Part of what we do, as graphic designers, is translate cultural nuances, intricacies and oddities into not-so-simple visual manifestations like posters, packages, brochures, annual reports and web sites. We react to what goes on around us and channel that as cohesive (or, at least, semi-cohesive) messages for any given product or service for a business or institution. Call it trends, call it Zeitgeist, call it dumb luck or even collateral damage, yet as designers we can’t help but let daily culture permeate into the work we produce. And culture — not in the smarty-pants sense — is nowhere more prevalent than in people. Just people. In any given country, city, town — even down to a single neighborhood — each person possesses a unique essence that is, again, a reflection of, and for, culture. No wonder then that people watching is one of the world’s finest, and easiest, pastimes.
When traveling to other countries, cities, towns — and once more, other neighborhoods — there is no better way to absorb the feel than by sitting at a coffee shop, a central plaza, a tree-shaded park… heck, even big cities’ financial districts are quite the spot for people watching. There is something extraordinary about contemplating people go about their business, in their daily routines; making up stories of where they have been or where they are heading; trying to figure out if they are happy at work and at home; wondering where they got that cool shirt, what’s the name of their dog, who are those flowers for? If there is a default in our system it is to watch people.
Living in New York — you can tell I’m new here, since I now constantly bring it up — provides a consistent (make that, overwhelmingly consistent) opportunity to people watch anywhere you go. No matter where you are, there are people to watch. And lots of them. In motion, all the time. In 1998 Tibor Kalman aimed to capture this ever-growing euphoria of bustling populace in 1000 On 42nd Street, a book — in collaboration with photographer Neil Selkirk — documenting one thousand people walking by the intersection of Broadway and 42nd Street. The purpose was to use the one thousand photographs to cover the fencing that would in turn cover the intersection during its reconstruction. While the book itself is a wonderful collection of people that you can, well, watch, it fails to convey the pace, livelihood and sometimes fear of standing in that corner and watching people go by. Which is, really, the beauty of people watching. The experience.
People watching is, of course, not for everybody; say, persons with agoraphobia (open spaces) or anthropophobia (people). There are many alternatives of stuff to watch: birds, whales, store displays, people’s apartments as you walk by on the street. But none are — I would say — as important as watching people, acknowledging that they are there, sharing the neighborhood, the town, the city and the world with you, with us. Birdwatching.com lauds the act of bird watching — connotation, and stereotype aside, of senior citizens wearing silly hats and carrying large binoculars acknowledged — as a “lifetime ticket to the theater of nature”.
People watching is undeniably a lifetime ticket to the theater of culture. And we always have a front-row seat.
As purveyors — please excuse the charged word — of culture in the form of graphic design artifacts — please excuse the use of the word artifacts — people watching might just be the best palette to draw inspiration from. And it is available everywhere: everywhere we go, everywhere we turn, everywhere we look. People are everywhere. Just watch.
This post came about after I received an e-mail from Aaren Esplin, a graphic design student at the University of Utah, asking to pose the question “why do we people watch?” as help for a project. My initial reaction was to decline, since it seemed an arbitrary question to raise here, but then as I thought about it, it became obvious that this was something that influences us in one way or another and that we perhaps fail to acknowledge when we cite our “inspirations”. So, as help for Aaren and ourselves, why do you watch people?
>yet as designers we can’t help but let daily culture permeate into the work we produce.
I had the pleasure of hearing Joseph Kosuth speak about his work last week. During his presentation, he briefly mentioned how he saw the difference between art and what he called "advertising".
The reason that art is able to connect with viewers over the course of centuries is its self-consciousness (kind of the 'art for art's sake' issue) and its ability to retard interpretation (continuing dialogue through repeated viewing). "Advertising" may have a degree of self-consciousness — inter-textual references, disrupting traditional hierarchies (front cover on the back, etc.) — but there's always the issue of the "message". And there are very few pieces that reward repeated viewing beyond basic formal issues — tasty typography!, cool color scheme!, we could never get away with that kind of typography today, etc...
We operate within the Here and Now, so it's only logical that we be in the Here and Now.
So there you have it... a perfectly good rationale for hanging out in coffee shops and watching what we call "the freak show". Its our professional responsibility!
p.s. Kosuth's next show opens this weekend at Sean Kelly Gallery, 528 W 29 St, NYC. The gallery's a client and I've recently had the opportunity to see sketches and visit during installation. Go. It's gonna be great.
On Oct.21.2004 at 05:08 PM