Ollantay Avila Alcocer⋆˚✿˖
The “Everyday Designer”:
On Ornamentation, Decoration, and “Everyday Design Languages”
Selected Works⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡
Teotihuacan-A UNESCO World Heritage Site
An Interview with Kurt Woerpel
It Takes a Village-RISD Graphic Design Senior Show
The Princeton Progressive
Hi-RISD Orientation
Volume 1
Design Archive⁺‧₊˚♡˚₊‧⁺˖
& Everything Else˚ ༘ ೀ⋆｡˚
Research Project, Writing, Publication
Spring 2024-
“For the “Everyday Designer” aims to question the need for constant order, and to celebrate ornament and those who relish in it. May no surface be left untouched–may they come alive and show our hand.
Risograph Prints
Spring 2024
Blind embossed silkscreen with prong fastener binding
Although ornamentation and decoration are often used interchangeably, these two words can reflect an important difference in intent, audience, and authorship. Drawing from past interpretations of what designers and writers refer to as “Ornament”, it is the additional elements included by the designer that are non-essential to function. In the case of graphic design, the function is the understanding of the information being communicated. Decoration, on the other hand, is the alteration, customization, or personalization of a space, object, surface, or idea to better fit the needs and taste of the user. Decoration reflects a person’s interests, worldviews, or taste. Here, the audience is directly interacting with, iterating on, or recontextualizing the intentions of the original author.
Decoration is a significant way in which the everyday person takes ownership over things that are designed for a broad audience, especially in an age where it’s often more accessible or time-efficient to purchase ready-made objects and when public spaces are unprotected from private interventions. Graffiti, stickers, tattoos, embroidery, carving, etc. are all ways in which the everyday person has gone about manipulating surfaces, spaces, and objects. They serve as a form of annotation–an intervention on a designed surface, originally meant to be a self-contained and conclusive thought. Much like a physical plane might be decorated, an idea can be manipulated over time using visual inclusions and adaptations.
For example, “La Virgen de Guadalupe”, a culturally significant figure and visual motif in Mexico, originated shortly after the fall of Tenochtitlán as a tool for Spanish colonization. Through the appropriation of indigenous religious symbols and sites, particularly those of the earth and fertility deities, Spanish missionaries manipulated Aztec imagery for religious indoctrination. In later iterations of her depiction, various regionally specific motifs were added to prove the legitimacy of La Virgen as a figure of American Christianity: a nopal, or prickly-pear cactus, a crescent moon, an eagle, and a serpent. Ironically, this reinterpretation of her image would later prove useful as a symbol of Mexican nationalism and rebellion during the war for Independence and the Mexican Revolution. Even with this reinterpretation, Peterson notes in her article The Virgen of Guadalupe: Symbol of Conquest or Liberation that “not until the nineteenth century did Guadalupe's cult gain in strength among a largely disenfranchised population… only in the twentieth century has her image taken on new meaning compatible with her title, "Mother of the Mexicans."” This visual development of an idea through its ornamentation and decoration now aptly represents the multiplicity of a people–the tension of mestizaje, of being both colonized and colonizer.
Alongside this conversation of ornamentation and decoration, we can also observe the form these elements may take. “Everyday design languages” are the techniques, motifs, and aesthetics that are local to a place or community. In this definition, the term “design languages” refers to ornamentation and decoration strategies, styles, patterns, and tendencies that arise when working within the limitations of a certain medium. Everyday design languages come from the materials readily accessible to the community, its histories, and cultural influences. These design languages can vary in intricacy or craft, but this does not mean that some are inherently more valuable than others.
Memes, for example, have adapted a particularly niche everyday design language. The relationship between image and language seems to be where most of the tension lies. Memes often use found images (stock images, references from movies, tv shows, news, pop culture, etc.) paired with language to subvert the original content, subvert the subversion, and develop a never-ending cycle of referencing and recontextualizing. The “parameters” and tools of the internet have shaped the visual language and culture. Importantly and unlike any other everyday design language, these parameters have become “a dynamic structure for organizing information, a medium. One that generates the very tools that are meant to fill it.”
(fig.3)
I have to be the most fuckable person at the craft store for some reason
@materialgrrrlz via Instagram
Memes, commonly:
a) fit within common internet aspect ratios such as 1:1, 4:5, 9:16, etc., as most of these images are being circulated on social media platforms with limited user interfaces;
b) use default or highly accessible fonts such as Instagram Sans, Arial, Times New
Roman, etc., as there is a limited range of fonts available on widely accessible digital image making and manipulation software or social media creation tools;
c) stretch, distort, or manipulate the font and/or image, or combine different fonts haphazardly;
d) poorly cover up previous text, often using a sort of pen tool;
e) are highly pixelated, due to being screenshot and reposted multiple times, causing a degradation of the image and loss of information and;
f) use concise language to communicate a common experience, idea, or feeling through humor or irony as there is often a character count or a limited amount of space that can contain legible text.
These all work as forms of annotation–being in conversation with the original author or referenced material and manipulating its original intention.
Part of a meme’s humor comes from knowing that the original reference or meme has been edited or taken out of context. For example, every day i wake up [criying] (fig. 1) was so successful because many people were already familiar with Marriage Story and/or the clip that was being referenced, and the original scene was so intense that substituting the original argument with anything else was absurd. When applying this format to a mundane situation, it suddenly becomes a surreal overreaction that we all somehow resonate with. In some ways, it’s a reflection of how one wishes they could react when that one small inconvenience becomes the final straw. every day i wake up [criying] takes the meme’s logic to its natural conclusion: forgoing the mention of an inconvenience, either because we are too overwhelmed to mention even one of the many issues, or (a more sobering interpretation) the “minor inconvenience” is waking up itself.
Memes often utilize this shock value, contrasting the mundane with the absurd and often expressing common experiences through surreal or vulgar language and imagery (see I have to be the most fuckable person at the craft store for some reason [fig 3]). Unlike most everyday design languages, some memes purposefully try to look unappealing or poorly designed as it visually references that these words or images have been hastily taken out of context or adapted, or purposely failing at making an image look authentic or legitimate. These layers of referencing, subverting, ornamenting, and decorating create a dialogue between authors that, I believe, is one of the most prominent ways that the “everyday designer” is making nowadays.
Much like a meme embraces the chaos of multiplicity, the “everyday designer” embraces the dissonance of their multitude of identities through the use of ornamentation, decoration, and everyday design languages. They take the contradictions and translate them into something visual, discernible, and distinct. What makes the visual so special is how layered and nuanced an image’s impression can be. It’s what makes graphic design so effective–the ability to imbue meaning, context, and emotion onto an image. These layers of significance can be understood at once–just as one might read a sentence, the meaning is immediate.
Who is the “everyday designer” and how do they fit into this greater conversation of ornamentation, decoration, everyday design languages? Lorusso writes, “The everyday designer is located between these poles – not fully recognised as an expert, but also not a mere human being who plans ahead…[w]hile this kind of practitioner might have cultural and political aspirations, a good portion of their time is spent in mundane tasks”. His logic is clear – there’s an important distinction between the graphic designer tasked with “making the logo bigger”, and the partner at the prestigious design firm. Although this is an important distinction in the field of “Graphic Design”, most people who fall under this current definition must be actively aware of visual trends, but do not engage in the creation of culture themselves or are participating in an imitation of it.
Instead of defining the archetype by its disillusion or lack of agency, I would like to focus on the strengths that determine the “everyday designer”. Something I’ve been considering (or maybe admiring) about the “everyday designer” is how they handle ornament and decoration with nuance and confidence. This voice is what so many try to replicate, but fail to authentically capture. So, in the spirit of adaptation, I’d like to appropriate the term to better suit my and this essay’s needs. When I refer to the “everyday designer,” I am describing a laborer outside of the conventional “Design” field who consciously utilizes the techniques of ornamentation and decoration, and engages with everyday design languages to visually communicate.