Forget the pretty and posed. Jan van Toorn refuses to stand on the side on unrealism and familiarity. Design’s Delight communicates not an artistic message, but a journalistic one. The difference between the two is that the expression of visual journalism, unlike artistry, is tied to the public domain by the commission situation. Here, Jan uses visual metaphors to report design ‘live from the scene’ and issues a challenge to fellow designers to intensify the substance of communication design.



Title: Design’s Delight
Publisher: 010 Publishers
Author: Jan van Toorn

“The complexity of life has always been the source of inspiration to me in this profession. I was never a follower of universal belief for long, but preferred a provisional model that can be constantly modified as situations change in order to survive.” Jan van Toorn

HOME

Communication design cannot be detached from the experience and traditions of making, and can certainly not be reduced to form-related solutions to conceptual problems.



Exemplifying this is Jan’s approach to liberalism in his hometown Holland, where homosexuality is celebrated and never discriminated. Communicating the country’s stance on what other nations might think is a problem, he shows how the ideology has evolved to become a mass acceptance in his homeland and through events like the gay parade, its brings the country together as one to celebrate. In true light of laissez-faire, pornography and extreme makeovers are showed on television, as they do not believe that censorship in design or any related fields should be implemented for that matter.

WORLD

We are experiencing the worldwide phenomenon in which all forms of communicative interactive, both in language and action are made uniform and superficial. As citizens and consumers, we are hardly concerned with the reality behind the images and messages of the culture industry at all.



As the world becomes more virtual and less realistic, Jan shows powerful imageries, which forces the reader to scrape beneath the surface and comprehend the picture for its deeper significance. He quotes “ In the beginning was the image” by Asger Jorn, whilst portraying the Mexican refugees climbing over the border between Mexico and United States. This first part of the book, sectioned Panorama of Habits shows the progressive stages around the world, the past and the present, how it has been captured and how different countries have their own unique customary cultures. The McDonalds signage in a Middle-East country is also a cultural rarity, and Jan seeks for readers to understand the connotation behind this change and what is to come in the future.

FINANCE

Design operates in the forcefield of economic and socio-cultural interest. Under economic pressure in the field of cultural mass production, it would appear to lack the capacity to introduce communication strategies with a social or more profound symbolic function.



Embodying this point would be the image taken in London during the Diesel Jeans publicity campaign in 2001. An advertisement looking similarly mass-produced and monotonous fails to communicate with passer-bys as illustrated not one citizen takes a look at the campaign, which purpose to communicate a strong message falls short.



A cropped shot of the president of the World bank shaking hands with the Chinese VP, in charge of ‘poverty alleviation work’ in Beijing 2005 and sharing the page with the BELIEF SUPER-MARKET taken in China, where ideas become markets, both highlight a symbolic message on the economic interest in China. The message they hope to communicate would be one of hope and development within a short span of time.

LIFESTYLE

A lot of design is about control, not about the spontaneity and pleasure of communication as a social and interpretive activity. That is an activity that refers to experiences and meanings outside the world of design.

In the section of ‘meaningful nonplaces’, Jan captures a lan ( local are network) party, a virtual battlefield in the year 2000 where the worldwide turnover in that branch is $30 billion. It highlights the activity in a competitive environment, and yet the image is able to encompass the essence of different characters communicating and not allowing the forces of the atmosphere to control them.



In the very same section, the inner court of the National Museum of Australia in Canberra is highlighted as a museum not restricted by boundaries but instead is given creative freedom to design each section uniquely but communicates a very user fun friendly for all ages.

Many of the visuals in Design’s delight are plain to see and its facade may not symbolize a significant element, yet Jan cleverly plays with the minds of the readers, opting for the latter’s own active interpretation towards the visuals expression.






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