Firmitas, utilitas, venustas

I went to the LCC Graphic Design PhD forum this week. The speaker was Ranulph Glanville and his talk was entitled 'Designing®, researching, knowing'. The ® after the word is not a RSI induced spasm, but intentional. Glanville uses it to reinforce his use of the word 'Design' in a particular way—that is design as known and understood by designers. Implict here is, I think, not as 'understood' by design engineers, but that is another post entirely.

He started his talk with Vitruvius' characterisation of architecture, which as the title suggests, is 'Firmitas, utilitas, venustas' and he offered his own translation or interpretation of this—well made, useful and delightful. Glanville suggested that it is easy to do the well made and useful part of the equation, but that what is difficult is the 'delightful'and that this requires the designer to do more than is necessary, to make something better than what is there. It is the more than necessary that is the necessary bit—it is what brings the delight.

I can definitely see where he is coming from, but I am not sure about the word delight. At the time I suggested 'engaging' which he dismissed as too neutral and I agree with that, however, for me there is something about the word 'delight' that is too 'lightweight', too momentary and perhaps too much aligned with some kind of aesthetic pleasure. Reading over this again, maybe delight is also too subjective a term? As venustas means beauty this isn't surprising I guess, in fact it apparently literally means the salient qualities possessed by the goddess Venus and implied a visual quality in architecture that would arouse the emotion of love. However not all design is pleasurable in this way, nor does it intend to be. Even in architecture, the area of design and subject that Glanville's talk was originally given in, one only has to go to Berlin and visit the Holocaust memorial to know that the affect, whilst powerful, is not pleasurable or delightful.

So maybe what we are after is something that captures that effect or charge a building or piece of work can give you. This maybe brings us back to Barthes and his idea of 'punctum' in a photograph, an emotional response which is elicited by the ‘prick’ of an unexpected detail or contrast. I think these days it has been superceded by the idea of 'affect' so punctum might be a bit dated, but it seems to offer something to the discussion. Whether this charge is always related to something unexpected or some kind of contrast I don't know, we can get pleasure from familiarity also. But then perhaps the idea of the unexpected links nicely with the idea of the designer providing something extra, something that is more than necessary.

Two other things spring to mind in relation to this experience and design and designers' ability to construct it. Firstly, I recently re-read Gaston Bachelard's The poetics of space and he writes about eperiencing the 'reverberation' of 'poetic images.' I think he is referring to images that are conjured up in the mind through poetry, and if this is not too much of an over-simplification, it seems to me that this idea of 'reverberation' is also what Barthes is getting at with 'punctum', and perhaps Glanville with 'delight.' Secondly I recalled having read Malcom Barnard's Graphic design as communication and his description of the four functions of graphic design: Information, persuasion, decoration and magic. It is this idea of 'magic' that got me thinking in terms of how the 'delight' (or whatever I decide I might prefer to term it) is engendered. Barnard suggests that this idea of magic relates to Tibor Kalman's idea that what most graphic design is about is 'making something different from what it truly is.' That it makes absent or distant people or places 'present' to us, the spectator (Barnard 2005:15). This seems to tie in—that whether it be a logo or an advert, it is more than just type and image on a page. The Nike tick signifies a brand that offers more to some than a functional pair of trainers. The image and copy used in an advertisement for Barnardos puts us into the position of seeing the abuse and therefore offers us the opportunity to take part in ending such awful situations, or if we do nothing, collude in the perpetrator's actions. Maybe his title should have been Graphic design as teleporter?

That 'magic' then made me think of something I read that Bourdieu had said about a 'magical act.' Digging about I found it is referenced in David Crow's Visual signs. In this case Crow describes Bourdieu as defining this magical act in relation to the use of language. I find it a difficult idea to get my head round, and I wonder whether such a small snippet is being taken out of context here, and also possibly in Crow's text as neither of us quotes an original source. However, it seems to be about the possibilities of the performativity of language, that one can, in the sphere of social action, 'act through words beyond the limits of delegated authority' (Crow 2003:97). The written example Crow uses to explain this is of a passer by smashing the champagne bottle against the prow of a ready to be launched ship, instead of the diginatry who has been given the responsibilty, and in a sense, I guess, the power. What Crow doesn't make clear, at least to me, is does this mean the ship is named and can be launched, or does the fact that the passer by didn't have 'the power' mean it is null and void? The visual examples Crow uses are those of individuals subverting corporate communications to their own ends—Joe Magee's 2002 illustrations for the Daily Telegraph. The illustrations seemed to be decorated with dots as part of the design. What the Torygraph didn't realise was that these dots were actually braille and spelled out anti-capitalist sentiments. Anyhow, I am not sure I quite see the parallels between the word and image examples. Am I being dim? Never mind that, this post seems to be getting off topic. I suppose in a way there is magic in both of them. Someone who didn't have 'power' utters the magic words 'I name this ship...' and becomes powerful. Someone who was supposed to be the slave of the corporate fat cats uses their own media against them. So maybe there is some kind of magic in both.

But what of 'delight'? I'm still not sure it feels like the right term to me, I shall continue to ponder. If anyone has any better suggestions let me know. Oh, and if you can explain the 'magical act' better, that would be great too.