Audience

Sometimes I get a little scared for the future of communication design.  While it's really nice that design is getting more recognition as a necessary and valuable weapon of sorts, I worry about its misuse. Design is all about the message, anyone will agree, but what about the quality of the message? Do we, as designers have the luxury of only accepting jobs that have an important message? or, is it part of the trade now that we have to design things that don't actually mean much so we can eat?

Perhaps it is less of a problem of message and more one of how an audience is treated. I have serious qualms about designing objects that are too easy. I don't mean this in terms of functionality, I guess I am talking more about an issue of transparency. When you design something, right off the bat you assume the viewer knows certain things, ie how to read english, has his or her glasses on or can even see at all, etc. Different designs assume different things: a wheelchair assumes a person cannot walk, a toaster assumes you will only toast things of a certain thickness, a book assumes you have fingers to turn the pages. This process of assumptions is natural. 

I think it can be very dangerous to go too far in assuming what a viewer knows, but also extremely dangerous to the quality of a design to go in the opposite direction. I suppose we live in an age of convenience now, for better or worse, and things that take too long or require too much work are discarded in frustration. What effect is this having on messages, though? Is this going to destroy complex and harder to grasp concepts and ideas in favor of more bang for the buck?

The movement away from modern aesthetics is kind of a relief to me. While I think going too far into ornamentation and useless decoration may obfuscate messages to the point where it's possibly more dangerous, I think that this fear of the degradation of content is in the air. The visual trends are significantly less Swiss and clean and modern, but not quite on the doorstep of 90s grunge/postmodernism. I almost feel like we are having a safe and scientific revolt against the modern aesthetic. 

picture: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/910114