agree with him. Today’s society is built on the fabric of economic transactions, it drives almost all our needs and wants. As someone who has experienced both the western and eastern cultured, Ronald thinks there tends to be less intentional criticism of consumerism in Asian cultures. There seems to be much more acceptance and strategic leveraging of consumerist needs and wants with life goals, higher endeavors, etc. In the west, there seems to be more systemic education of challenging, or at least re-thinking, consumerism’s role in our lives. As with most issues, different cultures tend to have different strategies when dealing with ideologies, and consumerism is no different.
Me and Ronald both thinks designers are employed for communication, and by extension, to assist in the act of selling something. I think this is why it’s important that a designer remains conscious of what he/she/they are contributing to society in what way. Are we creating more excess and generating more unnecessary wants? Are we creating more problems are trying our best to be part of the solution? Are we using our abilities to divert attention to issues that truly deserve attention?
When talking about the trap of consumerism, we both agree that designers are certainly playing a crucial role in furthering the trap of consumerism. However, there are always two sides to a coin. Designers ought to evaluate who they are creating designs for, what messages they are pushing, intentionally or not, through their designs. As designers, we must seek to choose who we speak for, and make tradeoffs to work with the right clients pushing the right messages in society. Every problem is multifaceted. We must also as designers seek to educate ourselves as broadly as possible, if we are stuck microscopically in only matters of design, we lose connection to the world at large and the problems that truly deserve attention, and when design is created for design’s sake, it will then more often than not contribute nothing but contribute to consumerism.