Aesthetics of Gentrification: The Designer's Role in Branding a City
Saturday, February 15, 2020: 10:30 AM
Lake Ontario (Hilton Chicago)
<<Letterpressed coasters, artisanal pie, the word “artisanal”, antique chandeliers over a bar of reclaimed barnwood, wax seals, expensive signage to emulate cheap printing, no signage at all.>>
To visit the gentrified neighborhood of Chicago’s Logan Square, we can understand a space with a familiar and now normalized rhythm. A reclaimed barbershop letterboard promoting low prices for weaves and relaxers is displayed at Gaslight Coffee Roasters, advertising services for a demographic that’s neither reflected in their customers nor workers. A neighborhood walking tour replicates a virtual tour of a Pinterest board titled “hip typography.” This is no coincidence. In client-designer relationships, the brief might contain a series of keywords—“premium,” “artisan,” “radical,” “progressive,” “revolutionary,” etc.—for a designer to succinctly attach a visual form, embodying one’s articulated identity. Various online digital collections—Pinterest, Instagram, Google image search, etc.—reflect the homogeneous smoothing over of urban and aesthetic histories. New graphic identities morph into a singular cluster of codes with an existing contingency of followers who understand them, of how they designate a specific milieu, to replace (and displace) the existing community. Taken together, they create an amalgamated identity of a city. In these redesigned spaces—bars, restaurants, cafés—(white) economic affluence is conflated with community progress, bringing with it visual signifiers of who belongs and who doesn’t. This presentation will explore the aesthetics of gentrification through an analysis of the objects, spaces, and images within ‘revitalized’ neighborhoods, as well as highlighting the role of language and digital collections in the design process.
To visit the gentrified neighborhood of Chicago’s Logan Square, we can understand a space with a familiar and now normalized rhythm. A reclaimed barbershop letterboard promoting low prices for weaves and relaxers is displayed at Gaslight Coffee Roasters, advertising services for a demographic that’s neither reflected in their customers nor workers. A neighborhood walking tour replicates a virtual tour of a Pinterest board titled “hip typography.” This is no coincidence. In client-designer relationships, the brief might contain a series of keywords—“premium,” “artisan,” “radical,” “progressive,” “revolutionary,” etc.—for a designer to succinctly attach a visual form, embodying one’s articulated identity. Various online digital collections—Pinterest, Instagram, Google image search, etc.—reflect the homogeneous smoothing over of urban and aesthetic histories. New graphic identities morph into a singular cluster of codes with an existing contingency of followers who understand them, of how they designate a specific milieu, to replace (and displace) the existing community. Taken together, they create an amalgamated identity of a city. In these redesigned spaces—bars, restaurants, cafés—(white) economic affluence is conflated with community progress, bringing with it visual signifiers of who belongs and who doesn’t. This presentation will explore the aesthetics of gentrification through an analysis of the objects, spaces, and images within ‘revitalized’ neighborhoods, as well as highlighting the role of language and digital collections in the design process.