The most important thing about design, it turns out, is not the result but the process. The design process: we talk about it, but are we sure we really understand its value? Recently the New York chapter of the AIGA decided to put the design process to the test. They picked a project that had no easy solution and applied to it the kind of thinking that is the prerogative of our profession.
Design/Relief: Legible, Visible, Navigable was a participatory initiative conceived to make a difference—albeit a small one—in three New York waterfront communities that had been hit hard by Superstorm Sandy: Red Hook, Rockaway, and South Street Seaport. A year after the hurricane, these neighborhoods had yet to recover a sense of identity, so disruptive had been the event. Trying to help them recapture a modicum of dignity seemed like a good cause to begin with—however, the ultimate incentive was the challenge it represented. Can design be construed as a vital tool in time of crisis?
AIGA NY Chapter president Willie Wong endorsed the initiative. Coordinating the efforts was Laetitia Wolff, who specializes in cultural engineering. Members of the chapter volunteered considerable time, talent, and energy. They got in touch with community leaders and grassroots organizations in the three battered neighborhoods. Then, deliberately, they engaged in what is probably the most critical part of the design process: they listened.
Listening is not a technique for the fainthearted. Curb your enthusiasm. “You have to hold back the desire to ‘do something’ or ‘change something’,” explains Wolff. “Our role was to give form to a need that was not yet perceived as such. And we were only moderately successful in establishing a dialog with residents.”
In the spring of 2015, after eighteen months of engagement with an audience of often perplexed participants and compartmentalized community activists, the three AIGA/NY teams completed their mission. In Red Hook, they had been able to create “The Hub,” an outdoors information sharing bulletin board; in South Street Seaport, they had devised “Catch & Release,” a playful indoors postcard installation; and in Rockaway, they had produced an oral history campaign, “Dear Rockaway,” a series of handsome posters and sidewalk stencils.
“Creative placemaking,” as these modest design solutions are called, was truly remarkable because they did “increase social connectedness” by “activating public space.” But even more remarkable, in my opinion, was the fact that they demonstrated, yet again, how critical is the presence of typography in urban environments.
To be sure, vernacular letterforms, from graffiti to neon signs, are semiotics markers that are as much part of the identity of a place as brick and mortar—but what about posters featuring good-looking fonts? Do they belong on placards pasted on a derelict storefront or on a grimy fence, beside a small handbill advertising the services of the Bedbug King? For disheartened residents, can the likes of Erik Spiekermann or Frere-Jones provide as credible a visual language as that generated by a spray can or a fat magic marker?
The broken windows theory comes to mind. However utopic, the AIGA/NY initiative was a courageous endeavor. “The hardest thing for the Design/Relief designers was not to be able to do things perfectly,” says Wolff. “We couldn’t pretend that everything was just fine.”
There are some things the design process can’t fix, but what it can do is help us humanize our creative ambitions.