Occupy Design

Occupy Design is a grassroots project connecting designers with on-the-ground demonstrators in the Occupy Together movement. The project’s goal is to create freely available visual tools around a common graphic language to unite the 99%. The project places an emphasis on producing infographics and icons to improve the communication of the movement’s messages and the data surrounding them across the world.

The site aims to connect designers with occupiers and, whilst this is a laudable goal, one nagging issue becomes painfully obvious when you access the—wait for it—Google doc page.

The world is inadequate in many ways. Poverty is pervasive. Wealth disparities abound. Agreed. There even seems to be consensus that many of the world’s woes stem from the unhealthy mingling of commercial and political interests. So, if the goal of the Occupy movement is to somehow influence how the financial system is run, shouldn’t the focus remain on that issue? Isn’t it enough?

Don’t get me wrong, the efforts of the designers are good, very good in some cases, but will graphic representations of various, disparate issues, help the movement become more unified? If it did, we could design a brand for it. And by brand I mean a recognisable, understandable symbol.

We could design a brand right now for Occupy but not one that could ever serve it as it should. Ideally, a brand should reflect the culture, values and essence of an entity. Without clarity into what those might be, any effort at expressing it visually will fall short of the mark. At best it will be what designers routinely call “an empty vessel”: a graphic symbol waiting to be filled with meaning.

Form is inextricably tied to function and content. If Occupy continues to struggle with its identity and offer dissonant messages, its voice will remain garbled and, in the end, easier to ignore.