What can makeshift COVID-19 signage tell us about the nature of design?

The following is not an attempt to present a scientifically true or accurate description of design culture; rather, it should be considered a thought experiment. I’m trying to publish ideas online more often, and even though Medium.com may foster an aura of legitimacy, I’m considering using it more as my personal blog. We’ll see how this goes.

Is everyone a designer?

Why this matters:

• How should we distinguish those who produce official designs vs makeshift?
• What might a “qualification” process look like for designers?

Zack Sheppard (Due to COVID-19)

One of the ideas I’ve been playing with lately is “everyone is a designer.” This is rooted in a particular (peculiar?) definition of design (verb) I’ve been recently considering:

To design is to add, change, or remove things, to change the dynamics of a specific relationship in an ecosystem.

Similarly, a design (noun) could be defined as:

A design is a structure whose subsystems are intentionally (re)arranged.

My partner and I were recently discussing this idea. Learning vicariously about design over the last several years, she’s gleaned insight into what designers (think they) do from an outside point of view (or at least, what I think I do as a designer).

One of her observations was this: designers can think that their work in the world is of particular importance (I guess that’s perpetuated when I tweet stuff like this). Designers can act like the impacts of design can be felt throughout society. That design is in everything, and that designers have the ability — the authority, the responsibility — to re-shape everything, one Gutes Design™ at a time. That designers have a unique superpower: seeing things in everyday life that might not seem like “pain points,” but that actually are. That you just have no idea how much better your life could be. That this thing simply looks and works better than that thing because of X, Y, and Z characteristics.

In other words, designers are great at telling people what their problems are.

But hold on a second — what if some things weren’t actually problems to begin with? What if we intentionally took a shortcut, veering from the “official grid?” Or on the flip side, what if we were perfectly happy “taking the long route,” even after somebody showed us a shortcut?

“Desire paths as a metaphor for user experience and design by Natalia Klishina” –99 Percent Invisible

Could it be, that people have the autonomy and self awareness to choose what they see as good design? I know — preposterous. But maybe, just maybe, non-designer-made design decisions aren’t so bad after all.

Now a problem arises, which my partner articulated nicely: if design is just intentional decision making, then isn’t everything design?

Well, maybe, yes.

Let’s consider the idea that “everyone can design” using an example, one which has been particularly relevant this year: sign making. Beyond newspaper statistics and talk show opinions, one essential informational medium during the Coronavirus pandemic has been local signage.

Local Signage during COVID-19

For the sake of discussion, I’d like to consider is how signs in public spaces have evolved since the start of the pandemic. From some brief Googling, I found a range of websites that have been chronicling and discussing COVID-19-related signage throughout the year.

• The Signs of the Coronavirus
• Documenting the Signs of the Pandemic
• The Importance of Wayfinding and Signage in the Age of the Coronavirus
• Bad Coronavirus Signage Could Scare Your Customers Away

I’m sure you could find many, many more.

I don’t presume this is an accurate or complete story, but it’s one that’s interesting to consider:

1. People start to hear about COVID-19.
2. People start to care about COVID-19.
3. Governments mandate that businesses require face masks.
4. Businesses create makeshift signs to explain the face mask requirement.
5. Businesses (that can afford to) increase the the quality of their communication design (i.e. hire graphic designers), to more officially communicate the new requirement.
6. Subsets of the graphic design industry emerge, dedicated to COVID-19-related signage.

Today, a quick Google search for “social distancing signage” results in two-hundred-and-twenty-million web pages.

It’s safe to say that COVID-19-related signage has moved from the makeshift to the official. But what implications might this somewhat hypothetical progression illuminate about design practice more broadly?

Type designers pride themselves on their ability to arrange written language in a beautiful way. Even so, any Joe Schmoe can dig up a piece of paper and write up a makeshift sign to communicate some policy around coronavirus. Does this — should this — count as an act of design?

Makeshift signs stating “Mear a Mask” and “Save Lives” (Flickr)

At what point does something become designed or a design? Is it when it starts to have emphasis put on particular areas — when there’s a sense of artistic craft behind it?

Noam Galai (Newsweek)

Is it when it’s created with a computer?

David Wolever (Due to COVID-19)

Or when it’s interactive?

Bloomberg Law

Or when a company with influence pays somebody to make it?

New York Times

Or when it integrates brand elements, like color and type, to emphasize the important parts?

Bloomberg

If there is a threshold between makeshift and official design, it’s not necessarily clear where that threshold is.

So what happened?

There were sudden, fundamental shifts in the nature of human ecosystems worldwide. Those shifts were largely due to the spread of information, and in some cases due to the spread of the virus itself. Information sometimes preceded the virus, sometimes not. Information of a virus was enough to make some people reconsider aspects of their environment. It was enough to convince governments that they should infringe on typical rights — restricting people from leaving their homes, from visiting families, and from running their businesses — for the sake of public health.

Because of shifts in information ecosystems, people foresaw undesirable outcomes (a virus outbreak). People in positions of influence (lawmakers, politicians, business owners) were faced with a choice: remain ignorant of this new aspect of the environment, or engage with it? To engage with it implied a response. In the case of lawmakers, that response looked like establishing new regulation. In the case of business-owners, that response looked like adhering to new regulation. In order to promote adherence, that required communication to local populations. Signage can be the most effective means of local, contextual communication.

Sometimes design comes from deep contemplation of everyday experience—from ideating and prototyping; from craft and attention to detail. But sometimes design comes from compulsion. If you want to allow customers to visit your business, you have no choice but to communicate—to design communication—of regulations.

How are we to assess the value of design if we accept that every act of decision making is an act of design? What is the role of a hired designer if we accept that everyone is a designer? These are important questions.

The Design Way makes a case for design as a third discipline, a “third culture” — next to art and science, not subsequent to one or the other. At first glance, this could seem an over-inflation of the role and responsibility of the designer. It could seem to over-index on the importance of design.

That is, until you start to think more broadly about design thinking as mere human creativity and decision-making.

The first time the idea of design got bigger for me was when a friend and early mentor recommended the book, Creative Confidence, by Tom and David Kelley (the latter founded the famous design firm, IDEO). It packages this idea of “design thinking” for a wide, business audience. Why might these authors have written a book which places such importance on design? Well, because they run a design agency, whom you should definitely hire, and to whom you should pay scads of money. While I haven’t read the book in many years, I remember it laying out a rather paternalistic approach: “don’t worry, we know what design is, and we can tell you how you can use it to solve all your business problems!”

Since the book was published in 2013, it’s safe to say that the design industry has expanded and matured significantly. Of course this has happened in tandem with the ballooning of the West-coast tech industry, where software design has become an incredibly lucrative career path. But it also seems evident in corporate jargon and in university programs that non-designers are increasingly seeing something valuable in “design thinking” approaches.

Importantly, critiques have been and will continue to be made of design thinking. Design practice may be rooted in narcissism — or worse, white supremacy and epistemic colonialism. Today’s academic and corporate approach to design is fundamentally rooted in Capitalism — design thinking has emerged as a concept, likely catered to drive growth for growth’s sake, to preserve the status quo. Although specific concepts from “design thinking” may be problematic, I do think there’s a much deeper idea at play. Acts of design may transcend time and culture and may be part and parcel of our existence as humans.

Maybe there is something to “unleashing the creative potential within us all,” as they claim in Creative Confidence.