Abstract What happens to interfaces as generative AI disrupts the conditions of mediation, legibility, and control we have come to expect? This essay traces three fractures: a collapse of visibility, where interfaces obscure as much as they reveal; a collapse of form, where interfaces dissolve into language and prediction; and a collapse of positionality, where it becomes unclear who is thinking or speaking. In response, we offer five parables, five metaphors of physical transformation, from which to reconsider what interfaces might become.
Abstract The article “Was Susan Sontag Wrong? Polish Influences on Cuban Poster and the Problem of Post-War Poster Criticism” critically analyzes Susan Sontag's claims about the uniqueness of the Cuban posters, highlighting the often-overlooked influence of post-war Polish poster art on Cuban creators. The author challenges Sontag's interpretation, which treats Cuban posters as a phenomenon, pointing out her failure to consider the political and social realities of socialist states. The article emphasizes the pivotal role of Polish artists, invited to Cuba as teachers, who not only passed on stylistic elements but also the idea of creative freedom. Despite being behind the “Iron Curtain,” the Polish poster school had a significant impact on Cuban artists, who, between 1965 and 1975, created original forms that were distinct from Soviet socialist realism but also differed from capitalist aesthetics. The article argues that both Polish and Cuban posters, although created within socialist systems, served a propagandistic function, with creative freedom being utilized by the authorities for political purposes. Rather than idealizing Cuban posters as a separate, countercultural phenomenon, the article underscores the complexity of this artistic exchange, advocating for a broader understanding of Cold War-era art that takes into account both the political and artistic dimensions of poster creation.
Abstract This article offers a grounded account of an action script of transformative design, conceptualised as everyday making. It is a process initiated through the partial rearrangement of mundane artifacts and reveals the potential to catalyse collective actions to address complex social issues. Drawing on affordance theory and autoethnography conducted in an eight-month service design project, the study suggests everyday making entails carving out possibilities of action. In doing so, individuals must radically attend to the constraints and textures of their lives to find those possibilities that are not immediately or intuitively perceptible. These emergent possibilities, in turn, are invitations for others to act together. This article supports designers to sensitise themselves to the transformative potentials of seemingly mundane acts, acts that neither seek to solve problems nor follow strategic plans, but open new affordances for living otherwise.
Abstract The idea of Isotype as the main predecessor of public information pictograms is an example of ‘invented history’. Its main purpose is to strengthen the desired identity of the design world, as one that has always been leading in the development of standardized and good pictograms. In practice, this was not the case. Since the 19th century European transport and tourism organizations introduced figurative symbol systems to aid wayfinding and tourism. It is these that are at the root of our current public information pictograms, with traffic symbols in particular being a leading example. But until the 1960s pictogram systems from transport and tourism organizations were visually lackluster. Therefore, when the first graphic design histories were written in the 1980s, Isotype was preferred by designers as the main predecessor of pictograms. It was beautiful, socially progressive, and aspirational.
