Design can be the light, the beauty
❝ The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design. ❞
– Massimo Vignelli
Continuing my research on political correctness in parallel to design’s impact on our contemporary lives, I learned about something I’ve never stumbled upon in the past—the Intellectual Dark Web.
I started reading a review for Michael Brooks’ new book, Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right, a critique to the Right and the IDW. Intrigued but the ridiculous name, I kept searching to find that the term—coined by the mathematician Eric Weinstein—became popular through a 2018 New York Times opinion article.
It is a name used by a group of people like Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, Carl Benjamin and Joe Rogan, who “who oppose what they believe to be the dominance of identity politics, political correctness, partisan politics and the establishment in higher education and the news media.” They believe “their free-thinking embrace of ‘dangerous conversations‘ has shut them out of public debate.”
I kept diving in this rabbit hole of dystopian wonderland. The day after the NYT article, The Guardian published a review for the group, describing them as “the supposed thinking wing of the alt-right”. I agree. One day after, Voxpublished a piece explaining “what Jordan Peterson has in common with the alt-right”.
Despite what they say, people like the IDW and their followers are everywhere the past few years. You can see them in the news getting millions from platforms like Spotify or YouTube. You can see them in online debatessupported by people you may like or trust. One can easily split to that side of the spectrum if not well informed.
Twitter and Facebook participate in the discussion, trying to balance between being a platform or a publisher, protecting users’ rights and political debates, taking some (or very few) actions to crack down on hate speech. However, Hard-right has created their own version of these services. “There is WrongThink (alt-Facebook), PewTube (alt-YouTube), Voat (alt-Reddit), Infogalactic (alt-Wikipedia) and GoyFundMe (alt-Kickstarter). There is even WASP.love, a dating site for white nationalists and others ‘wishing to preserve their heritage’.” It is an unholy mess.
Of course, it was designers that made all these.
Keller Easterling said on Quartz’s The New Normal, “Covid-19 is an X-ray of whiteness, inequality, and ineffectual government as well as a rehearsal for climate catastrophe”.
We see the danger and we, designers, need to react. I’ll leave here these words by Patrick Dugan, Product Designer at Quora, for consideration. “As designers, we must be acutely aware of how the products we design are actually being used and understood by users, regardless of our original intentions. To ignore the realities of the product decisions we make is at best disingenuous, and at worst dangerous.” ☙
Keep fighting ugliness.
On topic
Mirko Ilić on graphic design as social commentary →
“Graphic design can be used as an effective means of communication to comment on various social issues”, Mirko Ilić illustrates. He believes that creative people have certain responsibilities.. (25:48)
White supremacists are taking their design seriously—and we should, too →
In 2018 Brand New Conference, Mirko Ilić suggested that many designers may not notice symbols of white supremacy hiding in plain sight. In a stunning call-to-arms (buy the video from here), the 62-year old designer and educator called on his audience to be the vanguard for raising awareness about such hateful marks. This article includes several loaded symbols Ilić identified, many of which are included in the American Defamation League’s database of hate symbols.
Hate on Display™ Hate Symbols Database →
This database provides an overview of many of the symbols most frequently used by a variety of white supremacist groups and movements, as well as some other types of hate groups.
The Real Meanings Behind Six Symbols of Protest →
We see them on banners, at protests and on social media—often, even, on seemingly benign decorative posters or clothes. But what do these icons of protest really symbolise, and where did they come from?
How to shoot and edit darker skin tones →
Aundre Larrow shares some useful tips on the subject.