Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design

tolerance and coexistence in the world. By avoiding sappy clichés and
timeworn stereotypes, Kalman’s brief editorial set the stage for a conflicting
catalog of bitterness and hope: “We don’t usually dwell on the bad news.
And racial violence is definitely bad news. But this issue of Colorsis about
how race affects our lives and how racism can take many forms, not all as
obvious as those we’ve presented here. These pictures are our way of
showing the problem quickly and bluntly. It will take us longer to show you
the solutions.”
Like a serum that employs disease to immunize the body,Colors
turned racist to fight racism. A feature titled “Who Are You?” spoke
through a racist’s voice to spew hundreds of slurs, epithets, and obscenities
used by different ethnic and racial groups to describe their neighbors and
enemies. In “So, What’s the Difference?” the racist ploy of comparing and
distinguishing physical characteristics was co-opted by using photographs
of various kinds of ears, noses, and hair to show that physical differences
are, in fact, endemic to humanity. In a stark photograph of two bleeding
fingers, one black and the other white, the message that there is no
fundamental difference is made vivid. In the same feature people from
around the world were asked to describe difference within their various
native and adopted cultures: “For the time being, I’m the only Ibo boy in
Hungary. The people I work for love me for being an Ibo,” replied a young
boy; “I do not belong to a race. I am Egyptian. In my country it makes no
difference what color you are or where you come from. The main difference
here is rich and poor,” said another. A disturbing feature, “How to Change
Your Race,” examined various cosmetic means of altering hair, lips, noses,
eyes, and, of course, skin color to achieve some kind of platonic ideal.
“What if.. .” was a collection of full-page manipulated photographs
showing famous people racially transformed: Queen Elizabeth and Arnold
Schwarzenegger as black; Pope John Paul as Asian; Spike Lee as white; and
Michael Jackson’s already altered features are further given a Nordic caste.
“Race is not the real issue here,” Kalman noted. “Power and sex are the
dominant forces in the world.”
But not everyone was pleased. A man in a Rolls Royce was
arrested in London after smearing black paint over Benetton’s store
windows. He told the police that it was in retaliation for Benetton’s
irreverence towards the Queen. In Japan, twenty-five thousand copies of
Colors were burned because authorities were afraid that the feature on
epithets would seriously offend Japanese people, and they feared reprisals
against Benetton’s Japanese employees.
The racism issue of Colorstouched raw nerves. It also proved that
design in the service of a strong message could influence people. The