Graphic Design is Angst: A Leap of Faith Facing “It”
Reading order: Graphic Design is Angst: a leap of faith facing “it” poster → Colorful Black → Would You Talk to Me for 5 Seconds? → Think Outside of Rectangle
Angst is an existential concept explored by 19th-century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. For Kierkegaard, angst is a response to the “dizziness of freedom,” that we have complete freedom to do whatever we want and complete responsibility for whatever we do. He mentioned an example of a man standing near the edge of a cliff. When the man looks down at the cliff, he of course dislikes the feeling of possibly falling, but at the same time, he also uncontrollably has an impulse to throw himself off the edge. The fact that one has the freedom and possibility to do something or the most terrifying possibility arises angst, that we are utterly free to decide our actions.
On my way to OCAD, I observed that most spaces—from walls and pavements to the very skyline—are filled with various forms of graphics. The vivid looks of posters, ads on TTC, random stickers on the street sign, and towering billboards scramble to catch my attention. They all looked colorful and fun, but somewhat bored my mind. When I feel tired and turn to my phone, I am again engulfed in the endless posts on Instagram. Among these graphics, about 80% of what I see in public and digital spaces serves to advertise a product, an experience, or even an emotion, urging people to purchase. As I searched for jobs on Indeed, the responsibility of graphic design roles hinged on “creating graphics to promote product or brand” and “managing social media posts”. Among the 30+ job listings I've reviewed, I have only encountered one graphic design role that designs graphics with a social welfare focus— for an NGO supporting indigenous and black women. This observation underscores the prevailing dominance of commercial graphics within our public spaces.
Angst emerges in the realm of graphic design when we realize that while it has the power to make things pretty, it also has the unsettling potential to exploit our innate capacity for recognizing and creating graphics. Within the mainstream cultural context, graphic design encounters its “terrifying possibility”—it disconnects with humans, and slowly loses its humanity. This disconnection highlights a paradox where graphic design, meant to serve human communication, instead finds itself in a state of isolation, underscoring the obstacles hidden under the fabulous appearance of graphic design.
The abundance of graphic design overwhelms people with an excess of visual stimuli and numbs people’s graphic senses. The intensive amount of graphics burdens people to absorb them, physically disconnecting people from graphic design. Many meaningful graphic designs go unnoticed in the overwhelming number of visuals out there. Moreover, the homogenization of design purpose erodes the intrinsic connection between graphic design and human experience. Designs of commercials often delve into human emotions and sensibilities to inform their work. Such practices co-opt human sensitivities, repurposing symbols and emotions as mechanisms to amplify a product (inanimate), effectively transforming the intrinsic aspects of human nature into commodities, essentially “it”. Graphic design, in this plight, moves away from diverse and spontaneous human-centric narratives, leaning towards narratives focused on uniform and linear "it"-centric narratives. When graphic design is speaking the languages of “dead,” how could we possibly understand and connect with it?
In my Graphic Design is Angst: A Leap of Faith Facing “It” series, I tackle the two significant issues within the realm of graphic design: the abundance of graphic design depicted in "Colorful Black" and the homogenisation of graphic design purposes across the industry. Beyond identifying these challenges, I establish my leap of faith to overcome these phenomena of “it”-centric narrative in today's graphic culture. Through the pieces "Would You Talk to Me for 5 Seconds" and "Think Outside of Rectangle", I go back to traditional hands-on analog making and embrace the fundamentals of graphic creation. I infuse humanity in my works to make graphic design come alive again. I invited people from different industries to speak in the language of graphics, trying to reinitiate the spontaneous and non-linear relationship with graphics that one is born with. I aim to rekindle a genuine connection between graphic design and human communication, moving beyond the constraints of standard graphic designs. In doing so, I wish to break through the finite of graphic design, and the terrifying possibilities of creating “it” that await me in my graphic design path. We should not let graphic design quietly slip away from our hands. Graphic design should be our language.
