The Difficult Job Ahead

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by Josh MacPhee
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We live and breathe the visual. Our culture depends the most on sight, and privileges the eyes. Our visual landscape, what we see in the world, is increasingly being littered with more and more messaging. It has reached the point where some spaces are so saturated with visual information that we can't possibly absorb and interprete it all.

This is the environment a political designer or artist steps into. In order to radically change society we're going to need a lot of people on our side, and we're going to have to be able to convince them a new and better world is possible. But we aren't on a level playing field. The images we create do not exist alone in the world, but have to compete with the visual rubbish of thousands of multi-billion dollar corporations.The audience we are trying to reach is already being attacked by upwards of 2000 advertising messages a day!

We have a difficult task at hand. As creators of visual culture we can participate in and give voice to social movements. Our skills can be used to reach beyond the confines of existing political groupings and organizations. Often a good picture can articulate a message far better and quicker than a paragraph of text. However, we don't want to operate just like multi-national corporations or ad agencies. Their goal is to make an audience think or act a certain way unquestioningly. Our job is much more difficult. We actually want people to think. Our materials can’t just be equally slick and convincing on a surface level, but must help develop critical thinking skills so people can decide on issues for themselves.