About creativity
Lucienne Roberts: A is for Activism
Defining herself as a lowercase ‘a’ kind of activist, Lucienne Roberts asks if design activism should be categorised this way too.
I was chuffed when It’s Nice That asked me to speak at their On [Activism] event this autumn. That seems a good match I thought… I’ve written a book about ethics in graphic design [Good, AVA 2007], am a signatory of First Things First 2000 and, since first working as a designer in the politically-charged ‘80s and ‘90s, I have held good to the central premise of the original FTF manifesto – trying to ply my trade in support of worthy and political causes and attempting to bring about positive change, in part at least, via design. So, I was confident that speaking about design activism was well within my comfort zone… but then I started to worry.
Am I a bit of a fraud? I am not an activist proper, I thought. You know a capital ‘A’ kind of Activist. As I type I sit comfortably at my desk in Clerkenwell while, not even a mile down the road, sleep members of Occupy London in tents outside St Paul’s Cathedral. Would I join them? To extend the typographic analogy further, I started to worry that ‘design activism’ is really just the arty equivalent of ‘activism light’.
I pondered with a heavy heart. There are in part psychological reasons why capital ‘A’ Activism worries me, although I know I have been the beneficiary of it in so many ways. I fear how crowds subsume the individual and, as someone who supports the notion of the law, don’t want to break it on an impulse determined by others.
That said, I always want to be counted, to engage, to make my dissenting voice heard… so would I have been sewing one of the Suffragette banners rather than on hunger strike in Holloway and, if so, would that have been a lesser contribution?
Definitions of activism vary hugely, ranging from reductive to inclusive descriptions like that found here on Wikipedia. The online OED comes up trumps though, see above, with a definition that alludes to the role of design in furthering a cause. Much relief all round, as part of the armory of any campaign graphic design is not on the periphery of activism at all. It is fundamental to it.
Reassured, I decided to put my work through a more vigorous activism test. Is there a graphic design equivalent of uppercase ‘A’ Activism, or lowercase ‘a’ for that matter, and if so do these categories imply different degrees of value or worth?
This hotchpotch of images makes the recurring themes that have informed my approach clear. I was a child in the ‘60s and a young adult under Thatcher. My designer Dad was a modernist and he and Mum talked about ideas and politics… a lot. So this, coupled with my attending a convent primary school, gave me a missionary like zeal and a belief that design could make the world a better place! Add feminism and the influence of politico designers Ken Garland, David King and Sister Mary Corita into the mix and it’s not a surprise that my clients have included feminist publishers, trades unions, charities and NGOs.
All challenge the status quo but some [the cap ‘A’ variety] don’t shy from more overt protest while others [the lowercase ‘a’ types] inform in order to persuade.
Having arrived at this shorthand definition, attributing the ‘A/a’ codes made it clear that design activism is not confined to big and bold gestures nor should its effectiveness be judged on the basis of most seen. Referred to historically as ‘minuscule’, I quickly concluded that when it comes to design activism the lowercase tag shouldn’t imply less significant in anyway.
Shown above is a spread from a late ‘90s Breakthrough Breast Cancer annual review. Primarily an awareness-raising document, the images were some of the most powerful I have commissioned. On the right is a photograph by Fleur Olby of a loaf of half frozen bread, her response to reading that a mother had made and frozen food for her family prior to her death from the disease. Its message is clear but gently told. If funds for Breakthrough’s research increased because of this publication, and saved only one life, then surely this is still a valuable example of design applied in a campaign for social change?
Bang up to date and the opposite of the Breakthrough project are these visuals for the self-defined ‘grassroots anti-austerity action network’ UKUncut. They approached me to look at updating the treatment of their name. Unlikely to be used, the process raised interesting questions around the aesthetics of what is undoubtedly cap ‘A’ Activism.
UKUncut’s current marque is amateur, both in terms of how it was made and how it is perceived. As a ‘pro’ it was easy for me to improve upon it, producing a far stronger identifier that would be highly recognisable in a whole range of applications – but is it too slick and does it therefore run counter to UKUncut’s aims?
The work for UKUncut was done for free. But more generally does the exchange of money for design in some way belie designer motivation? We often work for reduced rates, but – present company excepted and all that – in my experience even the most well meaning of fellow ‘activists’ will inadvertently undervalue those who value themselves too cheaply so I would argue that some kind of ‘swap’ needs to take place.
Here is an example of paid uppercase ‘A’ Activist graphics that also acted as a catalyst to my deliberations on the relationship between ad hoc and planned graphic design. Little did we know, as we painstakingly spaced and drew its letterforms, that the new UCU logo would be hand-rendered on signs, sewn on banners, stenciled on placards – something the control freak in me has had to embrace because it is in the spirit of the cause.
I wavered only momentarily considering the status of the exhibition Slave Britain, above, mainly because of its setting. Held in 2007, as Britain commemorated 200 years since the abolition of the slave trade, its subject was contemporary human trafficking into the UK. Our clients were Unicef, Amnesty International and the photographic agency Panos Pictures. The venue, all the more apposite currently, was St Paul’s Cathedral. Working with 3-d designer Michael Marriott, this was capital ‘A’ in its uncompromising subject matter, cage-like structure and overall design.
When it came to the Women’s Library exhibitions we’ve designed I introduced a new category. Sinners/Scroungers/Saints was an investigation into different attitudes to lone mothers. Although demanding subject matter, this show essentially sought to change perceptions via subtle forms of engagement including a series of light boxes showing stats and a wall of pinned visitor comments, shown above. Although these included provocative visitor observations, this exhibition was in part historical so I put it in the ‘A/a’ camp.
Having tested my system, and found I am not as wanting in the ‘A’ department as I’d imagined, there was one glaring omission: omission itself or saying ‘no’. I used to argue that a pre-requisite to helping convey the messages of others is being of the same opinion oneself – until I interviewed philosopher AC Grayling for my book Good.
Grayling asked if I believed in free speech, suggesting that if I did then surely it was part of my professional ethic to apply my skills in support of opinions that were not always my own. He acknowledged that there were exceptions of course but the contradiction he identified serves as a useful prompt – being a graphic activist is never as straightforward as I’d like it to be.
Copyright Lucienne Roberts 2011
