In the 1920s, designers in Europe argued that cubic buildings, sans serif typefaces, photographic images, and functional products could be useful and relevant to people across nationalities and income groups. Design is a tool for diagramming and exposing structures of power. The words and concepts we use to talk about design-in both normative and disruptive terms-also ripple through the critical writing about race and feminism. People use graphic design to study and transform social relationships as well as visual ones. The rules of writing and typography encompass grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and the correct use of spaces and dashes. At its core, typography is a norm, invented to reproduce text in a consistent, error-free manner. Style sheets, templates, and content management systems are norms. We just live in it.Įach year, we harvest a fresh crop of sans serif typefaces claiming to deliver content in anonymous, trouble-free text blocks. Each year, we harvest a fresh crop of sans serif typefaces claiming to deliver content in anonymous, trouble-free text blocks. We produce brand standards and corporate identity manuals to regulate the public image of companies and institutions. We use grids, hierarchies, and tasteful type pairings to unify publications and websites. We employ legible fonts and familiar interface conventions in order to churn out seemingly neutral, user-friendly messages. Graphic designers are in the norm business. Norms are invisible, becoming present only when they rub up against difference. Synonyms for the word normal include standard, average, typical, and ordinary.

People living inside the norm bubble often don’t recognize their own special status, because norms aren’t supposed to be special. What does it mean to design “normal” things for “normal” people? Western society defines certain individuals and communities as average and ordinary, while everyone else is something other.

Graphic Design by Ellen Lupton