Design has a complex relationship with the practice of politics
Design has a complex relationship with the practice of politics and is affected by policy in a myriad of ways. This brief overview will discuss a number of ways in which design and politics interact.
The role designers take in the service of political ideologies is complex and varied. All political forces in democratic and nondemocratic states make significant use of the persuasive potential of communication design and the power of the visual image to persuade populations of a particular political idea and a vision of the future, and to encourage them to identify themselves as members belonging to a particular communal project.
The classic examples of this are the right and left wing graphics of the Soviet era (Agit Prop), the Maoist Cultural Revolution in China, the Italian Fascists and the most notorious and comprehensive political design and branding campaign in history that of the German Nazi party through the 1930s and 40s.
In all political campaigns the assessment of color schemes, typography, graphic icons, and TV presentations, through to the hairstyles, glasses, and clothes worn by the politicians, the tone of a politician’s voice and so on has become a quasi-science, employing psychologists and designers in the quest to present a perfectly packaged message. In postindustrial democracies, political campaigns are almost entirely designed events with less and less left to chance. The intense scrutiny applied by the media and the rise of gossip-reporting has fuelled this development in Western (and Western-style) democracies.
Increasingly, governments in many countries have promoted design as an integral dimension of economic growth and social policy. In emerging economies such as India and China, and before them Japan and Korea, design has been identified as an essential means for economies to emerge from their positions as sources of cheap goods, designed by and manufactured for foreign companies, to one where they develop indigenous brands competing in global markets.
Design has proved critical in this endeavor, integrating products, visual identities, and marketing, and exporting this local design and production to world markets. As a consequence, an increasing number of countries are investing vigorously and enthusiastically in design education, because design is seen as such a critical dimension of economic competitiveness.
In the economies that emerged as world powers through the dominance of their heavy industries, this shift to manufacturing offshore has seen their great industrial heartlands decline and become “rust belts.” Increasingly, the technological innovations of these countries media technology and integrated global transportation systems primarily have resulted in companies being able to exploit cheaper workforces in poorer countries.
The resultant impact on the working class areas in these now “postindustrial” countries has seen a number of governments try to revitalize old manufacturing communities and sites with the essential ingredients of this new postindustrial economy. The promotion and introduction of “culture industries” into these locations is one dimension of this and recognizes that culture and creativity are essential components of an innovative society. Global competition itself has placed a very great emphasis on a company’s and a country’s ability to innovate.
Art, design, and culture have been promoted and at times relocated to the old ship-building, steel-working, and textile manufacturing cities, such as Manchester and Glasgow in the United Kingdom and in various parts of Europe and Australia, precisely to address both the consequences of the decline of the old manufacturing era, and the need for different capabilities in the “new” economic structures emerging in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Singapore is a good case study of this trend. It made its wealth from being extremely efficient, and an economically and politically safe gateway into and from Asia.
The Singapore government realized that both in order for corporations to establish headquarters in the country and to safeguard Singapore’s own economic future, culture and innovation had to be consciously fostered and developed through an integrated government initiative. They have invested heavily in art and design education, galleries, museums and performing arts centers have been built, and design research and development partnerships with brands such as BMW have been secured. This is probably one of the most instrumental examples of a broader worldwide trend. In a similar vein the “design icon” has also seen certain industrial centers revitalized.
Commonly, this is through architectural icons with the clearest example being the economic revitalization through tourism of the industrial town of Bilbao in Spain since the opening of the Frank Gehry designed Guggenheim Museum. The overwhelming attention and branding that this radical and (importantly) photogenic building form has provided for this otherwise relatively overlooked town is mimicked in other cities tempted to use architecture as a formof civic branding.
The practice of design is shaped directly and indirectly by government policies in many ways. While traditionally the only designer that required accreditation in order to be licensed and practice has been the architect, there is a steady increase in the “legislation” of the other design practices. This is usually in the form of registration rather than accreditation meaning that anyone can practice in the field, but registration provides a form of legitimacy to those educated in “approved” programs as a means to help clients discern the standing of designers and thus to choose from among them.
Government shifts in policy, from laws determining city zoning or regulating environmental impacts, to laws designed to protect people from an almost limitless range of potential dangers, to policies governing written-language usage (such as the requirement for all communication to be in multiple languages), immediately affect and provide new opportunities for designers.
A new environmental law, for instance, that requires manufacturers to be responsible for the packaging material of their products, will immediately alter the incentives around the way products are presented and marketed. Designers then have to shift their designs to take account and advantage of such changes. Indeed, changing government policy is directly responsible for generating a great deal of designers’ work.
Lastly, it could be argued that design and politics share a certain conceptual approach to their respective activities. While there are very obvious differences between design and politics (politics being principally for the creation and amendment of policy and law, and design the production of artifacts and systems) they do operate under similar constraints. Both these practices are essentially about the future: they both “make and shape” the world and they have to make decisions about this future within a predetermined configuration of what is possible.
Both design and politics structure and posit possible lifestyles, in the larger sense of this term, and, in so doing, both practices have to negotiate a range of seemingly irreconcilable cultural, social, environmental, technological, and economic forces (Wicked Problems). In different ways, these practices have to negotiate this complexity and make decisions on a very small and seemingly banal and local level, as well as ones of significant complexity, consequence, and reach.