organic illumination

Organic illumination

Mariann Nikman FreijDissertation

ma Design Futures 2010

Copyright © Mariann Nikman Freij, 2010

Set in 13 Mrs Eaves XL Serif Narrow& 14/26/70 Mr Eaves Sans

Cover art; “Various Species of hummingbirds” by Ernst Heackel (from Art Forms In Nature) Source: fr.academic.ru/pictures/frwiki/72/Haeckel_Trochilidae.jpg

Printed in Londonfor MA Design Futures, Goldsmiths College, University of London

full title Organic Illumination: How can “nature” be promoted

and communicated visually in an attractive, inclusional and engaging

way in order to help the growth of sustainable systems and lifestyles?

written by Mariann Nikman Freij

programme ma design futures 2010

dissertationprinted 10.09.2010

author myself as an Organic Illuminator

external reader A sustainable Communication Agency

internal reader thomas.matthews

predicament The need for effective ethical visual communica-

tion in the age of climate change and greenwashing

Indexperception & nature ......... 21visual perception ......... 21The human scale ......... 21Microtravels ......... 22Nests ......... 22The language of images ......... 23

beauty & understanding ......... 23Chaos ......... 23Beauty in chaos ......... 24Aesthetics & intuition ......... 25

what is nature? ......... 25Autopoietic ......... 25

organic illumination ......... 27social responsibility ......... 27Enlightening people ......... 27

illuminating nature ......... 27Use in traditional graphic design ......... 28Triggering intuitive mechanisms ......... 28Appealing to the unconscious ......... 28

less is less? ......... 28Illuminating through Datology ......... 30Naturalistic Illustration ......... 32

visualising climate change ......... 32Abstraction and modification ......... 32Different times ......... 32A new language ......... 33

interview: anna garforth ......... 33

greenwashing ......... 34Conscious consumers ......... 34Why is it dangerous? ......... 35The colour green ......... 35

green branding ......... 36Green or “green”? ......... 36Signs of greenwashing ......... 36Authenticity wins ......... 36Goodness ......... 36

biomimrical design ......... 37Biomimricry in graphic design ......... 36

thoughts for the future ......... 37

preface ......... 7personal memoirs ......... 7Where the wild things are ......... 8

designing futures ......... 9Embarking on a dissertation ......... 9Developing ideas ......... 9A meta-question ......... 9

methodology ......... 10MindMAde workshop ......... 10Feedback from the event ......... 10

introduction ......... 15tetrahedron ......... 15Context ......... 15Author and readers ......... 15Proposition ......... 16

fragmentation & alienation ......... 17specifications ......... 17

dividing the world ......... 17Taxonomy ......... 17Fragmenting a whole ......... 17A world in the world ......... 18Unfortunate division ......... 18The big picture ......... 18

alienation ......... 19Cutting space ......... 19Black and white ......... 20Gradients ......... 20Utopia? ......... 20

dissertation // Mariann nikMan Freij // Ma Design Futures 2010 7

Preface personal memoirsIllustration has always attracted me. For as long as I can remem-ber I have been drawing and enjoying it immensely, and I believe it was the illustration part of graphic design that made me choose such paths of education in the first place. When looking back there is one moment that sticks out as decisive: the day I discov-ered Ernst Haeckel.

Vintage TreasureIt was spring 2004 and I was stud-ying in Copenhagen. I was living on Amager, south in the city, and on my way towards Christian-shavn one day I passed a vintage book store on Amagerbrogade. I parked my bicycle, walked in and spent a couple of minutes scan-

ning through the shelves before I pulled out a large, thin paperback version of “Art Forms In Nature”. I opened it… and was sold. Three minutes later the book was as well and it is probably the best 30 dk (£3) I have ever spent.

I am not sure what it is about Haeckel’s illustrations that I found, and still find, so mesmer-izing. They are without a doubt beautiful in their supreme de-tailedness, but it is more than that. They remind me a bit of old botanical illustrations I have seen in my parent’s old school books, which I also love. It is nature organised, randomness “prototyped”. In a way it is also about discovering beauty in what are rather weird and somewhat

scary beings. Octopuses, jellyfish, amphibians, spiders and algae are alien looking and dark things, but in his drawings they were beautiful and fascinating. And the religious details and the time he must have spent on them show such love and care and interest. It is infectious somehow.

It was also at this time I first developed an interest for de-sign, and in the spring of 2004 I signed up for a weekend course in graphic design. The course barely scratched the surface of the world of visual communica-tion, but it gave me an idea of the elements involved. The following year I moved back to Norway and enrolled in a foundation year in “Communication” at the Uni-

versity of Agder. It consisted of subjects like “Interpersonal Com-munication”, “Text and Image”, “Text and Interpretation”, “Mass Communication”, “Digital Pres-entation”, “Genre and Aesthetics”. After this year I felt confident that graphic design was the way I wanted to go and in 2005 I en-rolled in the ba in Media Design at Gjøvik University College.

Still, the love for nature and ani-mals stayed with me. I had pre-viously considered Biology and Zoology as a career path and even though I had chosen differently, I still felt drawn to it. I wanted to be able to bridge the gap between graphic design and nature, but was not sure how.

dissertation // Mariann nikMan Freij // Ma Design Futures 20108

Where the wild things areI have grown up with cats. Me, my mother and our cats, that was always my family situation. One or two cats were always residing in the house, and being an only child, at least until the age of 13, I had a very close relationship to these cats. They were my siblings, and one of them more than the

I would dress her up sometimes in my doll’s clothes. And she would sit there; patient, quietly suffering in a pink tutu, looking at me with these sad, green eyes as if to say “I love you, but you’re an idiot”, or as if repeating to her-self “it’s only a phase she’s going through, it’s only a phase…”.

I would throw her toys and teach her to bring them back to me. She would do all these things, point-less things, and I honestly believe she did it out of love. Maybe be-cause I wanted to believe, because God knows I loved her.

I used to watch her sometimes, moving around in the garden, our insane jungle of a garden, my mother’s hobby and pride. She was free of me out there.

right Artforms in Nature by Ernst Haeckel. Source: im-ages.amazon.com/images/P/0486229874.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

She would stroke by my leg, then quickly disappear into a Horten-sia bush with only her black tail exposing her. I envied her that world so much: the world within the bushes, the flowers, the smells, between green stalks and weird beetles. I would try to follow her in my mind and sometimes I would succeed, but as I grew older that world disappeared for me.

To me there has always been something slightly magical about animals. The way they are so dif-ferent from us, but yet so alike. They too can feel love, joy, fear, pain, pleasure. And we can com-municate. I look at my mother’s cat sometimes, and I think: what an amazing creature. And it is living with us, here in our house! It is looking at me, talking to me, regarding me as family. How privileged I am.

others. Her name was Malla, and she was, in a way, my sister. When I say “in a way”, it is not because she was less worth to me than any human sister would have been, but because she was different from me. She looked different, behaved different, sounded dif-ferent, smelled different. Quite frankly, she was better than me.

left Various species of Semaeos-tomeae, illustrated by Ernst Hae-ckel. Source: downloadthat.com/images/screen/7f93768c0396e9351a463ee4389ff406_Art_Forms_in_Nature_by_Ernst_Haeckel.jpg

middle Haeckel himself. Source: caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/hae-ckel/ceylon_e/habitus.jpg


designing futuresAfter graduating in Norway and moving onto the working life, this gap between design and the natural world became bigger and bothered me even more. I looked at the world around me and saw great unbalance, and found that I needed to do more than what traditional graphic design work would ask of me. I had to explore other fields of opportunities, and applied for an ma in Design Futures.

Embarking on a dissertationWhen doing an ma in a design programme such as Design Futures, which introduces “deep ethical and ecological perspec-tives into the design agenda” 1 and encourages the student to “challenge the existing bounda-ries and purposes of design”, you become disturbingly aware of the global (and local) challenges awaiting and the responsibility evolve the designer’s role in soci-ety. The need to create and push forward great, innovative ideas that will trigger change and “save the world” is very much present. It is a bit overwhelming and one can easily acquire a little fear of failure.

I definitely did. I was under the impression that if I was not able to come up with a practical de-sign project that would change both my life and others, then I really did not need to bother at

all. However, time passed, ideas were processed and subsequently rejected, summer arrived and the dissertation deadline approached with increasing pace. The some-what magic and amazing practi-val project I had in mind to de-sign as a case study for my thesis neglected to reveal itself, and I realised this would be a theoreti-cal thesis after all. 2

On the other hand, there is not much time in a 12 month ma to conduct both practical work and the supporting theory for it. In the end I find that writing this dissertation has been a highly creative process on more than one level, and that it has helped me grow as a designer. I also see the method I have developed and the body of work in itself as a piece of design, one that I am proud of presenting to you.

I realised that in order to de-velop great ideas, a great amount of thinking needs to take place, and that takes time. A great idea might appear as if out of no-where, in a sudden, unsuspected moment, but for such a flower to shoot, the ground must be fertile, and the soil must be nourished and cared for over time. With this allegory in mind, this work you are holding here can be seen as the nourished soil I have cared for over the last couple of months, in hope - and belief - that it will give life to many flowers over time.

Developing ideasThe following dissertation is about how organic materials (or the display of such) can be used in visual communication to find new ways of communicating na-ture or a connection to nature – regardless of the message.

It initially started out with an idea I developed in an essay written previous in my ma. In this essay I explored what I then described as “organic illustration” in urban spaces as a tool to coun-teract alienation from nature. The idea was that the average urban citizen is being exposed to a lot of commercial consumer propa-ganda and far too little “nature”, increasing the alienated state we are in against the natural proc-esses of our world. I wanted to incorporate “nature” in informa-tion design in the urban envi-ronment, through for example wayshowing. But because urban intervention and design in urban spaces is not my expertise (how-ever interesting I may find it), and because most of my previous background is in 2-dimensional typography and information design, I decided to concentrate on a field I already knew and to incorporate the organic and wild in graphics instead. At the same time I wanted keeping the pos-sibility open for the ideas to be able to exist and operate on other, 3-dimensional platforms.

A meta-questionBecause fragmentation and sys-tem thinking has been such an important part of my research for this topic, a “meta-question” to my thesis also appeared: How is it possible to combine the wild and chaotic side of nature with our need for systems, symmetry and logic, in order to create under-standable, beautiful, truthful and holistic visual communication?

1 gold.ac.uk/pg/ma-design-futures

2 The Ma Design Futures is a written based design programme, conducting no practical projects.


methodologyI am basing most of this disserta-tion on literature, but I have also conducted research from work-shops, talks and an interview.

MindMade workshopEvery year the ma Design Futures arranges an event where the students each invite a couple of guests that are relevant for their dissertation topic. This year the event was called MindMade and took place on the 28th of May. I had invited designer Richard Knowles and Dr. in Biology, Alan Rayner, as my potential “readers”. Half way through the event it was time for workshops where previ-ous Design Futures graduate Ivan Nascimento also joined the table.

For the workshop I had prepared tool cards to be used for ideation. The cards were divided into seven categories – “Platform”, ”Tools”, “Styles”, “Addressing”, “Focus”, “Public Services”, “Challenges” – and were meant to trigger ser-endipitous ideas when combining one card from each category. For example, one constellation could be;

Focus• : Food Style• : Photography Tool• : Infotainment Public Service• : Recycling Addressing• : Students/Young Platform• : Mobile Phones Challenge• : Rules & Regulations

The question would then be:

What kind of ideas could the crossing between these aspects create?

Unfortunately I did not have the time to test the cards out and failed to facilitate a proper inter-action with them. They did how-ever show a range of aspects that was potentially relevant to my topic, and also a certain depth to my thesis in terms of the quanta (60 cards). But this last point might also have been a weakness as it became somewhat confusing and overwhelming for the small amount of time that we had to our disposal.

Richard, as the impulsive and executing designer he is, plunged into the cards immediately and saw the serendipitous potential in them as he wanted to pick cards blindfolded and see what would come of it. This was a great and positive turn in the workshop, but because of the quanta of the cards it all appeared a bit too random, and the incidental constellation we ended up with during the workshop did not really trigger any immediate ideas. I think if there had been fewer cards, per-haps 30 or 40, with issues chosen more thoroughly or strategically, it could have been a good and fun tool to trigger ideas and conversa-tions.

However, it is hard to predict how successful the process would have been considering the mix of my group. My guest Alan Rayner

is a very interesting, opinion-ated character with a completely different background than the two other participants. He is not a designer, and seeks philosophical discourse rather than practical, hands-on creation. His strength as a professor is to lecture and be absorbed by others, not to be part of a collaborative, creative process. He was more interested in defining and developing my research question than to ide-ate practical ideas for my dis-sertation. His philosophical and ecological contribution through out the event as a whole was highly appreciated and valuable to me, but the main goal for the workshop was to generate specific ideas for practical, tangible case studies I could base my disserta-tion on. Than being said, it was my role as a fascilitator to lead the energy in the group, and for this I fell short in this time.

Ivan brought a nice balance to the group as he is both a practic-ing designer but also understands Alan’s philosophical and abstract language and way of thinking – which I think, unfortunately, clashed a bit with Richard’s spon-taneous “make-do”-energy. How-ever, the challenge of merging a young designer with a mature, academic biologist, was one that I was well aware of when I carried out my invitations. I expected the workshop to be tricky, but the dif-ferences in knowledge and view-

points to be valuable and diverse. In retrospect I see that had I been better prepared with both the tool cards and the workshop as a whole, the outcomes of it would probably have been a lot better.

Feedback from the eventThe most valuable and useful feedback I had from the work-shop, was that “illustration” might not be the right word to follow “organic”, as it might be too limited for the what I had in mind for it. “Visualisation” was suggested but later on Professor John Wood suggested “Organic Il-lumination”. At first I was scepti-cal to it, thinking it might give off the wrong connotations. After giving it some thought however I found that “illumination” covered the layered meanings of my idea elegantly, and that it had a nice ring to it.

Alan also spoke of the idea of “permeability” which I found interesting to incorporate into my own thesis. (you can read more about it on page 19) Ivan and Ri-chard also gave me some tips on designers, artists and projects to look into.

From my presentation at the event I got feedback from Clive Dilnot on how I should perhaps focus on Information Design and use the “wild” and “organic” to display information. Ivan backed this idea up by suggesting I use the skills and knowledge I already

*Illuminate: to light up, to make bright; to enlighten spiritually or intellectually; to help explain; to decorate with lights as a sign(The Oxford Reference Dictionary (1986) Clarendon Press, Oxford)


possess within the field of Infor-mation Design as a starting point, and build on that with the “or-ganic illustration”.

I also had a conversation af-terwards with one of the other student’s guest, Peter Bentley, discussing fragmentation and alienation, during which he made a reflection about how the mod-ern world has created a feeling of homelessness, both from our environment and our own body. I found this reflection interesting and have kept it in mind while working on this dissertation.

images MindMade workshop. Photographer: Seng Jariangroj

How can “nature” be pro-moted and communicated visually in an attractive, inclusional and engaging way in order to help the growth of sustainable sys-tems and lifestyles?


Author and ReadersMy role in this is as an “Organic Illuminator” and therefore I am addressing sustainable commu-nication agencies. As an internal reader I have chosen a design company that is specifically that type of agency, and whom I will be joining for an internship after completing this Master’s degree.

thomas.matthews 3 is a London based sustainable communica-tions agency. They have 12 years of working experience and sus-tainability has always been the foundation of their practice. They are one of the best in their field, and their clients include govern-ments, global corporations, ar-chitects and planners, museums, and ngo’s. They realised long ago that “Unsustainable is not a word

other. The four angles consist of “Author”, “Reader”, “Proposi-tion”, and “Context”, and the idea is that by defining each of these “angles” and visualising them in a 3-dimensional model, it will help the writing process and make the finished text clear and understandable. My final model is displayed above.

ContextThe context or reason for this dis-sertation is the “need for effective ethical visual communication in the age of climate change and green washing”. It is based on the pressing concerns that climate change might lead to, and my own interests and aspirations as a conscious designer, both now and in the future.

of the future” 4 and are driven by the conviction that good design is both sustainable, beautiful and economic, and that it opens up worlds of creativity and brand differentiation.

Like any sustainable communi-cations agency they are affected by the presence of greenwashing that is flourishing in the graphic design business and are aware of how often good intentions gets lost in design that fails to fulfil the vision behind it. They strive to differentiate sustainable busi-nesses with the integrity that could help inspire change from their consumers and clients.

Greenwashing is an ongoing challenge that they deal with on a regular basis, but like many [aktører/actors?] within the realm

introduction

proposition Howcan“nature”bepro-motedandcommunicatedvisuallyinanattractive,in-clusionalandengagingwayinordertohelpthegrowthofsustainablesystems

andlifestyles?

readers External:AsustainableCommunicationAgency

Internal:thomas.matthews

author Myselfasa

OrganicIlluminator

context Theneedforeffectiveethicalvisualcom-

municationintheageofclimatechangeand

greenwashing

tetrahedronThis dissertation is an exploration in figuring out ways in which I as a graphic designer can do more than what traditional graphic design work would ask of me, and where I can position myself in the “green” design movement. In doing so I have explored the role of the communicator and human perception. I have had to look back to understand the context in which I am operating, I have ana-lysed design today and ongoing trends, and I have tried to look ahead to see potential futures.

The ma Design Futures writ-ing model, which I have used, is based on a Tetrahedron; a pyramid shaped, dynamic struc-ture with four angles that oper-ate interdependently with each

3 thomasmatthews.com

4 thomasmatthews.com/index.php/about/philosophy


of “sustainability” they are still focusing on the idea of “reduc-tion”;

“…design and communication need to reduce negative environmental im-pacts and enhance the positives within society.“

Their list of clients includes for example Shell, which however in-volved in reducing emissions and innovation regarding new forms of energy, is a company in the grey area of what can be called “sustainable”. That being said, it is hard to find clients which business is as ethically optimal as a sustainable communications agency would prefer; and the line between good and bad might have to be stretched on occasion to be able to make it financially as design company.

However, this piece of theoreti-cal thinking you have before you is a look up and ahead, exploring ideas that are not hindered by financial limitation. I have used that freedom to question cur-rent mindsets and tendencies. I believe idea of embracing “reduc-tion” as green design is a limita-tion that is holding good design back from distinguishing itself from unethical greenwashing, and that it is time to take good visual communication a step further.

PropositionI have tried to materialise the future of “green” design, as this is where I intend to be working. What is going on in green design now? Where is it heading? Where should it be heading? And how can we help take it there?

The proposition which I have explored is “How can “true nature” be promoted and communicated visually in an attractive, inclu-sional and engaging way in order to help the growth of sustainable systems and lifestyles?”, and is about how organic materials (or the display of such) can be used in visual communication to find new ways of communicating nature or a connection to nature – regardless of the message.

In doing so I have looked at alienation from nature and what

leads to it, and how this gap can be bridged through visual com-munication. I have studied hu-man perceptions of nature and intuition, and looked at current trends of green design and future prospects.

image assets.thomasmatthews.com/portfolio/Cabe_gg_cover.png

image assets.thomas-matthews.com/portfolio/SHE_1_550x650px.jpg


dividing the worldHomo Sapiens possess the ability to plan, resonate and use tools. These are abilities that distinguish us from other animals. But the human brain can only process a limited amount of things at a time.

In order to process things we have had to divide things up, and in order to pass on knowledge about them and communicate with each other we have given these separated entities names and numbers. This process has been going on and evolving (probably) since the human brain became human – and even fur-ther back. And these created sys-tems have only gotten more and more fragmented and detailed as humans have evolved and ex-plored the world.

specificationsI would like to specify that when I refer to “us”, “we” or even “humans” I will be referring to humans living in urban, industr-ialised areas in the western part of the world. Today over half of the worlds population 5 are living in cities, but because of cultural differences between these peo-ple, cultures I know little of, I am specifically addressing the western part of the world.

fragmentation � alienation

TaxonomyTracing back as far as Aristotle’s “Categories” 6, everything acces-sible to us has been systematically named, numbered and catego-rised. Through taxonomy great thinkers like Carl Linnaeus and Ernst Haeckel have systemised the natural world to the smallest entities possible.

Fragmenting a wholeOur world and everything in it, is constantly changing, so how can we divide it up into separate bits and still make sense of it all?For example, there is really no such thing as a “now” because what we call “time” can never be divided up into entities small enough to be static. Time can never be static because it is hap-

pening in a constant flow. It is like Heraclitus said: you cannot step in the same river twice. The world is in constant flux and the river is changing even when your foot is entering the water surface, which technically means that you cannot even step into the same river once.

Still, this kind of truth is too ab-stract for us to deal with in practi-cal life. We have designed made sequences in time around which we organise our lives and rely on every second, minute, hour, day, month, year. Then again, “time” is a human idea/creation, a name for the cycles and flows we per-ceive in the world, day to night, summer to fall, life to death.

“No man is an island” john donne

5 seedmagazine.com/content/article/urban_resilience

6 The Complete Works of Aristotle (1984/1995) Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex, p.3


A world in the world“we seek with our human hands to create a second nature in the natural world” 7

Our language and way of thought is not attuned to the fundamental presence of change, but is instead support-ing a created “reality”, a world in the world. Why is this so? In order to be able to process and understand information, the human brain needs to divide things up. To a certain extent all animals do this and it is vital to separate dangers from opportunities or edible ber-ries from poisonous ones. We categorise to understand and communicate, but also to con-trol what appears as dangers and chaos.

Unfortunate divisionsTo divide things up in order to understand and relate to things, and then remember and share them, is not really a problem in itself. Most of the time we do not even think about it. It is our reality and has been for as long as we can remember. Even to imagine relating to the world in any other way is completely im-possible to us. We know nothing else. Still, it is causing us great harm.

Now, you might think that I am being overly dramatic and that for us to think of trees as trees

and bushes as bushes, surely could have no negative conse-quences on anyone or any thing. And in one way you may be right – or let me put it this way; for a long time in human history our way of dividing things up did not have any major negative or de-structive impact on neither us nor our environment. Still there are links between fragmentation and the biggest horrors in our world: war, poverty, pollution and the potentially lethal climate change we are facing.

“The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion. Indeed, the attempt to live according to the notion that the fragments are really separate is, in essence, what has lead to the growing series of extremely urgent crises that is confronting us today. Thus, as is now well known (published in 1980, red.), this way of life has brought about pollution, destruction of the balance of nature, over-population, world-wide economic and political disorder, and the creation of an overall environment that is neither physically nor mentally healthy for most of the people that have to live in it.” 8

How could this be? The act of fragmenting is not the real prob-lem here, but as Bohm points out, the belief that the fragments are really separate. It boils down to

the fundamental question, “what is reality?” – a question humans have been asking them selves for a very long time.

The big pictureConsequently, the act of believing and living as if everything in our physical world was really sepa-rated, can be quite problematic. It is like dumping toxic waste into a river and thinking that it will not affect the cows drinking from it down the stream. Or dump-ing litter in the ocean and being surprised when it shows up on a

7 Cicero, The Nature of the Gods, Horace C. P. McGregor (trans.), (1927) Penguin, London, p.184-5

8 Bohm, David (1982) Wholeness and the Implicate order, Routledge, London p.1-2

9 buzzle.com/articles/disappearing-bee-theories.html

beach somewhere. Or spraying the world’s crop fields with pes-ticide and later being puzzled by why all the honeybees are disap-pearing. 9 The illusion that the fragments – water, waste, bees, crops, pesticide etcetera – do not interact and effect one another, is preventing us from realising the consequences of our actions, or maybe more importantly, the scale of it.

We have trouble seeing the “big picture” of things, the picture being of course the planet we live on. And the consequences of not

image kk.org/kk/Spiral%20time.jpg


seeing how everything is connect-ed, became very dangerous when the scale of interference with the natural world, exploiting and manipulating, quickly started increasing with the industrialisa-tion. This is when fragmentation started to materialise into “hor-ror” – when we reached a point in our technological development where we were able to destroy our entire specie, taking millions of other species with us, just because we are not able to see the world and life on it holistically.

Janine M. Benyus, author be-hind “Biomimicry”, tells of her story from studying applied science with a special in forestry and three growth;

“As I remember, cooperative relation-ships, self-regulating feedback cycles, and dense interconnectedness were not something we needed to know for the exam. In reductionist fashion, we studied each piece of the forest separately, rarely considering that a spruce-fir might add up to something more than the sum of its parts, or that wisdom might reside in the whole.” 10

alienation“We tend to live in a world of certain-ty, of undoubted, rock-ribbed per-ceptions: our convictions prove that things are the way we see them and there is no alternative to what we hold as true. This is our daily situation, our cultural condition, our common way of being human.” 11

Cutting spaceIf you look for differences, you will find them. In a world of chaos, they are everywhere, and we tend to draw lines between them. In some places they are vague, or decisive but not invisible to us. Other places they are drawn in hard, black ink, like the Berlin wall or borders around the Gaza strip or the hard line that divides the island of Ireland. “Differences” and “discrimination” are closely related.

Alan Rayner, professor of Biology

at Bath University and also my guest at the MindMade event ear-lier this year, refers to the lines we draw in our physical environ-ment as “cutting up space”. 12 He writes;

“…imaginary hard line is at the root of conflict between all kinds of intoler-ant fundamentalist ideologies as well as a source of great difficulty in pre-dicting and relating to environmental change.” 13

He also speaks of how our sup-position of fragments is so deeply imbedded in human thinking that we base our lives on the idea that matter can be divided from space, disregarding the presence of continuity – flow – between things. In my workshop at the MindMade event, he illustrated this with a simple “animation” of

image “Loving Error” (Oil paint-ing on board, by Alan Rayner, 1998), illustrating the dynamic interplay between differentiation and integration. Source: inclusion-al-research.org/lovingerror.php

image Illustration by Alan Rayner from the MindMade workshop, 28th of May 2010. Source: private

10 Benyus, Janine M. (1997) Biomimicry: innovation inspired by nature, William Morrow and Company Inc, New York, p.3

11 Maturana, H. R. and Varela, F. J. (1987) The tree of knowledge: The biologi-cal roots of human understanding, Sham-bala Publication, Boston, p.18

12 MindMade event

13bestthinking.com/topics/science/biology_and_nature/ecology/natural-inclusionality


the human body (see image). He explained the human body – or a body of mass – as an “energetic configuration of space in flow form”, which is illustrated with a dotted line that allows for that energy to flow, in and out, like our bodies do with breathing, sweating, eating and constantly changing. Then he draws a figure to explain how we perceive space and energy: with a solid, black outline, which cuts out the body from its environment, leaving it alienated. His point being, of course, that you cannot cut space. It is a physical impossibility, yet we base our whole perceived reality on it.

This contradiction that we live by every day is not unlikely to have a troubling effect on us, as we move our bodies through arti-ficial environments and linguis-tics, denying our own flow and natural processes.

Black and WhiteWe seek clarity, opposites, con-trast. Black or white, dead or alive, left or right, yes or no, up or down. In fact, we like stereotypes so much that we are even cat-egorising our friends and family. Psychologists call this tendency the “Fundamental Attribution Er-ror” (FAE) 14, and it is explained by Malcolm Gladwell as a human tendency to be “overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits and underesti-

mating the importance of the situation and context”. Because, as Gladwell puts it, it “makes the world a much simpler and more understandable place.” 15

GradientsOf course, humans are not com-pletely blind to flux and connec-tions and gradients. It is not that black and white and as an author I should be careful myself not to draw harmful lines between the words I am writing. Our idea of “time” is in a way an interpreta-tion of flow and we know that when we die, when everything dies, it rots and gives life to new forms.

On an instinctive level I think we are all aware of the connect-edness of everything on this planet, and that we have a shared feeling of being a part of its con-stant flow. This instinct however is buried deep in us, and perhaps deeper in some than in others. It is also being constantly repressed by our fragmented presupposi-tions in language and perceptions of “reality”. And mostly this is to blame for not recognising all the flows that are happening around us. Some happen to fast for us, or too slow. Some happen too far away or too close, and some are too big or too small for us to be optically perceived. (go on to Gib-son and visual perception )

Utopia?Some may say: ‘Fragmentation of cit-ies, religions, political systems, conflict in the form of wars, general violence, fratricide, etc., are the reality. Whole-ness is only an ideal, towards we should perhaps strive.’ 16

Is the idea of a holistic world view, an utopian dream? It has, along with other idealisms, a stigma of hippiedom by it, and some may say that holism is the illusion. I, however, agree with Bohm, that “wholeness is what is real, and that fragmentation is the response of this whole to man’s action...” (ibid)

What I would like to shed light on is how this “reality” is more harmful than beneficial, both for the human race and the planet as a whole, and that it might also be the source for feelings of discom-fort and homelessness – feelings we might sense but not be aware of – that are most commonly re-ferred to as alienation.

John Donne said “No man is an island”, and in a way no island is an island either, because under the water it is connected to the rest, and constantly changed by water, air, birds and people.

14 Gladwell, Malcolm (2000) The Tip-ping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference, Abacus London, p.160

15 p.160

16 Bohm, David (1982) Wholeness and the Implicate order, Routledge, London p.7


visual perception “We do not see what we do not see, and what we do not see does not exist.” 17

Like Maturana and Varela sug-gests in the quote above, what we see is our reality. Or as Gibson puts it, “Knowing is an extension of perceiving.”. 18 In “The ecologi-cal approach to visual percep-tion“, Gibson writes about how a decisive part of how we humans perceive our environment is in “the temporal scale of the process and events we choose to con-sider” 19, meaning space and time affects how and what we perceive. And this is not really something we control or a conscious “choice” on our part. We have no problems perceiving the life and death of our next of kin, or the growth

and decay of a plant, or the rising and setting of the sun. The crea-tion and collapse of a planet or a solar system on the other hand, is something we have no capac-ity or opportunity to perceive except in (scientific) theory. It is too massive and too far away, both in space and time. The same applies for changes happening on a microscopic level, in cells and in atoms. These processes are too small, too close, and too quick to be perceived with the naked eye.

The human scaleBut even though our reality is somewhat limited, fragmented and perhaps different from what our intuition* tells us, we are still aware of these changes because

perception & natureof science, and extensive studies and experiments through history. Other wise I would not have been able to write about them here. Still, we do not always take them into account in our daily actions or when planning ahead. Gener-ally one could say that our practi-cal understanding of time is too small to consider the universe, and too big to consider molecules, simply because it is beyond prac-tical comparison with our human scale.

In other words, if we only con-sider real what we see, there is a lot we miss out on. We are miss-ing out on valuable information that could give us a richer under-standing of our environment and our place in it and thus make us

“all of his friends were transformed into flowers, all flowers metamorphosed into birds, all birds into mountains, all mountains into stars, every star became a house, every house a city” max ernst

*“Instinct” and “intuition” are words that often get mixed up with one an-other, and their meaning do overlap:Instinct: “an innate propensity, espe-cially in lower animals, to seemingly rational acts; an innate impulse or behaviour; intuition”Intuition: “immediate apprehension by the mind without reasoning; immediate apprehension by a sense”.

However, as “instinct” often is used when speaking of behaviour, I will use “intuition” in this dissertation to refer to knowledge, but still a knowledge that is related to bodily instincts.

(The Oxford Reference Dictionary (1986) Clarendon Press, Oxford)

17 Maturana, H. R. and Varela, F. J. (1987) The tree of knowledge: The biologi-cal roots of human understanding, Sham-bala Publication, Boston p.242

18 Gibson, James J. (1986) The ecological approach to visual perception, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.,, New Jersey, p.258

19 p.10


more conscious about our actions and less alienated.

MicrotravelsVisual display of information could help make “invisible” life forms and processes more avail-able to us.

In an essay written for my ma earlier this year, I wrote about the idea of “Microtravels” and how it could be used to unravel “hidden” natural life in the city. “Mictro-travels” was initially developed in 2008 by a group of designers working for Samsung Design Eu-rope (SDE), and was a conceptual tool for escapism. It was meant as a virtual, high-tech “introspec-tive voyage” 20 by using optical technology like contact lenses and camera capsules to be integrated into consumer products, to offer quick, stress-relieving entertain-ment.

The concept of a commercialised “introspective voyage” did have some mental health issues and questionable ethical intentions, but at the same time it offered an innovative, alternative approach to travel experiences for the met-ropolitan citizen and knowledge about his or hers environment. I wanted to take this concept down a different path, and to facilitate Microtravels not just introspec-tively into people’s bodies, but outwards into their immediate environmental surroundings. That way it could this be used as a

image Left: An interactive visuali-sation of cell size and scale devel-oped by the university of Utah. Source: learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/

20 SDE research rapport (2008) received from Susana Branco via e-mail, 24.04.2010

tool to make the urban landscape more transparent to the wildlife in the city, natural processes hap-pening right in front of people’s noses but invisible to us either for optical or cultural reasons.

NestsPerhaps our minds prefer to see nature as components in a grid, but there are other ways of un-derstanding its structure. One could look at it as never ending “neighbourhoods”, or as Gibson explains it, as a system of nests. He describes how all things can be seen as smaller units embed-ded in larger units;

image Right: Fractals in nature are nice examples of systems and scale. Top: funpeak.com/funnyp-ics/fractals-in-nature.jpg Middle: listsoplenty.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/fractals-in-na-ture-a-shoreline.jpg Bottom: 1.bp.blogspot.com/_NDvJlp7t_FI/SXg-fUdfFZTI/AAAAAAAAEpU/KP ms9vxAlOs/s400/leaf+veins4.jpg


“For example, canyons are nested within mountains; trees are nested within canyons; leaves are nested within trees; and cells are nested within leaves.” 21

The language of imagesImages has layers of meaning beyond that of language that can bridge ideas of separations, and “see” things ordinarily hidden for us. For example, even though we do not see our own waste does not mean that it does not exist, but expression of “throwing away” something suggests otherwise.

We perceive through our senses, we acquire knowledge with our mind, we then communicate it, and perceive it all over again. Through language the fragments are supported, because language is built of these fragments. Be-

cause of this it is very hard to un-derstand any other, non-fragment-ed reality, when in a way there is no language to express it with or thoughts to think it with.

But images are a different lan-guage, a meta-language in a way. Both visual and linguistic images (allegories, metaphors) are able to help bridge those gaps that sepa-rate humans from nature, and to counteract alienation, and graph-ic designers can use this language consciously to do so.

But our love for systems, con-trasts, and symmetry applies for images as well, as images are a product of human perceptions and a form of communication.

beauty � understanding

“The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demon-strate in a special degree.” Aristotle 22

As I have pointed out, we need to fragment big systems and organ-ise chaos in order to understand it. This need makes us eligible to find systems aesthetically beau-tiful, as opposed to chaos. Sys-tems in nature are very complex, and because they so incredibly weaved together they can appear as chaotic.

ChaosIs it then possible for us to find beauty in chaos, and what is chaos? Chaos means basically “utter confusion or disorder” 23, and is in other words something than is not easily comprehensi-ble to us. Is it possible to adore something we do not understand, or is there a co-dependance in us humans between understanding and beauty?

Like Aristotle suggests and as I have previously mentioned, we seem to have a preference for logic and opposites, and aestheti-cally this noticeable/materialised in the frequency of patterns, contrast and grids we see in all types of art and design. We also tend to simplify things, making stereotypes of natural beings (im-age!!) on a mass scale. Even our

“She has neither language nor discourse; but she creates tongues and hearts, by which she feels and speaks” goethe

21Gibson, James J. (1986) The ecological approach to visual perception, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.,, New Jersey, p.9

22 Philosophies of art and beauty: Selected Readings in Aesthetics from Plato to Heidegger (1964/1976) edited by Albert Hofstadter and Richard Kuhns, The Uni-versity of Chicago Press, Chicago, p.96

23 The Oxford Reference Dictionary (1986) Clarendon Press, Oxford

image Chaos or system? Source: en.wikivisual.com/images/9/96/Water_drops_on_spider_web.jpg


parks and gardens can be said to be examples of stereotypes of how we prefer nature to be.

Still, we are without a doubt drawn to things we do not un-derstand as well. Mysteries, and puzzles, unattainable things and the occult are tendencies that we deliberately seek and find attrac-tive. Perhaps is it the curiosity and endless need to figure things out and understand them that is the main attraction. But that does not explain superstition, and believing in stories that are based entirely on the unexplainable. This proves that we are accessible to perceiving chaos, but it might be rooted deeper in us than the accessibility to other types of knowledge.

Beauty in chaosAnd it is not a secret that humans find nature beautiful, whether it is raw and untouched, wild na-ture or Kew Gardens. Clearly, we do not need to understand or con-trol it to love it, but up close wild nature can be frightening, and somehow we also find it to hinder efficiency and mess up our own systems. That might be why we are in such a never ending bat-tle with it in densely populated areas. Cities are created, artifi-cial environments - created from natural resources but distorted to the extent that modern tech-nology allows. Here the human laws rule, and green areas and

animals are meant to exist within strict boundaries to not sabotage our rules and systems.

Unfortunately, systems are usu-ally supported by bureaucracy, and often natural, self-sufficient systems can be more efficient. A good example of that is a traf-fic experiment that has been conducted out in towns across Europe. It shows that by remov-ing traffic signs the number of accidents actually went down drastically. By forcing drivers to think and judge for themselves they found that they acted more responsibly and were more alert to the flow in traffic.

Aesthetics & intuitionHow can we perceive any form of knowledge about chaos if it does not fit into our organised under-standing of reality? Do we have an intuitive, precognitive ability to perceive it, and do we have an intuitive understanding of what nature is?

what is nature?The word “nature” has several meanings. We use it when refer-ring to the “outdoors”, the country-side, or the “wild” and untouched landscape with wild animals, and we use it when we talk about the essence, form or way of something or someone. These are all differ-ent meanings, and slightly vague which makes it hard to under-stand what nature really is to the

image Haeckel Starfish. Source: scienceblogs.com.br/discutin-doecologia/images/Haeckel_Ophiodea_70_Astrophyton_dar-winium.jpg

image MC. Escher. Source: trickyrelativity.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/escher_csg026_en-counter.jpg


image A piece of nature cling-ing to a brick wall in New Cross Source: private

modern man and what kind of relationship we have to it.

Describing natureNature is both around and within the physical world, and exists as (separate) ideas and percep-tions in the non-physical world. “Nature” is all of these things and none at the same time, and it is difficult to find a description that covers all these areas.

In a way it is something or-ganic – in the widest sense of the word – that we can shape but not control – in the strictest sense of the word. Because technology is developing rapidly. Research in stem-cell technology is pushing boundaries, and a recent a break-through actually announced a chances of bringing extinct spe-cies back to life 24. Still, there is an element of unpredictability in living creatures, if nothing else than that they tend to change more rapidly than artificial crea-tions.

I say “organic” in the widest sense of the word because sub-stances like for example rocks are not usually thought of as organic, still we refer to mountains as “na-ture”. Rocks do however contain carbon and is thus organic in the wider sense. Then again, when we refer to mountains as a part of nature it is possibly not the rock itself we are thinking of but the rock’s or the mountain’s context: the fauna, animals, trees grip-

ping the mountain side, and the fresh air surrounding it.

Imagine holding a pebble in your hand: would you think of it as nature or as a product of nature? In fact, would you think of anything separated as “nature” at all? A plant in a pot on your window sill, a tree on the pave-ment or a bird on a wire: if a liv-ing, organic entity, or the produce of such, is not perceived in a the context of other organic entities, interacting with each other, do we recognise it as something more than “natural”? Do we recognise it as “nature”? It is hard to find a perfect formula for what really constitutes “nature” as it pene-trates so many aspects of our lives

and exists in so many variations in our language.

AutopoieticIn the truest sense, nature is autopoietic 25, meaning self-organised and self-contained, and is coexisting in a synergy of synergies that includes all life on this planet. However, this is an understanding too abstract for common use, all though perhaps optimal. In this dissertation I will therefore be referring to “nature” in the way I, and probably also you, my readers, are most famil-iar with: as Kate Soper defines it;

“In its commonest and most funda-mental sense, the term ‘nature’ refers

to everything which is not human and distinguished from the work of humanity. Thus ‘nature’ is opposed to culture, to history, to convention, to what is artificially worked or pro-duced, in short, to everything which is defining of the order of humanity.” 26

Definitions Nature:1. the phenomena of the physi-cal world as a whole; 2. a thing’s essential qualities; a person’s or animal’s innate character; 3. a kind or class; 4. vital force, functions, or needsDefinitions of Natural:1. of, existing in, or produced by nature; 2. conforming to the ordi-nary course of nature; 3. suited to be such by nature; 4. not affected in manner; 5. not surprising, to be expected(The Oxford Reference Dictionary (1986) Clarendon Press, Oxford)

24guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/29/frozen-zoo-san-diego-rhino

25 Maturana, H. R. and Varela, F. J. (1987) The tree of knowledge: The biologi-cal roots of human understanding, Sham-bala Publication, Boston p.47

26 Soper, Kate (1995) What is nature?, Blackwell Publishers Inc., Massachu-setts, USA, p.15


social responsibilityDesign has always been about improving life. From nose-jobs to chairs, design is trying to make life easier, more enjoyable, and more convenient. And we have really enjoyed ourselves so far: we have been partying like there was no tomorrow. Now, design is no longer just about improving lives. It is about “improving man’s abil-ity to survive on this planet”, in true Buckminster Fuller spirit 27

In that respect, design is be-coming more “social” than ever, infiltrating new areas of life.Like David B. Berman is saying in his book “Do good: how designers can change the world”, that;

“Designers have an essential social responsibility because design is at the

core of the world’s largest challenges. And solutions.” 28

Enlightening peopleAs a visual communication de-signer, that social responsibility lies in “illuminating” people and making valuable and truthful in-formation accessible to the public. On the question about the need for visualisations in the future,designer and lecturer, Andrew Vande Moere says “We have an urgent need to use visualization for socially relevant purposes”, 29 and refers to both information overload in modern society and global problems. He believes that information visualisations can provoke questions, change peo-ples behaviours and contribute to a responsive public awareness for

sustainability, and that through aesthetics it is possible to increase the flow of information and invite discovery and insight.

I fully agree, and I am propos-ing that it is possible to shape the future by visually reshaping peo-ple’s current image of ‘the reality of nature’, and that “Organic Il-lumination” will help counteract alienation.

27 Radical Nature, Barbican art gallery (2009), p. 72

28 Berman, David B. (2009) Do good: how designers can change the world, New Riders, Berkeley, p.1

29 Data Flow: Visualizing Information in Graphic Design 2 (2010) Ed. by Robert Klanten, Nicolas Bourquin, Thibaud Tis-sot, Die Gestalten Verlag, Berlin, p.29

30 Data Flow: Visualising Information in Graphic Design (2008) Ed. by Robert Klanten, Nicolas Bourquin, Thibaud Tis-sot, Sven Ehmann Die Gestalten Verlag, Berlin, p.8

image Private

illuminating nature

“illumination and knowledge flow together.” Ferdi Van Heerden 30

“Organic illumination” I am using to describe visual communication that uses organic materials as a an instrument to illustrate and shed light on natural systems. This can happen in two ways:1. As physical, 3-dimensional “graphics” like branches, leaves, fruit, etcetera, that are used as they are, where they are, or photo-graphed and portrayed on other 2D platforms. (It is very closely related to “Datalogy”, which I will get back to later.)2. Organic materials that are illustrated in other ways, in a naturalistic style.

Organic Illumination

“It’s hard to put into words what the mind does, but drawing can map those processes better than anything but music. It’s so agile. It’s like a cloth you put over some complex object and it takes on the shape of the object exactly” robert horvitz


I am using the word “organic” as a representation of something naturally existing in nature or produced by nature, including mineral based objects like for example rocks and all living crea-tures. The word “illuminate” in this context is meant as “enlight-en spiritually and intellectually”, “increase understanding” and to “celebrate” 31 explain”

Use in traditional graphic designIn this dissertation, I am focus-ing on how Organic Illumination can be used in traditional graphic design, more specifically informa-tion design and in visual identities. To clarify what kind of “informa-tion” I am referring to, as almost all graphic design is design of in-formation, I am thinking of facts, statistics, and public information – knowledge we consider reliable, and how Organic Illumination can be used to visualise and add meaning to this knowledge. I will also look into how it can be embedded visually in corporate, public and organisational identi-ties in order to achieve ethical goals and promote and push for-ward sustainable futures.

Organic Illumination is how-ever not limited to the traditional graphic design and can be used on different platforms. Organic Illumination is an alternative reality: an approach to unravel complexity in a way that provides a richer understanding of the

world, regardless of what kind of platform it takes place on.

Triggering intuitive mechanismsThe idea behind this visual lan-guage is that organic materials can trigger embedded, instinc-tive/intuitive* recognitions of “nature” in a whole different way than other visual representations of information. Therefore it will be more effective when creating understandable, beautiful, ethi-cal and inclusional design, and a valuable tool to help promote natural and sustainable systems – whether it is the life and death of paper cups or a public trans-portation system. It is meant as a way to help create healthier, more holistic and authentic perceptions of what “nature” is and our role in it.

Appealing to the unconsciousThe use of organic materials in graphic design will communi-cate both the right values and the complexity of nature in a simple and understandable way, because organic materials appeal to our intuition about what nature is. I will argue that this is an intuitive recognition happening on two levels. Firstly, the organic materi-als, or the naturalistic style used to portray the materials, gives us an immediate understanding of a connection to nature that we may fail to communicate in words. Secondly, the autopoietic nature

of our human bodies will have an intuitive recognition of belonging to other, autopoietic systems. This might be sensations happening on an unconscious level, but still a real sensation.

It might be connected to what Soper describes as “anthropocen-tric” attitudes to nature 32: that we relate to nature through a me-diation of ideas about ourselves, because that is the only way we know how. We look for recogni-tion in nature related to our own nature.

less is less?Another supporting theory be-hind the idea of Organic Illumi-nation is that organic materials communicates with our intuitive awareness in such a way that it can convey a meta-language about the “chaos” or complexity of natural systems.

As a graphic designer you are being thought repeatedly about how the virtue of good graphic design is simplicity, and the saying “less is more”, is one of the pil-lars of (modern) design, perhaps particularly within branding and information design. I do not intend to argue with that, espe-cially not in this age where our everyday lives are so dense with information. Like Manuel Lima, Visualization Consultant and author, suggests: “our ability to generate and acquire data has by far outpaced our ability to make

“Organic Illumina-tion is an alternative reality: an approach to unravel complex-ity in a way that provides a richer un-derstand-ing of the world”

31 Illuminate: 1. to light up, to make bright 2. to enlighten spiritually or intel-lectually; to help explain (a subject) 3. to decorate with lights as a sign of festivity 4. to decorate […] with gold or other bright colours (The Oxford Reference Dictionary (1986) Clarendon Press, Oxford)

32 Soper, Kate (1995) What is Nature?, Blackwell Publishers Inc., Massachu-setts, USA, p.13


1 Cycle + grass illuminating how recycling is a natural part of na-ture and that recycling in human systems affects nature as well. Source: ies.ncsu.edu/_library/im-ages/products/sustainability/grass-recycling-symbol.jpg

2 Illustrator Cornelia Hesse-Hon-egger, draws naturalistic images of morphologically disturbed true bugs that she finds and collects next to nuclear power plants, and this way illuminating changes in environment and animal life and making it visible to people. Source: chembiodiv.ch/images/malformation.jpg

3 Ernst Haeckel illuminates breath taking beauty in his naturalistic illustrations and overwhelming details. Source: wired.com/im-ages_blogs/photos/uncategorized/2008/10/20/425pxhaeckel_asteridea_2.jpg

4 “Black Locust” by Brian Nash Gill, beautiful woodcut and ink rubbing of a Black Locust tree, illuminating the tree’s “finger-print”, it’s “Dna”, and years lived. Source: bryannashgill.com/assets/gallery/6/107.jpg

5 “Breath posters”: brilliant campaign about the importance of trees in Berlin, by illuminating the codependency between trees, oxygen, breathing, the city and carbon dioxide. maria tackmann, studio 8 design, p.196 - 197 Data Flow

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sense of that data.” 33

Simplicity is a virtue, but how do we combine it with the chaos and complexity of mother na-ture? How do we simplify without loosing valuable meaning? Must visual communication be simple or minimalistic in order to be understood? Ferdi Van Heerden, Design for business specialist at ideo, writes;

“Design is not just about making things simple. In fact, there is a com-plementary relationship between sim-plicity and complexity (that influences design choices to produce surprising and informative data diagrams.)” 34

Less could end up being exactly that, and organic materials could be an added layer that visualises the complexity by addressing people’s intuition.

Information design guru Ed-ward Tufte says, “Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information. And so the point is to find design strate-gies that reveal detail and com-plexity”. 35 Organic Illumination can be seen as such a strategy.

Illumination through DatalogyDatalogy are physical, 3-dimen-sional “graphics” that are used to visualise information. It is introduced in the books Data Flow 1 and 2, and is meant to cover visual display of informa-tion – statistics – only, but has the

potential to be stretched to cover more than that. The authors ex-plains Datalogy as;

“a bridge between abstract data and familiar symbols, objects, spaces, or experiences. Rather than using neu-tral, interchangeable diagrams, the information is put in the direct context of its theme. Analogies are drawn which rely on the viewer’s interpreta-tion in order to enhance and intensify the meaning.” 36

Using watermarks on buildings as example it explains how by seeing watermarks on buildings (either from previous flooding or expected flooding from rising sea levels due to climate change), the contextual familiarity of what could have been abstract data makes you perceive and interpret the information on a much more intuitive, personal, and effec-tive level. The same applies for sugarstacks (see image 3 on next page): a graph could tell you that 0.5 liters of Coca Cola contains 60 sugar cubes, but a picture of 60 sugar cubes next to a bottle of Coke could give you a more com-prehensive understanding of how much sugar that actually is. You might even “taste an unpleasant sweetness and internalize a link to the respective item” 37, that mere numbers or graphs would have trouble achieving. It is infor-mation with direct connection to its subject that not only informs

the viewer, but also touches in-stincts and emotions.

Datalogy is visual informa-tion taken to a new level, based on the notion that “seeing is believing”(ibid). Organic illumi-nation as Datalogy is therefore an effective and powerful way of using organic materials to

33 Data Flow: Visualising Informa-tion in Graphic Design (2008) Ed by Robert Klanten, Nicolas Bourquin, Thibaud Tissot, Sven Ehmann Die Gestalten Verlag, Berlin, p.28

34 p.7

35 Tufte, Edward R. (1990) Envi-sioning Information, Graphics Press, Connecticut, p.53

36 Data Flow: Visualizing Informa-tion in Graphic Design 2(2010) Ed by Robert Klanten, Nicolas Bour-quin, Thibaud Tissot Die Gestalten Verlag, Berlin, 28

37 p.128

image [bottom] Poster by Astrid Stavro Source: designaudit.net/images/uploads/astrid_2_o.jpg

image [top] lisakurtzedesign.com/pear.jpg


1 One of many willow sculptures in Kew Garden, by Tom Hare. Source: farm4.static.flickr.com/3493/ 3826367330_7fd30ab47f.jpg

2 “Entity” by Are Mokkelbost, a puz-zling illustration combining elements from other animals in the faces of monkeys, without feeling random. An interesting example of how chaos and holeness can be com-bined visually in an interesting and attractive way. Source: c0573862.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/1/0/128/108424/are0_905.jpg

3 Datology from Data Flow 2 p.133

4 A diagram of software for Mac (1990). A fascinating and inspiring way of “combining worlds”: variation of structures and visual language in one display, creating in a rich and layered visualisation without becom-ing confusing. This particular piece is about software, but the rich visual language and intuitive approach to materializing knowledge makes it an excellent approach of visually “bridging” the natural and the artifi-cial world. This piece is 20 years old but I predict that this type of visu-als is something we will see more of in the future, as the information flow becomes increasingly more complex. Designer: Mitsunobu Murakami. Source: typogabor.com/Media/Diagrammes2_1600px/Dia-grammes2_DSC_9707.jpg

5 “Visuelle Programme 2.0” by Cedric Kiefers, a visual display of a year of data sent and received through sms. A nice organic way of displaying “digital” data, that on a subconscious level draws lines to possible similarities between human created systems and natural systems. Source: Data Flow, p. 155

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communicate information in a genuine way, not just through dry statistics.

However, as Data Flow points out, using analogies should be done with care and the cultural context for the information one is displaying needs to be taken into account to avoid misinterpreta-tion. More importantly, it is a powerful tool that must be used ethically.

Naturalistic illustrationPhysical organic materials, either operating “live” in 3-dimentional form or replicated in photography, speak for itself. The illustrations however, need stricter guidelines. Authenticity is of key importance, which only can be achieved by being sensitive to both detail and structure, and by avoiding reach-ing for perfection in form. The illustrations are imitations, but not poorer in value and mean-ing, and can often be more lay-ered and convey more depth than photographs. “Illustration has the power to evoke knowing through emotion” 38, and is often a much more personal communication method than for example pho-tography. Through illustration the “author” is detectable, as he/she will leave traces of themselves in the illustration. The human aspect is something we can relate to and this way a connection is established.

visualising climate changeWith the increased focus and in-terest in climate change there has also been a subsequent increase in graphics visualising such. Newspaper articles, rapports and self-initiated design works be-ing published online, in print or on TV contain visual display of information created to communi-cate a message.

Abstraction and modificationAs mentioned in the previous chapter, such graphics are often styled and strongly simplified. Natural, living creatures are turned into symbols and ”repro-ductions” which again are modi-fied to the end of recognition – and yet quite the opposite. There is a juxtaposition in creating what can be called “abstract visualisa-tions”: When natural organisms are modified and simplified into a homogenetic and abstract entity that bears little resemblance with its original self, yet at the same time this stripped down, simpli-fied symbol becomes the very meaning of what it is portraying.

Let us take the pig in the im-age on the rightas an example: a graphic clear in message but strongly modified in style 39. Graphics such as this are very common, and only the sight of a twirled tail, or the flat, circular nose is enough information to tell us that “this is a pig”. Of course, it

is not a pig. It is a symbol of a pig, which is a substantial difference, and not an unproblematic one.

The reason, in my opinion, why this is a problem is that this de-ranged, artificial, dead and objec-tified image of what is originally a complex, living and breath-ing organism, is that it is both a product of human alienation

from our physical environment and a reminder of how we easily see living beings as fragmented, separated objects that we can ma-nipulate without consequence.

Different timesPerhaps these reflections are coming across as somewhat ex-treme and uncalled for. After all,

38 From illustrators Emily Wilkinson’s and Ivan Nascimento’s cowritten defini-tion of illustration, which they wrote together for their dissertation in ma Design Futures 2009

39 Data Flow: Visualizing Information in Graphic Design 2 (2010) Ed by Robert Klanten, Nicolas Bourquin, Thibaud Tis-sot, Die Gestalten Verlag, Berlin, p. 25

image “Heritage Beast” by Jude Buffum Source: Data Flow 2, p. 25


symbols and pictographs have been a part of human culture for thousands of years. Ancient pictographs like aboriginal cave paintings or indigenous North American Haida art are also sim-plified and abstract images, yet they were created (and still are) by people living truly in synch with their natural surroundings.

Obviously abstract pictographs are not to be blamed for our current alienated existence and environmental challenges.

A new languageWhat I am saying is that this

current, alienated and critical state we are in calls for another type of visual language. One that

does not back up our skewed ex-isting perceptions, but a language that includes chaos, organic randomness and a holistic world view by appealing to an intuitive, animalistic wisdom of what na-ture is and how we fit in with it.

It is not a simple task. Our whole way of thinking and communi-cating about the world is based on fragmented systems created over time. They evolved for a reason, simply that our brains needed to divide things up in order to proc-ess and understand and evolve as a species. A different brain may have resulted in a different segmentation and thus a different world in the mind, and a differ-ent physical world in the year 2010.

Fragments are not likely disap-pear from language any time soon. But language is a living thing that is constantly evolving, and perhaps in the far future – if humans are still alive – we are able to communicate and under-stand a world that is both com-plex, holistic and sustainable.

interview: anna garforth The work of London based illus-trator, Anna Garforth, fits nicely into what I would describe as Organic Illumination. I met with her for a chat over a box of straw-berries.

Miss Garforth finds it hard to classify what she does, and a variation of descriptives are be-ing used about her in different contexts; natural media art-ist, illustrator, ecological artist, environmental designer, Guerilla Gardener etcetera, but says that what she is doing is really “urban intervention”. She studied Graph-ic Design at CSM and specialised in illustration. Inspired by land-scape artists like Andy Golds-worthy, she set out to experiment with untraditional materials. The first moss typography piece she did was for a competition with YCN (Young Creative Network).

“People saw it on the YCN site and liked it and reblogged it an literally within a month it was just everywhere. And from there I started experiment-ing with materials and typography.”

She is still exploring different avenues within the natural media realm, working with both leaves and bark.

“It is a long process working with natural materials has its restrictions. It can be challenging but I suppose that is what I like about it.”

image Perhaps a dog? Ha-ida art is abstract and con-ceptual, and easily recognis-able. Source: farm4.static.flickr.com/3528/3238608179_cde072ce43.jpg


The main drive behind her work is a general love for the natural world, for plants and anything organic.

“I found that a really nice contrast when working with natural media was the city as a backdrop, and I also had a desire to work within the public realm so that my artwork was immediately accessible”

She says the general ideology behind her work is the idea of na-ture and the city and public merg-ing, and the existence of both worlds together. On the question if she thinks displaying nature a bit out of context makes people notice it more, and perhaps see it for the “first time”, she says;

“Yes, taking it out of its original context will definitely stir something in people. There is nature around everywhere and a lot of wild in the city. There is for example all this moss on the pavement, that people don’t or-dinarily notice. But as soon as you put it up on the wall and give it a voice, crafting it into something that people can relate to, they see it and realise that “wow, there’s actually moss here”. And I find that quite interesting, to be able to perhaps build or develop peo-ple’s relationship with nature.”

She says that she herself sees the city differently now, and that working the way she does has made the city become almost

transparent to her. I asked her if she could try and put down in words what it is exactly that organic materials are visually communicating.

“It immediately gets people atten-tion purely because of the contrast of the natural medium against the city. I think it connects with an inherent respect that we all have for the natural world, and it brings something out in people. Moss with its spores and autumnal leaves lid up by the sun; it is already beautiful in its natural state, and coupled with crafting it into some-thing interesting, has a really strong, powerful message. And also I think it solidifies the relationship that we have to nature. We are nature, we are natural beings… It’s hard to explain. It’s instinctive I think, and for me that is sort of what nature is, I suppose.” 40

greenwashingIn a way we are now being bom-barded with more “organic” visual communication than ever before. Green is the new black, so to speak, and this trend is attract-ing participants on the market that are far from green in any way. What is greenwashing doing to the future of sustainable prod-ucts, consumption and business, and how it is affecting sustainable visual communication?

Conscious consumersWithin the last few years the awareness around climate change has spread rapidly in the commercial world and has

image [top] Anna Garforth in her home in Hackney, London. Source: Private

40 Interview with Anna Garforth, conducted by myself on August 11, 2010, London

image [rest] Garforth does urban intervention by creating various artworks using the natural media. Source: crosshatchling.co.uk


suddenly become a public do-main. Perhaps thanks to Al Gore, climate change is no longer a theory reserved for scientists and experts, but a subject most peo-ple have an opinion about. Con-sumers have become much more conscious about the products they buy and the interest in “organic” food has doubled in the uk since 2000 and is growing at an average of 25% per year. 41

What the market wants, the market gets, and the quick de-mand for green products has lead to an increase in products that are green on the outside only. Advertising and packaging with promising images and graphics and vague language is every-where, even certifications with-out ground or value. Greenpeace defines greenwashing as:

“…the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.” 42

The Advertising Standards Authority in the uk is uphold-ing more and more complaints against greenwashed advertis-ing 43. It is not just unethical to lie about “goodness” and quality or exaggerate the truth, but also to put a green smile on something that might be the smallest of change. 20% less CO2-emissions or slightly more effective fuel use in a car is an improvement but does

not qualify as a “green” product. A car will never be a sustainable product as long as it runs on fossil fuels.

Why is it dangerous?More importantly, greenwash-ing is sad and hurtful because it is undermining the ethical and truthful visual communication out there and also the good-willed actions of consumers. The consumer rules the market and therefore this emerging interest in ecological and organic prod-ucts is of great global value and is vital for building a sustainable future. Greenwashing is slowing down this development, leading it astray, and making it difficult for the consumer to do the right thing. Not only is greenwashing tricking consumers to support unsustain-able business, but green products are often also more expensive and the conscious consumer has to spend his time on reading la-bels, knowing what certifications to trust, and to look for products that has all the right qualifica-tions. Because what is really best; Organic apples from New Zealand or “regular” apples grown lo-cally in the uk? It is hard to be a sustainable consumer and green-washing is making it even harder. ”Greenwash destroys the very market it hopes to exploit”.44

Even the work of creative niche artists like Anna Garforth tells

of how unsustainable businesses contact her to shed some green light on their products.

“What I do attracts very green minded companies, but there is an element of greenwashing and there always will be and unfortunately I’m not in a place where I can say “no, I cant do it because it goes against my ethics”, but I am careful and pick my clients with care”. 40

The colour greenThe colour green has been adopt-ed as the colour of sustainable design. In “The Big Book of Green Design”, “green” design is defined by Eric Benson as something that “conserves natural resources, reduces energy consumption, cuts solid waste, and minimizes the ecological footprint of a project.” 45

Colour will, just as metaphors, symbols and images, always be strongly connected to culture, and it is a vast field with which I will not go into detail. However, green does perhaps have cer-tain universal associations. Felix Deutsch, a physician, explains how “…emotional excitements […] are brought forth through associ-ation”, and that “these superficial associations lead to deeper lying memories”. 46

In this sense, green will bring forth associations of forests, plants, and growing things.The human eye also has a maxi-

mum sensitivity and visibility to green and yellow 47, which means that a great deal of the colours we perceive everyday are shades of green, even in industrial and urban areas. Therefore green is a suitable association to “the envi-ronment” – by which green de-sign aims to spare/consider and protect. Still, it is a vague term as it is completely open to individual interpretations and understand-ing of how green “green” really is. Like our eyes absorb light differ-ently our idea of green will vary from person to person, company to company.

41 Futerra Greenwash Guide, digital version, p.7 [downloaded from futerra.co.uk/services/greenwash-guide]

42 stopgreenwash.org

43 Futerra Greenwash Guide, p.3

44 Futerra Greenwash Guide, p.22

45 The Big Book of Green Design (2009) ed. by Suzanna MW Stephens and An-thony B. Stephens, Collins Design, New York, introduction

46 Birren, Faber(1978) Color & Human Response, Litton Educational Publishing, New York, p.47

47 p.16


green brandingThe market is booming with products being marketed as “green”. A good share of these products are truly recyclable, biodegradable, organic, locally produced and healthy to humans and the environment, some are shades of green and some are not at all. Let us take a look at a cou-ple of these products and try to evaluate if it is possible to distin-guish between ethical and non-ethical branding.

Green or “green”?Aveda and Garnier are two brands that both offer cosmet-ics with a wide range of hair and skin products, and who both market themselves as “green”. This is also were the similari-ties stop, because while Aveda is the first beauty company to have achieved a Cradle to Cradle certi-fication 48, and that use organic ingredients which are ethically sourced, recycled and minimal packaging and is manufacturing with 100% certified wind power, the story with Garnier is a dif-ferent one. All though Garnier claims to have ‘’respect for the environment’’ 49, be inspired by nature and to believe in healthy lives, there is little or no facts on their products or website to back this up. There is no informa-tion about organic ingredients or sustainable manufacture, and the only ‘’green’’ actions they provide

48 aveda.co.uk/aboutaveda/index.tmpl

49 garnier.co.uk/_en/_gb/garnier/PHI-LOSOPHY.aspx?tpcode=GARNIER ^PHILOSOPHY

garnier [top left] loreal.co.uk/_en/_gb/index.aspx [bottom left] melbflowershow.com.au/files/Garnier_TC_Logo_Small.gif[right] beautycosmetic.biz/images/garnier_bodytonic%20rol-on.jpg

aveda [left] thedailygreen.com/cm/thedailygreen/images/8p/Aveda_GreenScience_MD08-lg.jpg [right top] 4.bp.blogspot.com/_4EfcMatQRcE/SU-ElPb-xFI/AAAAAAAAAQo/EvzaEs-EGyIY/s320/photo_aveda2.jpg [right bottom] http://www.giaco-moandrondi.com/aveda.jpg


facts for is using fsc (Forest Stew-ardship Council) certified pack-aging and a modest reduction in co2 emissions. Is that really sufficient to promote a business as “green”? Technically, they may not be doing anything downright illegal. They are not claiming, black on white, that they are a certified sustainable business or that they are particularly “green” at all. Their visual profile, how-ever, does.

Signs of greenwashingIs there such a thing as a ”recog-nisable design pattern” in green washing? Sustainable communi-cations agency Futerra has cre-ated a rapport about greenwash-ing to guide designers on how to avoid it. They list ten signs of greenwashing to be aware of;

Fluffy language: words like 01 “eco-friendly” and –– that has no clear meaningGreen products from dirty 02 companies: green products created through polluting manufactureSuggestive pictures: images 03 that indicates un-justified green impactIrrelevant claims: emphasis-04 ing a minor green attribute whilst all remaining aspects are un-greenDegradere the competition: 05 declarance of being greener than the competitors, even

though the competition is far from greenNo credibility: “eco-friendly” 06 versions of products that in their core sense are the op-posite of green, for example cigarettes or carsUnfamiliar jargon: words that 07 only an expert could check or understandFake certifications: adding 08 made up symbols and logo’s that looks like a third party endorsementNo proof: no facts to back up 09 claimsPure lies: fabricated claims or 10 data

From this list there are several of which we can find in Garnier’s graphic material; fluffy language, suggestive pictures, irrelevant claims and unfamiliar jargon.

Authenticity winsAdvertisers will use all the visual effects they know to communi-cate the intended message. But by reading through Futerra’s list and analysing Garnier’s visual style, we find tendencies of a somewhat louder language. By having less facts to lean on, un-green compa-nies might tend to scream a little louder in trying to convince the consumer of their green inten-tions.

In comparison, Aveda’s design profile is much more “down played” and moderate both in col-

our use and other visual effects, and thus appears as much more authentic. The use of organic ma-terials is also different and more specific, which gives the impres-sion that they know their natural ingredients. The simplicity and moderation in the use of special effects might also represent a certain pride in the product itself, which is a good indication of au-thentic quality.

GoodnessTrue green brands are not just selling healthy and sustainable products, but also a “feeling of goodness” for the consumer, “good” beyond that of tasty, ap-pealing, functional, comfortable, and durable. It is a feeling of contributing to good, support-ing a healthy system of which the consumer is a part of, but easily ruined by false pretences.

What happens if or when all products on the market and manufacturing methods becomes green? If all food is organically produced? What new levels of “goodness” will then arise and what visual identities will they communicate? Will there be new “super products” – locally made with self-sufficient energy use, designed for up-cycling and a Cradle to Cradle life cycle?

biomimicral designBiomimicry is according to Janine M. Benyus “innovation inspired by nature” 50, and is closely re-lated to Cradle to Cradle as it is based on mimicking systems in nature. What would visual com-munication look like through the lense of biomimicry?

biomimicry in graphic designGraphic design is a broad field of things, ranging from everything from designing road signs, to advertising campaigns, to book design. What would for example a biomimicral advertising cam-paign look like?

To figure that out we need to look at how natural organisms “pro-mote” themselves. And there is a lot of self-promotion going on: in the animal kingdom the male usually try it’s hardest to dress up and shout to make the most fuzz about himself as possibles, while the female secretes seductive scents to attract her mate. Flowers do the same to attract the bees, which then happily come to collect the pollen. Berries on plants and bushes also dress up in colours and scent to be eaten by birds and passers-by and then dropped a couple of hours later in a hopeful-ly suitable growing area for their seeds. Advertising and visual communication in the natural world is about mating and re-production, but also dangers and survival. Survival and growth, the

50 Benyus, Janine M. (1997) Biomimicry: innovation inspired by nature, William Morrow and Company Inc, New York, p.2

“battle to survive”, is really all it comes down to in human, corpo-rate advertising as well. In that sense, graphic design already is biomimicral. As the berry wants to be eaten to have its seeds spread to new areas, the consumer or “carrier” of the berry gets valuable nutrition, and the same hap-pens in the corporate world: A jar of raspberry jam is purchased, covering both the buyer and the producer’s need for survival.

In the human, corporate world, this mutual, coexisting trade with mutual benefits is not always conscious move and the want for growth sometimes leads to un-ethical exploitation of the con-sumer. In a way there is trickery in the natural world as well, but life natural system would not intentionally hurt another life in the same system of which it is depending on. For example, if a type of berries depends on being eaten by a certain type of animal in order to spread and procreate, it would be completely illogical for it to be poisonous to that animal. That would be, like mentioned previously, a destruc-tion of the very market it hopes to exploit. It would simply mean the end of business for the berry.

The graphic designer’s role in the biomimicral sense would therefore be to make sure that the information it is designing is truthful, and that it is beneficial for all parties involved.

thoughts for the futureBecause of the global state, cli-mate change and green washing, it is more important than ever to create an ethical, holistic and attractive visual language to com-municate complex and layered information.

Most materials and systems might not be fully developed and ready to be biomimicral, but that does not mean that we should not aim for Cradle to Cradle systems. Being ahead of the curve is al-ways good and if we do not pull in that direction, we might not get there.

The scope of climate change is hard to predict, but it is likely that we can prepare on becoming more self-sufficient which means having a closer, more first-hand relationship to nature and the resources it can provide for us. Organic Illumination is a way to mend that relationship and step a few steps closer to nature. It is a way of improving our ability to survive on this planet.

Bibliographyliterature

Benyus, Janine M. (1997) • Biomimicry: innovation inspired by nature, William Morrow and Company Inc, New York

Berman, David B. (2009) Do good: how designers can change the world, New •Riders, Berkeley, p.1

The Big Book of Green Design (2009) ed. by Suzanna MW Stephens and Anthony •B. Stephens, Collins Design, New York, introduction

Birren, Faber (1978) Color & Human Response, Litton Educational Bohm, David •(1982) Wholeness and the Implicate order, Routledge, London

Cicero, • The Nature of the Gods, Horace C. P. McGregor (trans.), (1927) Penguin, London

The Complete Works of Aristotle• (1984/1995) Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex

Data Flow: Visualising Information in Graphic Design (2008) Ed. by Robert •Klanten, Nicolas Bourquin, Thibaud Tissot, Sven Ehmann Die Gestalten Verlag, Berlin, p.8

Data Flow: Visualizing Information in Graphic Design 2” (2010) Ed. by Robert •Klanten, Nicolas Bourquin, Thibaud Tissot, Die Gestalten Verlag, Berlin

Gibson, James J. (1986) The ecological approach to visual perception, Lawrence •Erlbaum Associates, Inc., New Jersey

Gladwell, Malcolm (2000)• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Differ-ence, Abacus London

Maturana, H. R. and Varela, F. J. (1987) The tree of knowledge: The biological •roots of human understanding, Shambala Publication, Boston

The Oxford Reference Dictionary (1986) Clarendon Press, Oxford•Philosophies of art and beauty: Selected Readings in Aesthetics from Plato to •

Heidegger (1964/1976) edited by Albert Hofstadter and Richard Kuhns, The Uni-versity of Chicago Press, Chicago

Radical Nature (2009) Barbican art gallery•Soper, Kate (1995) What is nature?, Blackwell Publishers Inc., Massachusetts, USA•Tufte, Edward R. (1990) Envisioning Information, Graphics Press, Connecticut •

Publishing, New York,

other publicationssde• research rapport (2008) received from Susana

Branco via e-mail,24.04.2010

Futerra Greenwash Guide, digital version [download-•ed from futerra.co.uk/services/greenwash-guide]

definition of illustration from Emily Wilkinson’s dis-•sertation, maDesign Futures 2009

interview with Anna Garforth at her home in North-East London 11.08.2010

workshopMindMade workshop the 28.05.2010

web [chronologically]

gold.ac.uk/pg/ma-design-futures•thomasmatthews.com•thomasmatthews.com/index.php/about/philosophy•guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/29/frozen-zoo-•

san-diego-rhinoseedmagazine.com/content/article/urban_resilience•buzzle.com/articles/disappearing-beetheories.html•bestthinking.com/topics/science/biology_and_nature/•

ecology/naturalinclusionalitystopgreenwash.org•aveda.co.uk/aboutaveda/index.tmpl•garnier.co.uk/_en/_gb/garnier/PHILOSOPHY.•

aspx?tpcode=GARNIER^PHILOSOPHY

[All web references were last checked 01.09.2010]

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