PLEASURE AND PAIN: | ee ne en ee eee een re ay CONSTRUCTING AN ACCESSIBLE VISION OF DESIGN HISTORY THROUGH A NOVEL LENS Michele Guimond ABSTRACT// The book Pleasure and Pain: 70 Years of Graphic Design, produced for a second year communication design project, intended to create a form that offered a unique and interesting way to look at the history of graphic design that was engaging for an audience of non-designers. This was achieved using categories to group design that suggested design’s various social functions; these categories had a broader context as opposed to being lodged in design paradigms. By focusing the ideation process on user needs, the framework for the book was established using the visceral and opposing human emotions of pleasure and pain to map a non-linear course through history. This framework enabled the various functions of graphic design to be viewed through a series of critical lenses. This article explores the design process for this book. KEYWORDS// History, Design Writing, Process, Reflection, Emotion, User-centered, Communication Design INTRODUCTION// Design is fundamentally a cultural activity and yet it is rarely discussed in these terms. More often design is presented as ‘applied art’, and as such it inherits theoretical tools that are not necessarily the ‘best fit’. Despite the fact that graphic design’s history clearly reflects its cultural and political context, design and society are discussed largely in isolation. This may result from the fact that, unlike many other disciplines, graphic design has developed without much “theoretical reflection” (Fra- scara, 1996). Therefore the bulk of the literature available on the subject of design, focuses largely on technical theory. On the sub- ject of design history, the selection of literature, textbooks and scholarly surveys is relatively sparse. For the uninitiated, including students of design, the available literature seems somewhat self referential, predominately geared toward identifying the shifts and phases within design itself. With this as a starting point the book, Pleasure and Pain: 70 Years of Graphic Design was conceived as an exploration in developing an alternate set of critical lenses through which to view design history, bringing design’s cultural context to the fore and engaging the audience on a more visceral level. This article describes the development of the theoretical framework used to arrange, constrain and assess the book’s content. 12 CURRENT RESEARCH QUESTION// Why would someone who is not studying communication design be interested in the history of design? This is a question that Michele Guimond, Kirsty Tsang and Nireesha Prakash focused on throughout the development of this book. How could a design history book engage non-prac- titioner and non-scholarly audiences in understanding design as a cultural activity and offer a compelling critical lens through which to view it? Methods and Process// The following will describe the design process behind Pleasure and Pain by describing the three central factors driving its development: precedents, content and users. The effect of each of these on the final outcome of the project will be discussed individually and in chronological order. PRECEDENTS// Initial research revealed that “compared to other areas of design, graphic design has been given short shrift by his- torians” (Wikins, 2001). Books on visual forms and elements, design heroes, how to’s and stylistic trends abound but the major- ity fail to bring design into a broader cultural or social context. Compared to the number of art history books or historic surveys for just about every other discipline there is a strikingly slim selection for those interested in the history of graphic design." The books that are available on design, historic and theory based, were found to share a common limitation for the non-specialist audience in that they are largely self-referencing and entrenched in design paradigms. The fact that early research into precedents revealed that so few “good scholarly surveys are written for lay audiences” suggests that a book like Pleasure and Pain is relevant to the untrained audience (Margolin, 2000). Some critical writers The few books that were discovered on the subject, notably Philip Meggs’ A History of Graphic Design, Richard Hollis’s Graphic Design: A Concise History, Roxane Jubert’s Typography and Graphic Design: From Antiquity to the Present and more recently Stephen J. Eskilson’s Graphic Design: A New History, were used as reference points during the project’s research phase. These books demonstrated both current approaches to design history writing and target audiences not covered by current precedents.