Decolonising design is a broad concept that means different things to different people and can be approached in a number of ways. Within the realm of graphic design, I position myself at the intersection of decolonising in terms of design practice, structures of power in the field, what/how history is recorded and told, and how education/knowledge is disseminated. I examine these overlaps through the lens of what is deemed as ‘imperfect’ in Eurocentric/Western thinking with regards to graphic design principles to develop a method in decolonising my own design practice.

From Germany to Switzerland, Japan and the United States, these parts directly affect my positioning because I was educated in graphic design in the US and my cultural roots are in Taiwan, where my family for the past three generations have been heavily impacted by Japanese culture. Even though I grew up in Australia I’ve moved to many countries and experienced multicultural thinking, which made me question the narrow-minded ways of thinking in the graphic design field. It seems as though graphic design practice is purely based on Bauhaus and Swiss typography – from the particular culture of design I was taught.

Autoethnography: Reflexive Writing

By focusing on autoethnography as the main method, reflexive writing became a large part of the process. It is an important starting point because as Elizabeth Ettore writes in Autoethnography as Feminist Method, “simply, knowledge comes from political understandings of one’s social positioning as well as experiences of the cultural freedoms and constraints one encounters” (Ettorre, 2017, p. 2). In order to fully understand what I’m trying to address with this project in depth, I need to clarify my position as a person in the world, as a designer, and my agency through reflexive writing.

In preparation for writing, I used the action of designing the sheets of paper that I would handwrite on as a way of thinking about what makes a design imperfect. Since the aim of these writings is to begin to think about why I am the way I am, the topics naturally lend themselves towards educational experiences in various schools/countries and the impact of culture through family/history.

It did not produce enough insight, so a new method had to be devised.

Reflective Practice: Self-devised Method

1. Pick a quote collected from literature review.
2. Design a poster using the quote without overthinking – ‘default’ design.
3. Reflect on each decision during the process (screen record for future reference).
4. Reflect on decisions overall, afterwards and post-rationalise.
5. Define elements that make it ‘perfect.’
6. Create a new poster that is ‘imperfect’ by those standards.
7. Reflect on what that means for ‘perfection’ and ‘imperfection.’

I refer to ‘perfect’ pieces as ‘default’ designs because they are made almost automatically. The ‘default’ designs are attempts to see how tacit knowledge works in physically manipulating things in the digital realm along with making subconscious decisions that take no time to process.

From Reflexive Writing

1. A way of creating imperfection is to make everything perfect first, and then purposefully undo one element.

I discovered this specific insight that came from tying my hair up as a child where my mother would tell me to pull some strands of hair out because it looked too perfectly neat and unnatural. In hindsight, this idea informed how I approached the methodology in creating ‘imperfect’ designs. In a peer review session there was a comment that this approach of doing and undoing was too mathematical and logical, which is why later tests were based on emotional and ‘default’ responses that focus more on inner aesthetic values and taste.

2. Western culture (including design and language) influenced Japan and subsequently Taiwan – Western superiority.

It is easy to follow the rules, but much harder to critically look at traditions and question why we still conform to them. “From the 19th century, Western societies sometimes used industrial, technical, and military imperialism to maintain their dominance over colonial culture. For this reason, in the ‘Japanese colonial period,’ any unique aspect of Western culture was inevitably regarded as a symbol of modern civilization. Western products were considered superior in the mind of Taiwanese people” (Yao, Sun and Lin, 2013, p. 45). “Japan's colonialism is a refraction of European and American colonialism” (Ibid, p. 46). This mindset still exists today and perhaps this subliminal superiority is the reason I had not questioned sources of design principles and theory until now, having used writing as a form of introspection of my identity and practice.

From Reflective Practice

1. Making ‘imperfect’ designs based on ‘perfect’ designs is not breaking away; it is still in response to it.

Step 6 in my reflective practice method, “create a new poster that is ‘imperfect’ by those [‘perfect’] standards” was made with the intention of directly undoing each point. Upon reflection on what it means for a design to be perfect or imperfect, I realised this approach is conflicting with the aim of this project (of breaking away from traditions and histories my practice is embedded in). Making something the opposite is simply a response and is not a new direction, what matters is looking at it from a different perspective.

2. Approaching designs from an emotional perspective instead of logical is one way of breaking away from traditions and histories of my own graphic design practice.

Following the uncovering of the previous insight and receiving feedback that the method of responding directly was too logical, exploring through an emotional perspective was a logical next step. With more iterations the posters began to take on textures and patterns with the typographic forms before readability became an issue.

It was only after conducting these tests that I found out Ellen Lupton had written about graphic designers in the 1980s and 90s experimenting with “readerly text”, which was theoretically based and driven by Roland Barthes’ idea of “death of the author” (Lupton, 2006, p. 23). Their work showed that “typography becomes a mode of interpretation” with “layers of interlocking grids” aiming to engage readers and challenge the designer and author dynamic for control over text (Ibid). The same idea was behind posters where, if examined closely, the text is still readable, although challenging. The turning point was where readability became too much of an issue so I focused on creating posters based on emotional intuition. These felt more successful in breaking away from traditional practice and are still readable.

How can I, as a designer, break away from the traditions and histories that have influenced my own graphic design practice?

In order to break away from the traditions and histories embedded in my own graphic design practice I need to identify my position, what shaped me as a person, as a designer, and then experiment with executing designs through an emotional perspective instead of learned logical choices. As a result of reflexive writing and reflective practice, I realised the term ‘perfect’ is profoundly specific when referring to design and thus is unsuitable for describing designs because it sets limitations. This finding suggests that there is more to be learned from the vast range of what is considered ‘imperfect’ design, perhaps in future explorations.

What role does tacit knowledge play in creating ‘default’ designs?

Tacit knowledge facilitates in creating designs that are already deemed ‘good’ before we even produce them because our sense of taste is developed through iterative examples taught at school, seen in daily life, or on social media. Therefore, tacit knowledge’s role is to further enforce Western design principles and aesthetic values and taste especially in ‘default’ designs, which are in fact not default since it is learned.

Throughout the journey of this project I found that my initial research question was biased and held assumptions that I had not realised until I critically reflected on why I had associated ‘perfect’ design with Bauhaus design and Swiss typographic principles. This revelation led to a redirection of an autoethnographic study that personally addressed the issue of my design practice being colonised, not to mention the field. Consequent to answering the current research question of ‘how can I, as a designer, break away from the traditions and histories that have influenced my own graphic design practice?’ the insights gained from the process show that approaching designs from an emotional perspective is one way of breaking away; the role tacit knowledge plays in creating designs is in the beginning where it enforces the standardised Western ways of graphic design; and that using the term ‘perfect’ to describe a piece of design is too limiting because it is again reinforcing the colonised, Eurocentric ideas.

These findings are significant because it provides a method for other graphic designers curious about their own identity as a person and as a designer to begin to decolonise their own practice. As a result, graphic design practice may potentially be expanded, starting from the individual level before the field can move forward.

Ettorre, E. (2017) Autoethnography as Feminist Method: Sensitising the Feminist ‘I’. London ; New York, NY: Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.

Lupton, E. (2006) ‘The Birth of the User’, in Beirut, M., Drenttel, W., and Heller, S. (eds) Looking Closer 5. New York: Allworth Press, pp. 23–25.

Yao, T.-H., Sun, C.-Y. and Lin, P.-C. (2013) ‘Modern Design in Taiwan: The Japanese Period, 1895–1945’, Design Issues, 29(3), pp. 38–51. doi: 10.1162/DESI_a_00220.