Revisiting “Graphic Design: Fine Art or Social Science?”—The Question of Quality in Communication Design

Abstract

In 1988, I published an article on the criteria for quality in communication design. This article revisits the issues I raised: performance, rather than style, should be the determining factor in assessing quality. Today, 34 years later, I shift my focus to the current drive for simplification, to ask how this affects design processes by ignoring the complexity that characterizes human interactions with communications. Methods conceived as mechanical recipes and the promotion of quick working strategies reduce the fitness of methods and processes as the way to confront complex commercial, cultural, and social problems. The discussion touches on design practice and design education. It includes examples of design projects to support aspects of the argument. Designers should become more responsible agents, professionally, socially, and environmentally. This requires an optimal use of research-based decisions in design. The end of the article is an invitation for reflection and action.