Written by Lambert Strether of Corrente.
I’ve been involved in design for a significant portion of my working life. So when I found CAPS LOCK in a bookstore (subtitled “How Capitalism Captured Graphic Design and How to Escape It”), I had taken the packthread test and passed, so I picked it up. (I think the all-caps cover caught my eye, or rather, it grabbed me; perhaps it was attraction through repulsion). I can recommend this book to any designer, graphic artist, or anyone interested in the primary use case for design these days: product distribution.
Capitalism cannot exist without coins, banknotes, documents, graphics, interfaces, branding, and advertising. A work of art created (in part) by a graphic designer.
Ruben Pater is a Dutch designer based in Amsterdam.
[He] I trained as a graphic designer and work in the fields of journalism, activism, education, and graphic design under the name Untold Stories…. His first book, The Politics of Design (2016), has become an inspirational resource for design students, artists, and visual communicators in a variety of locations and contexts. Eye on Design writes: “This is the kind of literature that should be handed out to every student on the first day of art school, along with all of Albers, Berger, and Benjamin.”[,] And Sontag forms the backbone of the design curriculum, an up-to-date assessment of the landscape that all modern visual practitioners must pass through. ”
Pater’s CAPS LOCK (2021) is a meaty 552 pages, complete with notes, bibliography, and image credits. (A book with quotes from Sylvia Federici and Walter Benjamin on its title page is off to a great start.) These are the central themes of the book: 7-9:
This book seeks to understand how graphic design and capitalism have become trapped in an endless loop of creation and destruction. There are two central problems with CAPS LOCK. First, to trace historically how graphic design and capitalism became intertwined, and second, to develop a kind of vision of a graphic design practice that could exist without capitalism. The aim is to explore what strategies might be offered to separate graphic design from capitalism, with the intended result of
and:
Design serves capitalism by devising abstract forms (infographics, money, corporate identity, branding) that hide the fact that the “economy” is a collection of social partnerships between people . [see under “commodity fetishism”]. Therefore, as a critique of design itself, this book does not follow the method of design theory, which focuses on the designed thing. Capitalism is manifested not only in the appearance of posters, books, and websites, but also in how they are produced, where they are published, and how they are sold. The first part explains how the work of graphic designers strengthens capitalism and economic relations. The second part explores how designers themselves are also economic actors.
One positive review (of which there are many) tells us about the structure of the book. Design and culture:
In Caps Lock, Ruben Pater provides a comprehensive and chronological history of the long and complex entanglement between graphic design and capitalism. He defines it as “an economic system built on three fundamental principles: everything should be privately owned and all production should be done for the private benefit.” Markets and people work for wages.”[1]. He accomplished this by carefully examining the 12 evolving roles that designers have played throughout history. It begins with ancient Mesopotamian scribes who kept financial records and ends with interviews with contemporary design activists and activist groups around the world who are trying to work ethically within a capitalist system. He features designers as engineers, branders, salespeople, workers, entrepreneurs, amateurs, educators, hackers, futurists, and philanthropists. The list of roles may seem extensive, but it accurately covers the many hats that designers wear throughout their careers, if not in a single day.
In this quick review, I hope to give you enough material to decide whether or not to purchase this book for yourself. Let me start with two examples of insightful truths about “abstract form” that are scattered throughout the book. Banknotes and international standards. Below are two examples of Pater’s approach to social relations: the precariat and mutual aid. Finally, I return to the issue of severing the relationship between graphic design and capitalism. (For each of these four examples, here are screenshots of the relevant pages. Sorry, it’s too obvious that I don’t have a copy stand, and I apologize for the clumsy highlighting. )
bill
This is the banknote payter.
The insight here, though so obvious that it is difficult to understand, is that banknotes are designed in an abstract manner, which I believe is an essential requirement of the designer’s brief. I am forced to remember Terry Pratchett’s Making Money. There, newly minted central banker Moist von Lipwig tests his invention of paper money in Ankh-Morpork, an exercise in Pratchett’s world-building.
Where do you test a profitable idea? Not in a bank, that was true. We need to test it in an environment where people are far more careful with money and juggling finances in a world where they are constantly at risk, where split-second decisions can mean the difference between a win or a disgraceful loss. there was. Commonly known as the Real World, one of its unique names was Tenth Egg Street…. Tenth Egg Street was a street full of small merchants who sold small items in small quantities, for small amounts, and for small profits. In a city like that, you had to be small-minded. It wasn’t a place for big ideas. I had to look at every detail. They were people who were looking at much more money than dollars.
After a discussion of monetary theory that would make Stephanie Kelton run away screaming, the banknotes pass.
“So do you think these will catch on?” he said during a lull.
The consensus is that yes it is possible, but it should look more “flashy”, in the words of Nattie Pohlforth. They said, “Use more fancy lettering, etc.”
design!
international standards
As you all know, I am a supporter of international standards (‘Royal with Cheese’), so once again I offer an insight that is so commonplace that it is difficult to understand.
(I love “If there is only one victory in national politics, it is the metric system” and recommend it to my anarchist friends.) And the invention of the A-format paper by the French (today’s (a fundamental constraint for designers) was optimized by German artillery manufacturers during World War I…well, what a wonderful world.
precariat
To me, “freelancer” and “designer” are almost synonymous and have been for decades, long before Uber.
But for Fordism and beyond, wait until symbol manipulation is automated…
mutual aid
Pater practices what he preaches. In an interview with Print magazine, he said:
[PATER:] Currently, I only work with local printers and producers, I don’t fly to conferences or lectures, I focus on projects in my neighborhood, and my workshops focus on local rather than “global” issues. focused on the problem. Pay them well (book proceeds will be distributed to all contributing image makers). Rather than imposing my authority, I want to give young creators a stage so they can earn money and have a chance to show their talent.
My latest project is to establish a collective activist media/print workshop/publisher/conference space in Amsterdam in collaboration with Extinction Rebellion and the Anarchist Coalition. Rising rent prices in Amsterdam make it nearly impossible to secure a permanent space dedicated to non-commercial purposes, and collaboratively organized spaces like this are a great place for young activist designers looking for a place to work. This will be a huge boost for artists. With our own in-house production methods, we don’t rely on high-volume printing presses that use harmful inks. It wasn’t easy to organize such a space with so many people together, but it allowed us to meet and form bonds with more like-minded people.
Without jackpots, we expect most of what we think of as “global” to collapse, so we don’t know if this approach will scale. But it’s certainly worth a try. From a design perspective:
Throughout his book, Pater tackles the popular meme that declares that “there is no such thing as ethical design under capitalism.” He reveals how efforts to design ethically are evaluated by this coercive social system that can never be fully repaired by good deeds. He says even political protests are condoned by capital or even turned into “just causes” by brands willing to pose as activists. But while the above may sound a little pessimistic, Pater is surprisingly optimistic about the opportunities for resistance. Each chapter of CAPS LOCK ends with hopeful advice and speculation about how to design more ethically and not under the control of capital. The wealth of ideas here was inspired by politically engaged collectives such as the Diseño Cooperative in Buenos Aires and the Public in Toronto, and by others in the lengthy interviews that make up the final section of the book. are featured alongside four other groups. Together, they speak to the possibility of less hierarchical working relationships, freer access to design tools and products, and deeper connections with struggling communities.
conclusion
If capitalism ends, will we no longer need design? From the American Graphic Arts Association:
Indeed, the book’s insights taken together suggest that it may be easy to imagine the end of capitalism without design. In a world built not around wages and profits, but around freely bound individuals meeting social needs, where is the place to tweak the image of countless near-identical products vying for market share? ?
But Pater disagrees. From an interview with Print magazine:
[PATER:] CAPS LOCK does not present the connection between graphic design and capitalism as exclusive. I think we can establish that graphic design is much more than a tool of capitalism. Some of the most iconic (Western) design examples of the 1970s and 1980s were created for non-profit purposes, such as public transportation, government services, and education. Emory Douglas is a graphic designer I respect, but he was never a tool of capitalism. Russian Constructivist designers were anti-capitalist and influenced early modernist graphic design in Europe. There are many examples of graphic design before capitalism existed. Trajan’s Column, Garamon’s typeface, Aztec maps, African alphabets, etc. In my book, I mention a 17,000-year-old stone carved map discovered in Spain. Suffice it to say that graphic design has uses beyond serving capitalism, has always existed, and will continue to exist as long as people need visual communication.
I would like it to “exist”, preferably to be created directly by humans.
Precautions
[1] I’m not going to pick a fight here because it’s hard to get a picture-postcard definition of capitalism, but (for example) the origin of profit is missing from this formulation. It begins with the four “yuans” pointed out in the front matter of Volume 1 of the new translation of Das Kapital by Reiter et al.: extortion, extortion, exploitation, and expropriation. (summarized by KLG here) I think is a better starting point.
Appendix 1: Lecture on Caps Lock by Ruben Pater
Appendix 2: Hillary vs. MAGA
In an interview with Print magazine, Pater commented:
I think a lot about Trump’s hat design and the pentagram of identity. [, the design firm, made] For Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the US election [in 2016]. Effective graphic design isn’t about making something look prettier or more professional, it’s about understanding the person you’re talking to and being interested in what they want without trying to fool them. is to show. I think that’s why graphic designers and journalists are needed.
Mr. Clinton’s logo is:
And this is MAGA’s hat. CAPS LOCK on:
Interestingly, although Pater doesn’t mention this, Clinton’s logo is all about people, the “H” for “Hillary” (oddly, or perhaps not so strangely) , with an embedded right-pointing arrow). “MAGA” on the other hand, is about politics. Rather, it is a set of implicit policies to “Make America Great Again.” And which was more effective? And what was the job of the scam?
