The Essay Choice

November 28th 2020

I decided prior to this that my essay question would be "What role does graphic design play in changing culture?". It was really through process of elimination I guess, I narrowed it down to 2/3 questions. The more I thought of it, I did not want to do something too political (The women in design question) as I felt that would be a little too difficult and political for me to tackle, especially since I wrote about propaganda posters last sem. So i settled with this question as I felt it could be truly interesting and something with alot of resources for me to find.

I did some research on graphic design and culture, which of course led me to a widespan of different things as culture can be anything. So, I quickly realised it did not specify what culture I was to talk about, which made things all the more interesting to me. For a bit I thought of talking about culture as in culture of a country/races and such but as I searched for that I stumbled upon ‘Look and image: The branding of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games’ and no offense, it probably is super relevant and interesting to some, but I found it dead boring and due to that, I decided to find something more interesting other than culture of a country/races, even though I know it can actually be really interesting to talk about, it was just not where my head space was at the time. 

I thought of what graphic design really is and what kind of cultures it affects, which then led me to think of corporations and social issues and how graphic design helps them. I then listed down the questions I wanted to ask for these topics without going into much research for it as I figured I could do that another day.

Questions:

- Does culture influence graphic design? Or does graphic design influence culture? Both?

- What and how has graphic design done to help society in creating new norms?

- Is graphic design important to the world? And why?

- What is ‘changing culture’? Who has the power to change it? How does culture change? Why

- Is it really just the “commercial line”? Has it always been just the “commercial line”?

- Is it always a good change? Do graphic designers ever promote “bad” things/ change things for the worse?

- Are graphic designers irrelevant now? Will they be irrelevant in a few more years?

Extra Notes From Lecturer:

- Banks (and plenty other companies) with their "environmental friendlines" (and other Philanthropy acts)  that actually is just to deduct taxes.

- Where are designers stand on social reconstruction/building society. Good? Bad? Non existent? For example, smoking is bad but ads of it in the past hid that.

- Do designers just give people what they want to see? Or do they alter peoples mindset/beliefs?

Bibliography:

How Do Graphic Designers Affect the World Around You? Holly Breslin Design, March 2019.

Importance of Graphic Design: 7 Reasons with Examples. Wowbix, July 2019.

Look and image: The branding of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, n.d.

Mika. The Importance of Graphic Design in Today’s Society. DesignyUp, June 2018.

Robelo, Paola J. (2014) Zoom in to the Layers of Graphic Design. An Honors Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for Honors in Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art. Georgia, United States: Georgia Southern University.

Social Responsibility. Ethics in Graphic Design, n.d

The role of graphic design in international development. ico-D. May 2010.

UKEssays (November 2018). How Graphic Design Affects Culture Cultural Studies Essay.

What Makes Graphic Design Important? Chrysalis Communications, June 2014.

Why Is Graphic Design Important? How This Field Shapes the World. Designrfix, October 2019