The Libre Designer

Towards an understanding of Free/Libre Open Source as Graphic Designers… Thoughts on freeing the practice of design… ?

An Introduction

Free/Libre Open Source (F/LOS) is an alternative lens with which to reinvision design practice and pedagogy. The F/LOS realm offers designers not only a pragmatic approach reviving how sociocultural artifacts have historically been created, but also a critical approach that, through utilizing ideologically based software and tools (and having far more ease of access to these software and tools) intentionally positions itself as antidote to status-quo capitalist designing. A designer will find more ways to make; less obstructions to their creative vision; and the ability to learn from and to give back to a community.

The goal here is in pointing out opportunities for a designer to integrate the ideologies of Free/Libre Open Source into one’s practice:

• How can design practice and pedagogy improve by adopting F/LOS?
• What example projects and prompts might inspire workshops or classroom experiments with this content?

I am frequently working at this place of a strange overlap, where: I am pragmatic, I like to make things that ARE makeable; but the ideologies, or the intellectual or creative space the projects operate in is utopian; at least as compared to “status quo” cultural production. So, how can I explore the feasibility of the technical aspects of F/LOS(S) vs feasibility in an actual design practice… a pragmatic utopian?