Programming Visual Representations. Evolutions of Visual Identities between Tangible and Intangible.

Abstract

The communication design field it's considerably changed in the last 20 years and more as well as the role of the designer. Technology has modified the daily work tools and new possible relations between the designer, the commitment and the final user can be underlined. Observing some of the most experimental practices, new visual languages have draw the attention, affected by innovative approaches and mixed competencies. The area of visual identities is especially of interest, not excluding other areas of experimentations. The phenomenon of the so-called dynamic or post-logo identities underlined the possibilities of using more fluid and expressive, variable, context related, processual, performative, non-linear, consistent visual languages instead of the usual and static repetition of a logo or an imposed series of rules (Felsing, 2010). But also their contradictions in making recognizable an organization and in the visual identity daily management. An interesting evolution to be underlined is in the use of the digital tools, not anymore in a passive way but in an active way. Visual designers can build their digital tools basing them on design and esthetic needs. Innovation is in the creative process, instead of in the final result, is in the “way to live our own creativeness” as affirmed precisely by Soddu (1998). The designer is not anymore just the user of ready-made digital tools, becoming himself programmer of customized digital toolboxes by using open source codes like Processing or VVVV or hardware like Arduino. This allows to affirm that visual designers are are becoming designer-producers (Bianchini & Maffei, 2012) too, as its happening for the colleagues of the product design field. Not just a DIY attitude but something that it's changing the control knobs of a design system in all its process and development. As far as technology support is relevant, technical matters are relegated in the background on behalf of abstraction and data parametrization that means on behalf of a meta-design level. The use of programming in creative and visual communication design processes “empowers the designer, freeing he from the constraints of predefined computational tools, and promoting creative freedom in the construction of visual metaphors” (Duro, Machado, Rebelo, 2012). The aim of this paper is to argue this recent evolution in the field of visual identities and in the wider area of communication design practices. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/IFDP.2016.3334