Horizon in Visual Communications: Arenas of Promise and Challenge, The

Design Management Journal, Fall 2003 by Walton, Thomas

A second critique of communications design is the analysis of the cross-channel pollination among different media. Connie Birdsall and Brendân Murphy, both executives at the New York office of the design consulting firm Lippincott Mercer, note that "icons from the Internet are appearing in print. CNN Headline News is starting to resemble the AOL home page.... PowerPoint presentations are moving closer to video, and multimedia promotions that fill entire walls in trend-driven retail stores bear a striking resemblance to MTV music videos." In general, the visual options that start in one arena quickly migrate to others. There are even reverse migrations, as "hand-written" notes get layered over high-tech graphics and infomercials show up in print as advertisements run upwards of 10 pages. Such interrelationships are normal. The issue is to distinguish between what is feasible and what is genuinely compelling and effective. Birdsall and Murphy suggest some rules of thumb:

* Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

* Aim for continuity, not sameness.

* When "more" is possible, organization is critical.

* The stronger your message, the more channels your customers will notice.

* Collaborate and communicate.

* Remain true to the concept.

* Work within the strengths of the medium.

* Deliver an experience.

The most pointed appraisal of contemporary visual communications, albeit also the most poetic, comes from Nathan Felde, a visual communications system designer. He opens his essay extolling a list of pioneers, individuals from many disciplines who changed the communications landscape. This paean of praise, however, is preface to more troubling insights. The difficulty in communications is that "our need to identify individuals and our need to express ourselves, while seeming complementary, run contrary to our need for freedom of action, choice, and thought." Felde worries that the ability to fine-tune audience subsets and messages will move in the direction of controlling communications rather than liberating them: "You no longer control the manner or the media by which you are expressed. The bulk of data relevant to your survival belongs to someone else. By the time we subtract the genetic wiring and the contractual constraints with which most adults have encumbered themselves and add the inhibitions of habit and social protocol, you are left with few actual choices. By the time the brain scans and DNA strands have been compiled, you will have an index to your freedom that yields precious little to your deciding." To counter this prospect, he advocates communications of boundless variety and idiosyncrasy, a state of affairs he feels can emerge if we make the implications of our choices more transparent, if we understand the social and economic impact of our decisions and act to make sure that there is a more equitable distribution of the resources of the globe among all individuals. This is a world in which knowledge and breadth of communications media do not become ways to pinpoint and limit what we share but, instead, are preserved and acclaimed as resources for individual expression.