Brash-2022-Non-essential-design - Post-Pandemic Reflections - Central Saint Martins 2020-22

Aug 22, 2026

Post-pandemic reflections from Central Saint Martins explore how political graphic design often reduces or sanitizes “nonessential” and “excess” under austerity assumptions. Drawing on experiences during 2020-22, the text contrasts ad-hoc emergency design with deeper craft, scale, sensuality, and planning. It reframes luxury and abundance through examples from cinema, the 1871 Paris Commune, and barricade art, then links excess to collective life while critiquing austerity-driven minimalism.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages3

Reading Time8 min

AccessFree to download

Post-Pandemic Reflections - Central Saint Martins 2020-22

Nonessential design and political austerity

Nostalgia, craft, and rethinking luxury

Essentialness, plasticity of reality, and legal adaptation

Communal luxury and barricades as art

Moments of excess versus austerity minimalism

POST-PANDEMIC REFLECTIONS CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS 2020-22 The urgency of extra (and nonessential design) Andrew Brash Lecturer in MA Graphic Communication Design Central Saint Martins With concerns of sustainability and waste only growing, the idea of excessiveness and abundance is typically seen as anathema. For political design, excess is usually automatically reduced without question. If something exuberant or outspoken is proposed it often faces scepticism. Much politically-oriented graphic design retainsa kind of austerity through its short-termist naiveteto ‘just get the message across’. Commissioned as a kind of emergency design (with the non-existent budgets of grassroots groups against last minute deadlines, or undertaken the night before the event), the result often utilises – even celebrates – an ad-hoc immediacy. This is also partially due to the nostalgia of certain styles – the functionalism of constructivist design/protekult, DIY anarcho-punk or the freshly inked silkscreens of May 1968. In my experience with ac- tivist groups and critically-minded people in art alike, there is a suspicion of excessive beauty, slickness or glamour. These might be seen as ‘capitalist’values. But I don’t think politically interested designers should cede craft, scale, sensuality, luxury and planning to this arguably reactive stance. Most likely however, we need to redefine what terms like luxury can mean. Throughout 2020 and into this year, so many activities had their essentialness questioned. Essential travel, essential work, essential shopping or food etc. This has been debated alongside a reassessment of what is truly important in life. A kind of plasticity of reality and the possible has also occurred, best encapsulated by the ongoing creation, adaptation, extending or editing of laws – or the enacting of things that previously would have been unimaginable. For example, conservative governments across Europe eventually provided a financial incentive to stay home from work throughout the ongoing pandemic1 . 1 However unequally distributed the furlough schemes, its reality prior to 2020 was probably something imaginable only as a fringe demand in the form of Universal Basic Income. 2 Communal Luxury, Kristin Ross When everything feels threadbare, limited and pop-up, and with disposable plastic the most common material, a trip to an average cinema can be luxurious. Going to see Tenet last September ina cinema almost to myself, I experienced that luxury of space and focused time, a level of Hollywood production value on a huge screen that felt notably different compared to how the summer had been; TV programmes filled with dialed-in content, small-screen viewing experiences no more enjoyable than Zoom, and endless templated Netflix documentaries –slow zooms into archive photographs, standard voiceover, 100% pre-production. The contrast was fantastical. Visual experiences with qualities of depth, scale, richness and immersion can standout in an amazing way at the moment. The artistic concerns of the 1871 Paris commune aimed to abolish the division between fine and decorative crafts. Oneof the finest works of art created during the insurrection was the ‘Château Gaillard,’ a two-story barricade composed from stones and slumping sandbags, artfully arranged to impede army access. Tenet, 2020 Napoléon Gaillard (head of barricade construction and a shoemaker) considered his site-specific structures as ‘both works of art and luxury’2 . Why shouldn’t barricades be beautiful? Luxurious as well as resistant? Why are they contradictions? How might we rethink notions of excess and luxury now for utopian ends? Typically, luxury is elitist and morally vacuous. But are all forms of luxury and excess like this? The acceleration of technology has meant that increasingly problems of scarcity (energy, food production, commodities etc.) as well as overwork, can be eradicated, and that everything possible for a universall

FAQs

Why does the text argue that excess in political graphic design is often dismissed?

It explains that politically oriented design typically treats exuberance as suspicious, leading to an austerity that aims to “just get the message across,” often relying on short-termist, emergency-like production conditions.

How does the author connect “luxury” to everyday experiences during the pandemic?

The text describes how limited and pop-up conditions made even a normal cinema trip feel luxurious, highlighting depth, scale, richness, and immersion that stand out compared with dialed-in small-screen viewing.

What examples are used to challenge the idea that luxury and beauty are always morally empty?

The author references Napoléon Gaillard’s barricade structures described as art and luxury, the Paris Commune’s abolition of fine/decorative divisions, and a concept of “moments of excess” where collective creation accelerates life beyond capital limits.

Aug 22, 2026

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