If I adapt Benjamin’s demand for the ‘Author as Producer’ for graphic design practice, the call can become one of the Producer as Author: S/he is already ‘in solidarity’ with the producer (we already produce!), and may easily avail of ‘technical progress’ for ‘the foundation of her/his political progress’ (2005: 775). ‘Independent and oppositional cultural production’ as van Toorn suggests, rather than forming a new dogma, requires an approach ‘that makes it possible for mediating intellectuals, like designers, to leave the beaten path, to organise their opposition, and to articulate that in the mediated display’ (van Toorn 2009: 104). By taking up the tools available and familiar to me I am able to speak of the culture within which I operate. Lupton (1998) goes some of the way towards this in observing ‘Production is a concept embedded in the history of modernism. Avant-garde artists and designers treated the techniques of manufacture not as neutral, transparent means to an end but as devices equipped with cultural meaning and aesthetic character.’103 103. Lupton, E. (2011) ‘The Designer as Producer’, Graphic Design: Now in Production Minneapolis: Walker Arts Centre In Aguirre’s interview104 104. Aguirre, P. (2022) ‘Writing on the Wall: Interview with Experimental Jetset’ Available at: https://www.academia.edu/73248498/Writingonthewall_Jet_Set_Peio_Aguirre_ENG [ Accessed 3 June 2024] with Experimental Jetset he refers to the ‘technical image’ in which processes are expressly used in order to expose their ‘material base’ (Experimental Jetset). For Experimental Jetset this type of usage is motivated by a mistrust in the image derived from their reading of Debord’s ‘The Society of the Spectacle’, and in an effort to demystify image representation in the production of a V-Effect. This ‘technical progress’ (Benjamin) then can equip the graphic designer with the means to move beyond the specialisation of intellectual production (Benjamin, 2005: 775).
People need to derive income through practice (it’s a profession), and of course I recognise that I have been lucky, starting as I did at a time when it was possible to get by (mostly) making work in which I was culturally invested. During the course my writing ideas have naturally spilled into my teaching, and I have put these to the test, running studio projects which ask the learner to produce from an insider (emic) perspective. If students see themselves within a culture, and are producing for that culture, they come to recognise the value of their insight, and are naturally invested in project outcomes. If we undo the assumption that a graphic design education must make graduates ready to enter professionalised practice, and instead ask of them what kind of practice they wish to enter into, we introduce the hope that they can in time change professionalised culture. While it may seem naive to suggest an undoing of a professional practice, Pater finds that ‘the profession is a form of protection and exclusion, limiting the access to knowledge, the access to the means of production, and the influence over discourse.’ (2021: 334). This limits not just what may be said, but by whom. Having arrived in this situation it seems incumbent on me (as graphic designer and educator) to attempt its undoing. van Toorn asserts a ‘political approach’ ‘that, unlike the dominant neoliberal form of capitalism, is directed at real social problems’ (van Toorn 2009: 104), but I think this must be broadened in the sense that all actions are political, and visual communication in particular is capable of such impact that an understanding of these mechanisms is in itself a real social concern.