Designs Of Our Lives

A creative cultural producer finds ways to convey the essence of a culture in a creative manner.  This can take many forms including but not limited to video, blogs, images, and a whole slew of other ways.  In a way, the content generated by creative cultural producers doesn't only reflect the culture, but shapes it as well.  The creative projects let the culture know what they should like while also utilizing things that appeal to them.


Visual culture focuses on cultural meaning of a piece as opposed to its aesthetic value.  This post discusses how infographics are becoming a trend in today's visual culture.  The blogger mentions how infographics are being used in product packaging because they make boring information more interesting.  An example of a milk carton using this tactic is provided below. 

Fast forward to 4:10 in the video below for a little history on infographics and a discussion of their popularity today by a couple of people who design them. 

In the video above, the designers describe their role in deciding which information is most important and expressing that data creatively.  In a way this is the role/responsibility of all artist-designers in the digital media culture.  Whether creating an infographic or some other visual online, the designer chooses what they feel would be useful to convey.  Sometimes this comes in the way of information, in infographics, and sometimes it comes in the color chosen or even font.  Every choice a designer makes conveys some aspect of the culture they are a part of. 


I think contemporary art and design practice is very interesting in that the people in the occupation of designer somehow determine the culture's perception of the world.  No matter where you go, whether in real life or online, you are exposed to the work of a designer.   Designers shape the world we live in and thus shape our lives and experiences. 

Now and Then

In the recent past, technology has become increasingly available to the masses.  Blogging has become an expanding trend.  Anyone anywhere in the world can share anything they want at any time.  The increasing availability of technologies has allowed anyone who wants to be an author become one.

Publishing in the past has been a long and involved process.  Today, this very blog post will have gone from the writing process to "published" in a matter of minutes.  In years gone by writings were pitched to publishing houses, proofread extensively, run by editors, and finally sent to print.  At this point, individuals control their own publishing without much outside help. 

Designers and artists were hired to create not only covers for books, but also interiors.  This obviously still occurs in the book industry.  E-books have also altered this role of designers.  Rather than designing a physical book, designers must consider how a design will translate into a digital version.  This book designer discusses the process. 

Easy to use blogging software has allowed individual novices to design their own blog pages.  Technology has created the ability for people to become their own publisher in essence.  In some ways, the development of technology has allowed for more opportunities.  The introduction of the app market and other new technologies have created more things that need designing.  Apps are published and designed similar to the way books were.  It just involves more technology than in the past.  In the future, I suspect print will decline, but other new entries to the market will continue to present the need for artistic design.