Digital and Print Versions of Postmodern Design Practice

Barton and Barton’s “Ideology and the Map: Toward a Postmodern Visual Design Practice” struck me as being particularly relevant in light of the digital revolution. Barton and Barton write that ideology and power are expressed in mapping practices, and that these phenomena are represented as being described rather than constructed. Barton and Barton (1993) refer to this process – the process of masking the act of construction behind mapping practices – as naturalization (p. 235). The authors argue that naturalization is harmful, as it works to reinforce the dominant class structure and to repress the Other.

In an attempt to fight against the effects of naturalization, Barton and Barton (1993) offer examples of ways to avoid presenting reality as a unified whole. These examples include presenting spatial information in a collage format and temporal information as palimpsest (p. 245).

One example of “denaturalize[ing] the natural” (p. 235) that Barton and Barton (1993) give is “the lighted board map in several Parisian Metro stations, whereby the viewer can override the totalizing effect of the map by registering her destination and receiving an individualized, highlighted itinerary” (p. 248). This particular technique seems to be well-fitted for the digital sphere, where space is much more abundant than print space.

In fact, Google offers a mapping overlay service, which allows users the chance to individualize their Google maps. Google specifically offers:

• Google Picasa (used to place personal photos on Google maps)
• My Places (used to draw personalized maps)
• Data in Tables (used to draw maps based on data imported into Google Fusion Tables)
• GPS Tracks (used to convert and store GPS files onto your computer)

Google also allows users to upload their own versions of maps and to overlay information on these maps with its Map Maker service.

This service is certainly similar to the highlighted itinerary offered by the Parisian Metro stations mentioned in Barton and Barton’s paper. Map Builder also offers similar services. The digital medium, then, seems to offer rich potential for postmodern explorations of representation.

What the paper did not discuss as thoroughly, however, was how postmodern concepts of design could be applied to print texts. (To be fair, the paper claims to address visual design, not print-based text design. I found the topic interesting, nevertheless.)

The paper does offer a few simple guidelines for writing centered on denaturalizing the natural. For instance, according to Barton and Barton, authors should not mask the fact that their writing is an act of production. Writers should also include long block quotes, rather than simply summarizing important information, in order to include the Other (in this case, the other author). Finally, writers should include as many footnotes and marginalia as are needed, and avoid representing reality as a fixed entity (Barton and Barton, 1993, p. 239).

Yet it seems more difficult to implement postmodern concepts into writing than it does to implement postmodern concepts into visual design. This stems from the fact that writing is primarily linear, and linear entities are, by their nature, ordered.

As Barton and Barton (1993) remind us, “Privileging is also effected in a series through ordering, where the first, and to a lesser extent, the last, elements gain distinction” (p. 237). In writing, then, certain things topics are going to be highlighted just because they appear before others. For instance, even in Barton and Barton’s paper, which employs some of the postmodern techniques that the authors list, information is presented in a hierarchal order. The section on “rules of inclusion,” for example, is privileged over the section on “rules of exclusion” because the former appears before the latter.

 

Barton B.B. & Barton M.S. (1993). Ideology and the map: Toward a postmodern visual design practice. In J. Johnson-Eilola and S.A. Selber (Eds.), Central works in technical communication (pp. 232-252). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004.