Andrew Blauvelt and Tim Plowman

¶ … Andrew Blauvelt and Tim Plowman consider graphic design and product design as reflecting a culture. The authors both urge designers to take a more critical approach to design so that products are not isolated from their contexts. Only the cultural context can provide designs and objects with meaning. In "Towards Critical Autonomy or Can Graphic Design Save Itself?" Blauvelt suggests that graphic designers take a more critical stance toward their profession. Designers need to act independently of consumerism. Similarly, Plowman claims that graphic designers need to approach their work more like anthropologists do in the article "Ethnography and Critical Design Practice."

Both Blauvelt and Plowman use the word "critical" in their titles. The authors use the word critical in generally the same way. Both Blauvelt and Plowman use the word critical to suggest a critique of the graphic design profession, and both authors also use the word critical to mean "urgent." The theme of both the articles is that designers must reclaim their arts and not be slaves to consumerism.

If, as Plowman suggests, the creativity of the user is taken as a central concern, then graphic design can take on numerous forms. New technologies allow increasing user control over a designed product. Honoring user creativity means allowing all products to be used differently by different people. Plowman would state that a flexibility of graphic design is the best way to create a critical design practice. Individuals in a diverse society should be able to use a graphic design in unique ways. Blauvelt would agree that a flexible design creates the urgent "critical autonomy" that can save graphic design.