Came across this site with journal articles on graphic design. Below is an abstract from one that seemed to cross over into our territory. Somewhere in Connect we should speak to how gd people are involved in the solution for “wicked problems”.

Socially responsible design: thinking beyond the triple bottom line to socially responsive and sustainable product design

As the focus of product design has shifted from exclusively commercial to sustainability and social concerns, design education in this area has endeavoured to keep pace. Victor Papanek’s book Design for the real world, crystallised many of the systemic social, economic and environmental concerns into an argument for change through eco-design, inclusive design and, in business and corporate contexts, a triple bottom line of social, environmental and economic factors. Simultaneously, design has developed and evolved participatory and co-design approaches, with high-profile consultancies such as IDEO proving that early involvement of designers with ‘wicked’ social and environmental problems is possible. This position paper revisits Papanek’s agenda for industrial design, and examines the link with participatory approaches, and existing socially responsible design agendas and examples. Identifying eight critical features of socially sustainable product design, this paper suggests that Papanek’s original agenda for socially responsible and sustainable design has been partly fulfilled and must be developed further through the changed role of the designer as facilitator of flexible design solutions that meet local needs and resources.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15710882.2011.630473

“The most interesting graphic design is never purely on its own.” (Vinca Kurk and Daniel Vander Velde??) In an interview by Kyle Chayka, 2/15/13
http://hyperallergic.com/65281/graphic-design-as-political-practice-a-conversation-with-metahaven-part-2/
This is a two part interview published online on 2/14 and 2/15 2013, published on the occasion of Metahaven’s show at PS1, Islands in the Cloud.
Part 1:
http://hyperallergic.com/65187/graphic-design-as-political-practice-a-conversation-with-metahaven-part-1/

Excellent example of graphic design working with politics and social activism.
====================

“DV: So graphic design can change things, but it also plays a very strong role in sustaining things as they are. So for every single thing that changes, there are a thousand more that want everything to remain the same, especially now with the predominance of Apple and the “Apple aesthetic.” It’s difficult, but important, to challenge the notion of design as it is embodied in Apple products — where increasingly complex architectures are increasingly hidden from view. So the system is incredibly complex, but you don’t get to worry about that because all has been solved for you, like with the Cloud where you store your files wherever. You basically get this Fischer Price interface culture with one or two buttons that do everything. And that’s really great. But Apple has evolved from leading an innovative and important fight against deliberately bad, bureaucratic design culture (Windows and the PC) into representing a deliberate oversimplification of the world. That’s where we are critical.

There’s this fight between Google, which combines being a corporate giant with providing tools which work with the shared internet, or an operating system like Android, versus Apple and Facebook, which are completely walled gardens, theme parks in a sense, malls. These architectures affect a great deal how we experience, and thus make graphic design. A 15-year-old is no longer experiencing the mediated world through printed matter, like through Wolfgang Weingart Swiss posters and the like; he or she is experiencing the world through an iPad. In a way it ensures that graphic design will survive because it is a very strong container for historical practice — Helvetica is in, and all over the iPad and the iPhone.” (Daniel Vander Velde??)