Andrew Blauvelt - Graphic Design now in Production

I found this extract really thought provoking, making me question a practise that I seemingly thought I understood. The first point the author makes that hit me was the huge divide within the practise: conception/production, craft/mass manufacture, human/machine. This binary outlook has created friction and a hard border. I think the author concluded that this duality is being transformed into a more circular, collaborative and decentralised industry. De-valued production and elimination of human labour has lead to an increase in the value of conception, and also allowing profit to be made from bespoke pieces. A revolution of designer orientated work, of which my peers and I are lucky to be a part of. Metahaven comments that there will be an increasing disparity between celebrity designers and labourers; this stuck with me because the way we're taught at university seems to value the former. Or perhaps it is my generations mentality of entrepreneurship and our privileged rejection of labour. 

GIF ideas

I've tried to express the core concepts that I wish to address in my essay in these simple gifs. The first one targets the idea that the most universal and effective tool, the laptop, can perhaps be overpowering; the balance that we once had with our tools is skewed, and could argue that we are mere operators, or data, that continues to strengthen the system. 

GIF ideas

These three initial ideas draw upon different aspects of what my essay tries to express. The first one focuses on the laptop as a tool that consumes the user; an object, a system, that can in many ways control and diminish us to mere data. I tried to stay more on topic with the other two, and focused more on the dichotomy of modernism and ultra reality. The second gif idea is simple; a 2 dimensional square is transformed when the viewer puts on VR goggles; at first it gains another dimension, and then rapidly multiplies, to create a multi faceted web. For me this is the heart of what I'm trying to express in my essay; our tools transform how we see and therefore how we interpret and create. The third idea follows the same idea, and uses a cube as a symbol for a modernist construct; slowly it deconstructs and gains its own consciousness and power, and eventually overpowers the hand that once created and supported it.