Design's Delight

by Jan van Toorn

This book presents a number of experimental projects in communication design as a symbolic and public practice. It proceeds from a critical position vis-à-vis the customary mediation of information―a position more necessary than ever, now that design operates so prominently in the entertaining and marketing spectacle organized by the neo-liberal world order as an instrument for the colonization of human existence. Unlike the classic form of visual communication, the dialogic approach is a connective model of visual rhetoric with a polemic nature and polyphonic visual form―a storytelling structure that seeks to reveal the opposing elements of the message and opts for active interpretation by the spectator.

Genres: Design

230 pages, Paperback

Published April 30, 2013

Reviews

[Nela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This text has some important advice for designers on how to do our work more responsibly. But I couldn't summarize what it says because I had a hard time pushing my way through the academic jargon and forgot 95% of it as soon as I've read it. I suppose this book is out of my league. I hope someone will be able to explain these ideas in an accessible manner, so that us designers who are not social science majors can still benefit from them.