Kristjan Mändmaa in conversation with MetahavenOf the Future of Design and Nations
Kristja
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Kristjan Mändmaa in conversation with MetahavenOf the Future of Design and Nations
Kristjan Mändmaa in conversation with Metahaven
Published in Sirp , Estonian cultural weekly, 31 October 2008
Download Pdf
(English)
Download Pdf
(Estonian)
Kristjan Mändmaa: We met this June at the Brno Biennale. The conference was titled "What's next in graphic design?", and almost all speakers avoided answering to that question showing their work from 1990s instead. Your presentation was different – the works were newer, and you also made some intriguing proposals. So, to ask again – what's next in graphic design?
Metahaven: To start with the first remark; it would have been hard to show work from the 1990s because Metahaven didn't exist yet at the time. I (Daniel van der Velden) know what you mean though. Thinking about what's next in graphic design – which is of course a kind of non-theme – wouldn't make me think of anybody's actual work. It would make me think of the conditions that designers are immersed in, which are increasingly the conditions of information technology and its almost infinite potential for surveillance and profiling. Basically the presentation was about that. It was about the iconography that comes with data tagging, ranging from bar codes to forms of encryption to iris scanning and biometrical detection. We have explored these themes earlier in conferences and we also do it in our work. The presentation ended with an image of the eye of a human (it came from Wikimedia Commons). We're now making a short graphic novel about this entitled 'IRIS'; it talks about how the organ that makes us see, the eye, becomes the biometrical data set through which we are seen, recognized and filed by others. The pattern of an iris is unique for every person. It is an intricate, complicated structure which could be regarded as some sort of ultimate, individualized logo.
KM: The profession itself has changed – into 24h work-life mixture. (Graphic design leading the way here with steady jobs constantly being replaced by project-based employment everywhere). What should we do about that?
Metahaven: There's not much we can do about it. The more important forces which impact on design labour come from outside of design. The work produced by designers gets played out in the same field as the multitude of 'prosumers'. Think of 'user generated content'. The asymmetry between production and consumption gets slowly resolved – here we speak of graphic design and imagery, but the same mechanism also applies to products and other commodities. This means that selling and buying tend to converge, to look alike and take place simultaneously. Why is 'creativity' promoted so intensely? And why are designers themselves increasingly becoming interchangeable, an unstable asset, almost technically redundant? Because what information networks make possible is a shift in the relation between production and distribution. Circulation itself creates value, where popularity (centrality in a network) can be gained by relations (links). In other words, because it no longer is about 'who creates what' but rather about 'who is distributed where', this instability forges another kind of asymmetry, this time in terms of networks. So it is not so much about how the technicality of the profession is changing, or the life style that goes with it, but much more how the work is exchanged, and how relations are accumulated. These developments are irreversible. You can't just switch off the internet. (Or maybe you can, actually...)
KM: Most press releases about your collective mention the "political component" of your work. Is this something you are aiming for? Why does it seem like such a noteworthy exception in the realm of today's graphic design?
Metahaven: Conventional wisdom has it that designers shape the world. In reality, they are also shaped by it. During the last ten years or so, and progressively since 9/11, the whole West sees itself confronted with the disastrous consequences of its unconditional faith in a single political ideology. If the 1990s were hedonist, after the turn of the millennium things became hedonistically dystopian. Much of today's culture, cinema, fiction, entertainment, talks about geopolitics; 'everything' has become relevant and 'everything' becomes causally connected. There is a kind of interdependence of events which seems to belong to globalization. James Bond movies even have moved their settings to peripheral areas, the Balkans and the belt separating Russia and Europe from the Baltic states towards Manchuria. (Although the luxurious high speed train to Montenegro, boarded by Vesper and 007 in 'Casino Royale', is a pure invention of the filmmakers). Our work probably more than most other design tries to work with geopolitics. Within that frame of interest the work tries to talk about models for identity and sometimes resistance and contestation.
KM: The history knows several vivid examples of the fiercely political graphic design – Majakovski, Marinetti, Grapus, etc. Does Metahaven see itself as a logical member of this list? In what sense is Metahaven different?
Metahaven: Futurists like Marinetti are inspiring to us as historical figures. We can relate somehow to Grapus because they were engaged with and working on ideologies and topics which we find relevant, such as socialism, communism, or fascism, and their possible reincarnations in the contemporary world. Some of these people are inspirational on a visual level too. The work of El Lissizky is amazing because it doesn't differentiate between architecture, graphic design, typography, painting and theory. It's all in the same line of thought, whether it is a book, a monument, a structure or a written piece, the same mind set can be applied to many things without rejecting a specific medium or way of thinking.
The way we might differ from the list you mention, is perhaps that much of our work consists of linking design to the political on a conceptual rather than a pragmatic level. Our aim is not primarily to design according to a certain political ideology, but much more to expose a convergence between design and politics that is not premised on the outcome being 'acceptable'. The acceptability issue is ultimately why for Grapus, a poster for the communist party cannot look the same as an identity for the Louvre.
KM: Designs of Metahaven are professionally executed, but far from harmonious or pleasant. They are disturbing, employing knowingly "the low" in graphic design - "bad" type, conflicting colour schemes, unclarity in composition. What's the goal with all this? Why is beauty bad?
Metahaven: Beauty isn't bad but there can be beauty in brutality and beauty in complexity, as there can be something annoying about it too; it is how you handle it. Of course we take it quite far, that's true, but there is not an intention to disturb viewers. Personally we do think our work is quite harmonious and serene, although it almost always talks about some form of power, or destruction, or encryption, or intent, or failed dream, or impossible ambition, or great idea. In the failure to speak about the pure realization of something it is genuinely anti-heroic. Our work is structural, but also quite romantic. This fits with the personalities behind the work. We don't live nine to five lives behind desks waiting for the next paradigm to be served to us. We go out looking for it. What you talk about is perhaps the relentlessness of the work. On the one hand it is made from a punk spirit; on the other hand we are obsessed with links, associations, narrative and references. Naturally this generates a lot of extra information which then is unpleasant, or not pretty, or something like that. But the fact that you're talking about informationmeans not just that the work informs, but that it is informed.
KM: What about complicatedness and hard accessibility? Look at Metahaven's homepage – what purpose does it serve to confuse people like that?
Metahaven: The home page exists in its current form since three years, apart from minor changes. Ironically, now that more or less the whole internet begins to look and work structurally the same due to web 2.0, with a template- and blog-based standard architecture behind every other site, our own site is progressively looking different from that standard. What you call 'confusing people' was the attempt to construct a different kind of site. From the outset the idea was that we wanted to approach a web site as an architectural space; we wanted to emphasize that complexity and construction can be used in a web site by means of an assembly of loose windows. We did not want a glamorous portfolio site. Of course the three web windows together form an arch, and when you open the page the centre is empty; through it, you see your own desk top. There is this idea of occupying the margins or the periphery of the screen. That said, at some point indeed we probably will need to go with the flow and have a site which conveniently opens in a single window. About your first question: perhaps much of what you call complicatedness and hard accessibility, we call complexity.
KM: What is interesting in graphic design for you? What makes it worthy, good quality? It adds to the 1st question – could you see and point out the general movements in current World's graphic design?
Metahaven: What interests us about design (not graphic in particular) is its possibility to talk about contemporary conditions visually. How design can function to show their complexity. But we're also into more pragmatic things like designing identities and publications. Since writing has become important in our practice, we're also particularly interested in how books in the fields of theory and philosophy, and non-fiction in general are designed, for example. Taking the design situation in the Netherlands to start with, of course the Dutch situation shows quite a positive scenario for how designers can work. Some of its major art schools including the Rietveld Academy and the Arnhem Academy of Arts continue to attract and produce high quality people and work, and some of the graduate and post-academic institutions such as the Sandberg Institute, the Werkplaats Typografie and the Jan van Eyck Academie provide excellent platforms. On the other hand there is a European level where you can still speak about national identities engrained in design work but much less so than before. Swiss, Swedish, Dutch, German and maybe also Estonian design are increasingly looking alike. France is an exception; because of the francophone orientation having long prevented the easy circulation of French work, only now France is opening up, and it could become really influential again. There is a design boom in China and Russia, too, and they are very much looking at what happens in Europe. The same for Yale University, while there is a certain drive and ambition to the work, the style often comes accross as inspired by European design.
What is major in design is the explosion of self-publishing and editorialism; designers now work with much less restrained ideas of what it is they can do and many are confident writers. The connectedness of the designer's workplace by means of software and networks has helped to stimulate this. The question then becomes what design should be about now that it increasingly serves goals set by designers instead of commissioners. Here we encounter what is still the weaker side, a resistance to theory and research. Something we encounter quite strongly in The Netherlands. This comes from the past; designers in the past used to make a positive identity out of their refusal of theory. But we are progressing towards a moment when knowledge becomes as important as skill; at that point there is no natural condition any more to reject it.
In the Netherlands there are some interesting studios working with data aesthetics and randomness at the interplay between software and printing. On the other hand there is quite a big stake for style in recent years; pure style. Style has become more important and dominant than ever even if style doesn't mean extravagance. To end with, what groups like Dexter Sinister and Dot Dot Dot have achieved internationally over the last few years is really great for graphic design.
KM: In Estonia you participated in several discussions about place branding. Knowing it is your special interest, what did you learn from the Estonian example? How would you shortly comment the whole place branding issue?
Metahaven: The thing which got us started was a place branding project of sorts, albeit not one which could be measured according to traditional criteria; what we tried to search for is how internet, myth and virtuality could affect the formerly 'stable' image of a nation state. We have a special and keen interest in the role that peripheries and their state actors play nowadays because we think that peripheries – which are of course always defined the outskirts of some kind of centre – know something which the centre doesn't. The reason that place branding seems so present in Estonia must be because Estonia became part of the European Union. But Estonia is itself a geographical border zone between East and West where the transformations have turned out quite well. On a tactical level the Tallinn city guide you co-edited and designed has a wonderful quality to it which describes how the outskirts transform while the city centre is promoted as a film set; there's a great sense of optimism and pluralism with which banlieues like Lasnamae are positioned as quite unique and interesting by means of narrative, diary and travelogue. But even though progressive forces may think of Estonia as a suburb of Sweden or Finland, it isn't just that – as you know all too well it has been the suburb of Russia, too. Other places on the same 'belt' have fallen prey to border conflicts, partial or pseudo-statehood, and other things which tend to happen when there is no credible government or law enforcement in place to at least keep territory safe. Besides being awful and frightening, this periphery is however also an interesting testing ground which is highly relevant for the future of Europe. If we are looking for the future of Europe we should really look to the Balkans and to the borders, not to Germany or Denmark. This is, we feel, a crucial element missed out on by place branding; there is this tendency to brand new borders as part of the past, the safe zone, with only known qualities and many entrenched interests. Like a piece of antique. Like 'Slovenia is relevant because it is next to Italy'. Whilst it is, that isn't the most newthing there is to tell about Slovenia. That it is the one sitting next to Berlusconi is the least memorable thing about Slovenia. For Estonia, which became part of the EU in the same round as Slovenia in 2004, place branding seems to be in a kind of stranglehold by marketing firms with a 'touch and go' attitude. There is this idea that others can tell you better how to do it and then leave. What gets obscured is the question of the political, as it comes down to ideology and hegemony in a practice of place branding; in order to achieve what is hoped for as 'real effects', such as a foreign investment peak or increased tourism, certain procedures and routines are repeated which should not be repeated just like that. Every new occasion of a place brand should be used to question the concept; only then can it evolve.
Kristjan Mändmaa in conversation with Metahaven
Published in Sirp , Estonian cultural weekly, 31 October 2008
Download Pdf(English)
Download Pdf(Estonian)
Kristjan Mändmaa: We met this June at the Brno Biennale. The conference was titled "What's next in graphic design?", and almost all speakers avoided answering to that question showing their work from 1990s instead. Your presentation was different – the works were newer, and you also made some intriguing proposals. So, to ask again – what's next in graphic design?
Metahaven: To start with the first remark; it would have been hard to show work from the 1990s because Metahaven didn't exist yet at the time. I (Daniel van der Velden) know what you mean though. Thinking about what's next in graphic design – which is of course a kind of non-theme – wouldn't make me think of anybody's actual work. It would make me think of the conditions that designers are immersed in, which are increasingly the conditions of information technology and its almost infinite potential for surveillance and profiling. Basically the presentation was about that. It was about the iconography that comes with data tagging, ranging from bar codes to forms of encryption to iris scanning and biometrical detection. We have explored these themes earlier in conferences and we also do it in our work. The presentation ended with an image of the eye of a human (it came from Wikimedia Commons). We're now making a short graphic novel about this entitled 'IRIS'; it talks about how the organ that makes us see, the eye, becomes the biometrical data set through which we are seen, recognized and filed by others. The pattern of an iris is unique for every person. It is an intricate, complicated structure which could be regarded as some sort of ultimate, individualized logo.
KM: The profession itself has changed – into 24h work-life mixture. (Graphic design leading the way here with steady jobs constantly being replaced by project-based employment everywhere). What should we do about that?
Metahaven: There's not much we can do about it. The more important forces which impact on design labour come from outside of design. The work produced by designers gets played out in the same field as the multitude of 'prosumers'. Think of 'user generated content'. The asymmetry between production and consumption gets slowly resolved – here we speak of graphic design and imagery, but the same mechanism also applies to products and other commodities. This means that selling and buying tend to converge, to look alike and take place simultaneously. Why is 'creativity' promoted so intensely? And why are designers themselves increasingly becoming interchangeable, an unstable asset, almost technically redundant? Because what information networks make possible is a shift in the relation between production and distribution. Circulation itself creates value, where popularity (centrality in a network) can be gained by relations (links). In other words, because it no longer is about 'who creates what' but rather about 'who is distributed where', this instability forges another kind of asymmetry, this time in terms of networks. So it is not so much about how the technicality of the profession is changing, or the life style that goes with it, but much more how the work is exchanged, and how relations are accumulated. These developments are irreversible. You can't just switch off the internet. (Or maybe you can, actually...)
KM: Most press releases about your collective mention the "political component" of your work. Is this something you are aiming for? Why does it seem like such a noteworthy exception in the realm of today's graphic design?
Metahaven: Conventional wisdom has it that designers shape the world. In reality, they are also shaped by it. During the last ten years or so, and progressively since 9/11, the whole West sees itself confronted with the disastrous consequences of its unconditional faith in a single political ideology. If the 1990s were hedonist, after the turn of the millennium things became hedonistically dystopian. Much of today's culture, cinema, fiction, entertainment, talks about geopolitics; 'everything' has become relevant and 'everything' becomes causally connected. There is a kind of interdependence of events which seems to belong to globalization. James Bond movies even have moved their settings to peripheral areas, the Balkans and the belt separating Russia and Europe from the Baltic states towards Manchuria. (Although the luxurious high speed train to Montenegro, boarded by Vesper and 007 in 'Casino Royale', is a pure invention of the filmmakers). Our work probably more than most other design tries to work with geopolitics. Within that frame of interest the work tries to talk about models for identity and sometimes resistance and contestation.
KM: The history knows several vivid examples of the fiercely political graphic design – Majakovski, Marinetti, Grapus, etc. Does Metahaven see itself as a logical member of this list? In what sense is Metahaven different?
Metahaven: Futurists like Marinetti are inspiring to us as historical figures. We can relate somehow to Grapus because they were engaged with and working on ideologies and topics which we find relevant, such as socialism, communism, or fascism, and their possible reincarnations in the contemporary world. Some of these people are inspirational on a visual level too. The work of El Lissizky is amazing because it doesn't differentiate between architecture, graphic design, typography, painting and theory. It's all in the same line of thought, whether it is a book, a monument, a structure or a written piece, the same mind set can be applied to many things without rejecting a specific medium or way of thinking.
The way we might differ from the list you mention, is perhaps that much of our work consists of linking design to the political on a conceptual rather than a pragmatic level. Our aim is not primarily to design according to a certain political ideology, but much more to expose a convergence between design and politics that is not premised on the outcome being 'acceptable'. The acceptability issue is ultimately why for Grapus, a poster for the communist party cannot look the same as an identity for the Louvre.
KM: Designs of Metahaven are professionally executed, but far from harmonious or pleasant. They are disturbing, employing knowingly "the low" in graphic design - "bad" type, conflicting colour schemes, unclarity in composition. What's the goal with all this? Why is beauty bad?
Metahaven: Beauty isn't bad but there can be beauty in brutality and beauty in complexity, as there can be something annoying about it too; it is how you handle it. Of course we take it quite far, that's true, but there is not an intention to disturb viewers. Personally we do think our work is quite harmonious and serene, although it almost always talks about some form of power, or destruction, or encryption, or intent, or failed dream, or impossible ambition, or great idea. In the failure to speak about the pure realization of something it is genuinely anti-heroic. Our work is structural, but also quite romantic. This fits with the personalities behind the work. We don't live nine to five lives behind desks waiting for the next paradigm to be served to us. We go out looking for it. What you talk about is perhaps the relentlessness of the work. On the one hand it is made from a punk spirit; on the other hand we are obsessed with links, associations, narrative and references. Naturally this generates a lot of extra information which then is unpleasant, or not pretty, or something like that. But the fact that you're talking about informationmeans not just that the work informs, but that it is informed.
KM: What about complicatedness and hard accessibility? Look at Metahaven's homepage – what purpose does it serve to confuse people like that?
Metahaven: The home page exists in its current form since three years, apart from minor changes. Ironically, now that more or less the whole internet begins to look and work structurally the same due to web 2.0, with a template- and blog-based standard architecture behind every other site, our own site is progressively looking different from that standard. What you call 'confusing people' was the attempt to construct a different kind of site. From the outset the idea was that we wanted to approach a web site as an architectural space; we wanted to emphasize that complexity and construction can be used in a web site by means of an assembly of loose windows. We did not want a glamorous portfolio site. Of course the three web windows together form an arch, and when you open the page the centre is empty; through it, you see your own desk top. There is this idea of occupying the margins or the periphery of the screen. That said, at some point indeed we probably will need to go with the flow and have a site which conveniently opens in a single window. About your first question: perhaps much of what you call complicatedness and hard accessibility, we call complexity.
KM: What is interesting in graphic design for you? What makes it worthy, good quality? It adds to the 1st question – could you see and point out the general movements in current World's graphic design?
Metahaven: What interests us about design (not graphic in particular) is its possibility to talk about contemporary conditions visually. How design can function to show their complexity. But we're also into more pragmatic things like designing identities and publications. Since writing has become important in our practice, we're also particularly interested in how books in the fields of theory and philosophy, and non-fiction in general are designed, for example. Taking the design situation in the Netherlands to start with, of course the Dutch situation shows quite a positive scenario for how designers can work. Some of its major art schools including the Rietveld Academy and the Arnhem Academy of Arts continue to attract and produce high quality people and work, and some of the graduate and post-academic institutions such as the Sandberg Institute, the Werkplaats Typografie and the Jan van Eyck Academie provide excellent platforms. On the other hand there is a European level where you can still speak about national identities engrained in design work but much less so than before. Swiss, Swedish, Dutch, German and maybe also Estonian design are increasingly looking alike. France is an exception; because of the francophone orientation having long prevented the easy circulation of French work, only now France is opening up, and it could become really influential again. There is a design boom in China and Russia, too, and they are very much looking at what happens in Europe. The same for Yale University, while there is a certain drive and ambition to the work, the style often comes accross as inspired by European design.
What is major in design is the explosion of self-publishing and editorialism; designers now work with much less restrained ideas of what it is they can do and many are confident writers. The connectedness of the designer's workplace by means of software and networks has helped to stimulate this. The question then becomes what design should be about now that it increasingly serves goals set by designers instead of commissioners. Here we encounter what is still the weaker side, a resistance to theory and research. Something we encounter quite strongly in The Netherlands. This comes from the past; designers in the past used to make a positive identity out of their refusal of theory. But we are progressing towards a moment when knowledge becomes as important as skill; at that point there is no natural condition any more to reject it.
In the Netherlands there are some interesting studios working with data aesthetics and randomness at the interplay between software and printing. On the other hand there is quite a big stake for style in recent years; pure style. Style has become more important and dominant than ever even if style doesn't mean extravagance. To end with, what groups like Dexter Sinister and Dot Dot Dot have achieved internationally over the last few years is really great for graphic design.
KM: In Estonia you participated in several discussions about place branding. Knowing it is your special interest, what did you learn from the Estonian example? How would you shortly comment the whole place branding issue?
Metahaven: The thing which got us started was a place branding project of sorts, albeit not one which could be measured according to traditional criteria; what we tried to search for is how internet, myth and virtuality could affect the formerly 'stable' image of a nation state. We have a special and keen interest in the role that peripheries and their state actors play nowadays because we think that peripheries – which are of course always defined the outskirts of some kind of centre – know something which the centre doesn't. The reason that place branding seems so present in Estonia must be because Estonia became part of the European Union. But Estonia is itself a geographical border zone between East and West where the transformations have turned out quite well. On a tactical level the Tallinn city guide you co-edited and designed has a wonderful quality to it which describes how the outskirts transform while the city centre is promoted as a film set; there's a great sense of optimism and pluralism with which banlieues like Lasnamae are positioned as quite unique and interesting by means of narrative, diary and travelogue. But even though progressive forces may think of Estonia as a suburb of Sweden or Finland, it isn't just that – as you know all too well it has been the suburb of Russia, too. Other places on the same 'belt' have fallen prey to border conflicts, partial or pseudo-statehood, and other things which tend to happen when there is no credible government or law enforcement in place to at least keep territory safe. Besides being awful and frightening, this periphery is however also an interesting testing ground which is highly relevant for the future of Europe. If we are looking for the future of Europe we should really look to the Balkans and to the borders, not to Germany or Denmark. This is, we feel, a crucial element missed out on by place branding; there is this tendency to brand new borders as part of the past, the safe zone, with only known qualities and many entrenched interests. Like a piece of antique. Like 'Slovenia is relevant because it is next to Italy'. Whilst it is, that isn't the most newthing there is to tell about Slovenia. That it is the one sitting next to Berlusconi is the least memorable thing about Slovenia. For Estonia, which became part of the EU in the same round as Slovenia in 2004, place branding seems to be in a kind of stranglehold by marketing firms with a 'touch and go' attitude. There is this idea that others can tell you better how to do it and then leave. What gets obscured is the question of the political, as it comes down to ideology and hegemony in a practice of place branding; in order to achieve what is hoped for as 'real effects', such as a foreign investment peak or increased tourism, certain procedures and routines are repeated which should not be repeated just like that. Every new occasion of a place brand should be used to question the concept; only then can it evolve.
