Rhizome & Graphic Design

I recently became interested in rhizome (a philosophical concept derived from A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia), which symbolizes multi-networks, the destratification of society, and decentralization. A Thousand Plateaus is a conceptual collage composed of heterogeneous and diverse concepts that had already been formed in different theories. Each concept in this collage is separated from its original meaning and assigned a new meaning. These concepts are not explained in any one particular way because each concept not only reflects another like a mirror, but also includes the meaning of another. In other words, these concepts are stereospecifically connected with each other and eventually express the image of the whole book. For the most part the writing does not allow for logical reading but instead requires a repetitive, circulatory approach. Rhizome is a symbolic concept that represents the image of the whole collage.

Today, it is hart to explain various socio-cultural phenomena with conventional design principles. Human beings have undergone innumerable social, economical, and technological changes over the last century. Nonetheless, it seems there are still no proper design theories that can be applied to these recent changes. Most of today’s design students in college are still learning the same principles I learned when I was in college 15 years ago. Design cannot reach out and touch its audience when it does not embody the spirit of the times. As such, it is doubtful we have the proper design principles in place for today’s designers to embrace cultural simultaneity, superimposition, and complexity.

Over the past decades, people have pursued a wide range of alternative discussions and research in the field of humanities in an effort to surmount the contradictions and limitations of modernity. Thus it is obvious that some of the concepts from the humanities may provide a clue to understanding today’s cultural diversity, while pursuing an alternative methodology of graphic design to deal with the cultural phenomena at the same time. I would like to explore the concept of rhizome in order to discover how it may be interpreted and visualized in the field of graphic design, as well as how it can be applied to the field as a methodology.