Design as Communication

We tend to think that communication has no substance of design or that communication cannot stem from design. Design is communication. You interact with all kinds of people and talk about the world: what is going on in the world, what kinds of trends are happening, what things are evolving. Communication can be built around design. Say an employer hires someone to design a specific item, say a logo. These two, the designer and the employer discuss and talk about what interests the client has and what type of style they want to portray. The designer and the client converse back and forth so the perfect design can be created as a final product. Also, the designer and the client feed off each other, to see what path each person is heading towards, if they have opposing opinions or if they are on the same level. Suggestions and inputs are added to this conversation which creates the type of environment.

An example of how communication is design: in our Des 001 class we saw Lady Gaga and Yoko Ono collaborate on the great John Lennon’s song, “The Sun is Down.” They both put a twist to the song that is very different from the original. They probably have rehearsed the song before, but the actual performance on stage in front of the fans sound both rehearsed and improvised at the same time. The way they were communicating with each other seemed abnormal, to the point where one might argue that one didn’t know the other was going to do what they did. Yoko Ono was communicating with Lady Gaga and vice versa feeding off each other’s energy and also with the crowd’s energy. The communication was designed so that when Lady Gaga does one thing to build a type of environment, both Yoko Ono and the fans to react the way they do.