Activism or dilettanteism: design againts the war

Abstract

The graphical design, like professional manifestation of the graphical communication, is persecuted with reiteration by certain problems of indentity, like those of its relation with the art or those of its function in the society. Over the speculations or the voluntarist manifestos, certain facts can reveal in realistic way the map of their situation. In March of the 2003 the war of Iraq began. Although the facts continue the effervescence of that one first moment has not stayed. With the temporary distance it is possible to be made balance of one of the carried out performances in the surroundings of the graphical design, and to be seen his conditions of effectiveness, spectacularity or dilettanteism. The analysis body is the graphical pieces sent to the electronic page of the French magazine Étapes Graphiques, in which, to date of June of 2003, 402 gathered units appeared. Analysis does route syntactic (through the sorts and styles), semantic (through the subjects and contexts in that the pieces are located), to fall fundamentally to the pragmatic yield: what did in the reality of the public space that convoction and that performance.