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GRAPHIC DESIGN: NOW IN PRODUCTION: A NOTE ON EMERGING CULTURAL RELEVANCY FOR GRAPHIC DESIGN Ian Albinson, Rob Giampietro, Andrew Blauvelt, & Ellen Lupton Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 2011 ISBN 978-0935640984 Paperback, 224 pages, illustrated, full color, $40.00
Graphic design has arrived-not that it hadn't already. But the exhibition Graphic Design: Now in Production (GDNiP) previously on view at the Walker Art Center October 22, 2011-January 22, 2012, presents a cohesive understanding of graphic design as a discipline trying to examine its own sense of self. The catalog makes reference to two previous exhibitions on graphic design of similar scope, Graphic Design in America (1989) and Mixing Messages (1996), which presented graphic design as a state of individual practice or current themes, but GDNiP pursues graphic design in a much more introspective way. It theorizes graphic design as a practice with its own history, vocabulary, methods and aspirations. It is the position of this writer that to claim graphic design is a cultural enterprise is to understand it as an expanding disciplinary project. It is no longer simply a profession, a service, a tool or a means to create desire. Obviously it still serves all those roles, but it has also exceeded them. The co-organizers of the exhibition, Andrew Blauvelt and Ellen Lupton say as much in their introduction to the catalog, "We have sought out innovative practices that are pushing the discourse of design in new directions, expanding the language of the field by creating new tools, strategies, vocabularies, and content" (Blauvelt and Lupton, 2011).
The respective directors of the two institutions from which Blauvelt and Lupton hail, the Walker Art Center and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum respectively, are not so generous in their assessment. Olga Viso of the Walker and Bill Moggridge, of the Cooper-Hewitt, abide by the conventional perception that graphic design remains a service. In their view, "The field has changed dramatically [...] Design practice has broadened its reach, expanding from a specialized profession to a widely deployed tool" (Moggridge and Viso, 2011). But in fact, graphic design has always been a tool. The Directors let slip their perception that design is still solely about "problem-solving." But as Daniel van der Velden asks in...