Graphic design in the trade union movement
The joys of a crafted font, the satisfaction of perfect kerning, a well taken photograph, posters that attract and not detract, movies filmed using tripods, for too long these things have been missing in the communications sent out by unions worldwide.
In the past unions have traditionally preferred and have steadfastly stuck to using words and words alone to carry information and spread messages.
Custom and practice has been for unions to hire writers and ex journalists to be in charge of their whole communications strategy. This would mean that the same person would be responsible for writing press releases and articles, managing media relations, laying out newsletters and designing posters and being the official union photographer. Being a jack of all trades and a master of none, to use a well worn phrase, and at the same time deskilling.
This multidisciplinary approach has succeeded in alienating the best writers, designers, media specialists, film makers and photographers from choosing a career in the trade union movement, and choose the union movement they would if the opportunities existed. You only have to look at the ‘green’ movement to see how successful they have been in attracting quality designers and writers. They do this by offering specialist positions and giving opportunities to grow in careers that make a difference.
But it’s not just a lack of opportunities that keeps designers away, it’s also the attitudes of the unions themselves and design’s poor reputation. Fundamentally there is an under-appreciation and a misunderstanding of what design is and what it is used for. Firstly there is the old school opinion of ‘we’ve been doing it like this for years and it works so why change’. The ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach, the problem with this is that it is broke and it does need fixing. What was acceptable in the past is no longer. Unions need to be heading into the future looking and being relevant to now.
The second position is a deep mistrust of anything that makes unions look like big business because we’re taught to believe big business is bad. Big business uses marketing and design to trick people so we should stay as honest as we can by looking like we are run out of someone’s back shed. We like to think that this attitude of not wanting to trick people into becoming members is what makes us honest. Unfortunately the opposite is true. Unions spend money on design but they spend it on non-designers to design. When asking people to part with some of their salary the least we can do is look like the professional organisations that we are.
The third position is that design is just some pretty pictures and communications officers are repeatedly asked to ‘pretty’ things up. This is a total misunderstand of design. Good design is conceptual. It’s based on solid ideas and uses the best methods to convey the message. Colour theory, eye tracking, human behavior and cultural information are all taken into account. In the words of the design theory master Bruno Munari, ‘Design must be beautiful, functional and accessible.’ Not something thrown together or ‘just prettied up’.
So what is the answer? To attract design talent the movement needs to be offering genuine opportunities for designers and design graduates. Positions that have them creating rather than composing, if this happens then the design produced by the union movement will rival that produced by the top design companies.
I should also include a link back to Creative Unions on this one.
Thanks Atosha, this is well argued piece. I have particular sympathy for the ‘pretty things up’ paragraph. We need to incorporate design into the campaign development stage rather than as an afterthought after everything else is done.
[...] seen these we’ve been doing some writing about the use of twitter by unions and about multi skilling and graphic design in unions. We are planning to run a series of these going into different issues around campaigning and [...]