An illustrated essay on design labor, desktop publishing, and automation. Originally delivered as a talk at New Directions in Graphic Design History Symposium, in St. Louis, MO, January 2025.
Within the nascent desktop publishing industry of the late 1980’s, the phrase “What You See Is What You Get” became an epistemological north star. WYSIWYG, as it was often abbreviated, drove the development, implementation, and use of digital software packages, computer hardware, and printers. For designers and illustrators, the goal was a creative process where what you “saw” and manipulated on screen would be what you “got” when you printed.
The proliferation of WYSIWYG systems set the stage for present-day corporate enclosure of the creative industry, the deskilling of practitioners, and the congealing of creative expertise into applications powered by “Artificial Intelligence.” Through détournement and wordplay, this essay reworks WYSIWYG in order to unfold the forces of production within.
24 pages
Black ink on white card stock cover with yellow pastel interior.