Design Narratives and the White Spatial Imaginary

Graphic designers are ideological storytellers, often creating signs and symbols that help reproduce the material and affective economies of neoliberalism. Recently, scholars across varying fields have shown an interest in the aesthetic components of gentrification, but the role of the graphic designer has yet to be explored in depth. I argue graphic design not only plays a role but is a logical contributor to gentrification in the US, helping to reproduce what George Lipsitz (2011) refers to as the white spatial imaginary.

To frame the designer’s complicity in the violence of gentrification, I will begin by exploring professional design culture’s embrace of diversity as a commodity and its enthusiasm for entrepreneurialism. Then, with two case studies of gentrified US neighborhoods—the East Austin neighborhood in Austin, Texas, and the Logan Square neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois—I will examine verbal and visual rhetoric produced and deployed by designers that helps (re)define racialized boundaries. Studying both professional design discourse and design in situ enables us to more clearly see how designers exploit ideological narratives as a public pedagogy to, consciously or unconsciously, participate in the rationalization, justification, and perpetuation of the white spatial imaginary.