On 26/08/2010, at 11:08 AM, Terence Love wrote:
> Just wondering if you would say some more about your thoughts on 'design
> drawings as a means of controlling labour'
I say a bit more about it 'Learning and Visual Communication'. But I can add a little bit more here.
I should preface what I say by giving some context.
What I know about this by way of first hand knowledge is from living and working in a highly industrialised part of the UK in the 1960s and 70s—the North East—or Geordieland as we fondly call it. It was also a deeply depressed part of the UK, in both senses of the word, with about 10% long term unemployment.
The native Geordies used to say that the only man who ever brought full employment to the area was Adolf Hitler.(though they said it in a much more melodic and ironic tone than I can write it).
Nonetheless, at that time, if you were fortunate enough to be in full time work, it was more likely to be down the coal mine, in the shipyard, in the steelworks, or in some other engineering works or factory. These were not nice places to work in and most people who worked had their life affirming interests outside work. There was often a sharp divide between work and leisure activity, and this was carried over into the way one dressed for these different activities, and in the symbols and iconography that surrounded what were highly contrasted worlds: forging metal and fishing, coal mining and gardening, production line repetitive tasks and pigeon fancying, making railway tracks and football.
Things like engineering drawings were firmly associated in people's minds with dangerous, noisy, dirty, repetitive, and unsatisfying world of work. If they misread a drawing and made a mistake in executing the instructions in the drawing, they could loose their job or cause their fellow workers discomfort or death. What I'm suggesting here is that there was a vague penumbra of meanings surrounding these types of drawings that were associated with many of the bad things in industrial society. Alongside that there was also the craft, skill, and pride that went into manufacturing. This is most evident graphically in the magnificent drawings in the Art of Engineering exhibition. It was also palpable at events like ship launches when as many as 5,000 workers would stand and cheer as a great hulk they had built slowly moved down the slipway and into the water for the first time.
So these drawings, which mean something very precise and absolutely control what people did in jobs they did not like, could be viewed with all the surrounding and contradictory penumbra: a mixture of dislike and pride.
Imagine with all those meanings available to you, going on weekend outing (leisure) down to London 'to see the sights and watch a football match' and stepping into one of the industrial wonders of the age—the London Underground—to which you had contributed with labour and pride. And then imagine being confronted for the first time by the London Underground Diagram. You know how to read this type of diagram because you have seen hundreds like it at work. Only here it does not control you, but helps you! And it doesn't tell you what to do, but rather tells you what you can choose to do! Work, pride and play are conjoined in a new way.
All of the above might be soft fanciful stuff— irony, play, and pride—but not entirely implausible. And importantly it's a long way from talking about design as being all about prediction.
War regards from Melbourne and its magical public transport system (particularly the trams),
David
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Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
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