No More Reading!

Snapshot of Archinect's posting about Rice Lecture Series, Fall 2013

All branches of design face the same difficulties after all, when it comes to public reception. The image above is a screenshot of Archinect's posting about Rice's upcoming lecture series that Ian Searcy designed. Besides the comic side of the comments which is really why I picked this particular instance, the typical encounter of designer vs. public (reader or user) is extremely fascinating. Of course Ian had an image of his audience while designing the poster: architecture students who probably enjoy the struggle to read the text, to figure out what NSFW stands for or to see overprinted black. But it's more interesting once we think those people complaining about the illegibility of the text are most likely designers too (why would anyone subscribe to Archinect otherwise?). Even the dismayed person that utters his dissatisfaction with architects--and says "Dammit architects stop trying to be clever"--happens to be an architect, co-founder of an architecture practice, in fact. It may be the case, that we all--designers or otherwise--have simply internalized a typified audience in our subconscious: an extremely functionalist user who has a maximum capacity of 2 seconds to spare on any idea.

A side-note: El Lissitzky, an eminent member of the group ASNOVA, an early 20th century Soviet avant-garde group that are commonly called 'The Rationalists', once articulated his approach to book design as such: "Nicht mehr Lesen! Sehen!" (No more reading! Seeing!).