In this post, I want to share a bit of that\u00a0design\u00a0process with you. The back-and-forth that the process inspired \u2014 with me offering draft images and them giving critiques \u2014 was\u00a0fascinating on its own. But more than that, this project exemplified some\u00a0of the tensions\u00a0I’ve struggled with\u00a0over the years creating\u00a0visual communications for social justice groups.<\/p>\n
One of\u00a0these recurring tensions has to do with the use of symbols. Infographics and other visualizations often rely on simple, widely-recognizable symbols to communicate ideas. We know instantly that a paintbrush means art<\/em>, a graduation cap means education<\/em>, and two tall figures and two short figures means family<\/em>.\u00a0These symbols serve as visual shorthands, allowing\u00a0images\u00a0to be comprehended quickly, and by a broad audience.<\/p>\n A social justice perspective, however, values diversity and inclusiveness. There is no one kind of family, no one educational path, and to simplify these ideas into universal symbols\u00a0is\u00a0to marginalize\u00a0those who deviate from that single\u00a0image. In addition,\u00a0social justice is often about imagining\u00a0how\u00a0the world\u00a0could<\/em>\u00a0be<\/em>.\u00a0<\/em>That can be hard to do using symbols that are based on the world as it\u00a0<\/em>is \u2014\u00a0<\/em>particularly if you’re not totally sure what the future you are fighting for will look like. But\u00a0the farther you stray from the dominant culture’s symbols, the less you can assume that viewers will immediately\u00a0recognize your meaning.<\/p>\n These are not insolvable dilemmas. Many artists\u00a0are navigating them creatively. Here’s a story of one of my attempts. I hope it offers some useful insights; I certainly learned a lot. And since\u00a0I recently critiqued another person’s visualization<\/a>, it’s only fair that I share some of the\u00a0critiques I’ve\u00a0received \u2014 all of which, ultimately, have led to better designs.<\/p>\n Ann Ishimaru, a professor at the University of Washington<\/a>,\u00a0approached me with the job. She and her colleague Megan Bang<\/a>\u00a0had received funding from the Kellogg Foundation<\/a> to\u00a0bring together a group of nationally-recognized community organizers, educators, and researchers from around the country for a two-day meeting. The topic under discussion was family engagement \u2014 the practice of supporting families as leaders, advocates, and collaborators in schools and communities.<\/p>\n Ann, Megan, and their\u00a0colleagues\u00a0were not content with the current state of “best practices” in family engagement. Their goal was to to develop “next practices” \u2014 approaches that go beyond what we’re doing now to what is possible tomorrow. They wanted\u00a0to center racial justice and the voices of “nondominant” groups, with the ultimate goal of “family and community wellbeing and educational justice.” Ann wanted to capture all this in an image to\u00a0share at the meeting.<\/p>\n Clearly no small task.<\/p>\n We began with a couple\u00a0different concepts. One was Tupac Shakur’s metaphor of “the rose that grew from concrete,” <\/a>which is about the strength and beauty of people who learn to thrive despite facing significant life challenges. Ann wanted to expand the metaphor to explore what was happening below the surface of the concrete, as well as the broader ecology around the rose.<\/p>\n Another\u00a0concept was root systems. <\/em>The root systems of plants are often\u00a0much more extensive than you’d expect<\/a>, just as there is much going on beneath the surface in marginalized communities that\u00a0goes\u00a0unrecognized by outsiders. As a starting point,\u00a0Ann shared with me the image below,\u00a0showing a fungus that that attaches to plant roots<\/a>. She liked the way the tendrils\u00a0were interconnected through nodes, which suggested\u00a0ideas about human interconnectedness and networks.<\/p>\n After some back and forth, I drafted the image below.\u00a0I carefully selected flowers from\u00a0different climates around the country to communicate the diversity of the gathered group. I also used\u00a0flowers at different stages of growth, to symbolize inter-generational collaboration. The urban landscape signified\u00a0the broader ecology within which family engagement took place, as well as\u00a0the large, often inaccessible institutions that families had to navigate. Linked root systems signified networks of\u00a0mutual support, and a rootedness in shared history and culture.<\/p>\n The image sparked some great discussion at the meeting. Basically, they didn’t like it. Perhaps the loudest\u00a0critique was about the lack of people<\/em> in the image. Family engagement and leadership, they said, is about human beings, and that needs to be clear. Another critique was\u00a0that the\u00a0use of flowers made it seem like the\u00a0image was about the environment. A third critique was that\u00a0family leadership isn’t\u00a0just about breaking through racism and oppression (the concrete), but also about building something new. Ann summarized it this way:<\/p>\n “The roots of schools as we know them are stunted and\u00a0problematic from the get-go. They are rooted in oppression, in colonization, in assimilation and the stealing of land. How do we reconstruct something entirely different \u2014 not a school building, per se, but a system of education that starts from the roots and strengths and cultural practices of different communities and then builds from there…the process of growing or cultivating that somehow helps communities to heal, to be well, to build solidarities, to envision themselves into the future.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n At this point I realized\u00a0I needed to shift my\u00a0design approach. Simple stick figures\u00a0could never capture the full humanity of people, or the complexity of family leadership across all the different groups involved.\u00a0What if I used actual photographs? This idea led to the image below, based on Ann’s description of “a system of education that starts from the roots and strengths and cultural practices of different communities.” What would such an education system look like? (I used photos from an older project on community organizing for these early drafts, so thank you to all the groups featured!).<\/p>\n Ann and Jondou\u00a0liked the photos. However, they said the root system looked like a honeycomb. Also,\u00a0they really<\/em> didn’t like the top part. It was immediately clear, when they looked at the image,\u00a0that the idea of a\u00a0new institution as the end-goal wasn’t right.\u00a0(I wasn’t thrilled with it myself, since it ended up looking like a cathedral, which is culturally specific and has its own baggage). Having an idea rejected like this can be frustrating, but over the years I’ve realized that this is one of the more helpful services visualizations can offer. By having their words reflected\u00a0back to them as an image, they were able to clarify\u00a0what they did\u00a0not<\/em> mean, and the dialogue moved forward in a better direction.<\/p>\n After some more conversation, I merged the ideas from my last two designs and came up with the graphic below. I moved the images of family leadership work into the leaves, rather than the roots. This suggested that people in communities around the country were\u00a0already<\/em> carrying out “next” practices, that the future goal was already here within today’s struggle. The multi-colored\u00a0soils were meant to\u00a0represent the diverse cultural and historical roots that fed this work. (At one point I tried to put historical images\u00a0of family leadership and activism among the roots, but it got WAY too busy.)<\/p>\n Ann, Jondou, and their colleagues really\u00a0liked the new direction, but had a few concerns:<\/p>\n After a few more rounds of back-and-forth, we landed on the image below. In the end a wall, rather than a city, was\u00a0used to symbolize the barriers faced by families.\u00a0I drew inclusive, diverse groups of connected people, which purposefully\u00a0did not read as\u00a0traditional nuclear families. To be sure, it not the kind of graphic whose meaning is immediately clear to a viewer. Rather, it invites exploration, explanation, and discussion. It is as much about the\u00a0feeling<\/em> of the work as about the\u00a0idea<\/em> of the work.<\/p>\n Though\u00a0it\u00a0took a long time, and many re-drawings,\u00a0ultimately\u00a0the critiques\u00a0greatly improved the design. In addition, the design process helped Ann and her colleagues clarify their own mission, goals, and values. Now the FLDC is running collaborative research projects<\/a> in communities around the country, and I’ve been told that one group used the image to guide their discussions. They asked participants to describe how race and class have shaped their own histories (the roots); to write their hopes and dreams for their children, schools, and communities on cut-out leaves; and to use white note cards as “walls” to represent the barriers and challenges to realizing those hopes and dreams.<\/p>\n All around, a success, though I wouldn’t be surprised if we continued to adapt it going forward.<\/p>\nThe Job<\/h3>\n
![\"Mycorrhizosphere](../../../../../\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Mycorrhiza-shop.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"flowers-v4web\"](../../../../../\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Flowers-V4web.jpg\")
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![\"planet-sketchweb\"](../../../../../\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Planet-Sketchweb-300x243.jpg\")
<\/a>In conversation with Ann and Jondou Chen<\/a>, the project director, I began to sketch out a new image that showed\u00a0people<\/em> with roots in the ground. The people had tools in their hands, to symbolize the building of new types of institutions.\u00a0But Ann and I agreed that it was getting a bit too “we are the world<\/a>,” and losing any indication of oppression and struggle.<\/p>\n![\"treessolid2web\"](../../../../../\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Treessolid2Web.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"peopletree-colorweb\"](../../../../../\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/PeopleTree-Colorweb.jpg\")
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![\"tree-image-vectors-v3-web\"](../../../../../\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Tree-Image-Vectors-V3-Web.jpg\")
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