Platform Pudding: designcriticism in development
Kylièn Sarino Bergh 07.03.2026
‘Did you know—’, Gogo initiated the conversation. ‘Oh no, not that again!’ as Didi interrupted. ‘You know that I’m sick of your nonsense and conspiracy rumble, right?’ 1 as she spoke in a tone imbued by sarcasm and scepticism. ‘Well—’, he insisted, ‘how could you know that it’s not true?’ 2
1. Credibility is under scrutiny. While our means of communication are heavily privatised and befalling to the logic of the liberal market ideology and have become the fiefdom of technofeudalism, our public domain is saturated with conflicting messages, politicised information, misinformation, disinformation, deepfakes and conspiracy theories. As a result, the belief in and respect for a singular concept of truth shatters – paving the way for political distrust and societal polarisation. Mainstream media is continuously challenged by fleeting and volatile news feeds shared via digital media networks. At times, rightfully so. At others, it may lead us to question what reliable information is or not.
2. We have come to live in an age described as the post-truth era. This term indicates that conflicting realities are proclaimed by the mass media. Truth has become subordinate to narratives shaped by our ideologies, identities, or emotions. This is pointed at by Ralph Keyes in The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life (2004), who argues that contemporary society has normalized dishonesty to the point where deception has become not only accepted but expected in both public and private communication. In similar fashion we witness how mass media established a suspicious relationship between images and politics, as demonstrated by Naomi Biasetton in Superstorm: Design and Politics in the Age of Information (2024).
3. The rise of affordable and digital production techniques throughout the twentieth century – such as the advent of desktop publishing or online dissemination of text – has increased the accessibility to information as much as it decreased its reliability. Traditionally, communicative practices such as graphic design mediated this exchange of information. It shaped the way information was announced and, as a result, it shaped the credibility of both the sender and its message. Yet new means of digital communication democratised the distribution of information, as much as it blurs distinctions between fact and opinion. Journalism, for instance, heavily struggles to sustain its critical capacities within the infrastructure of today's media which is thriving on clicks and entertainment. So, how can graphic design still contribute to the credibility of communication and information, at times of political distrust, polarisation, deepfakes and conspiracy theories?
4. In the post-truth era neither information nor authority suffices to ascertain credibility. Instead, the transmission of communication is inevitably reliant on how the receiver perceives it; as famously proclaimed by Roland Barthes in The Death of the Author (1967). Thus, when conveying information, we should not only take credibility into account. Instead, editorial design could aim to reflect how information was retrieved, exposing its sources, show the relationality of information to other pieces of information, or reveal for what purposes and by whom it is presented to us. By doing so, information shifts from a fixed given to exposing a process of reasoning, involving the reader in its proof-reading. This brings us to asking what means are at our disposal to show information as a relational entity.
5. Within academic environments – a realm obsessed with proof par excellence – footnotes are tended to as the grammar of evidence. They expose the foundation of the argument or observation, as much as that they testify of the author’s expertise and knowledge. They are described by Anthony Grafton, in The Footnote: A Curious History (1997), as a curious species emerging from the scholarly ambition of constructing truth. More importantly, it makes information transparent and traceable.
6. Footnotes, however, come with their own distinct grammar. Their usage as an instrument to provide evidence is embedded in the history of the written word. Marginalia of ancient and medieval manuscripts, for example, often contained annotations, comments, cross references or explanatory remarks; which can be seen as proto-footnotes according to Grafton. Yet it was during the Renaissance – with the rise of the printing press which consequentially led to standardizing page layouts – that footnotes emerged as an intellectual device for revealing and disclosing sources. Listed in the appendance as preuves (proofs), they were gradually curbed by academic standardisation of citation styles throughout the 19th and 20th century for the sake of proof-reading and fact checking processes. Thus, bound to the conventions of the written word, notes are inevitably set within the realm of academia. This leads to questioning their degree of inclusivity and accessibility. Even more so, how can academic methods still claim credibility when authorities are taken into question in the first place?
7. The footnote, nevertheless, has the potential to present information as a relational construct. As Grafton states, “the text persuades, the notes prove.” (15) Seen as such, notes transform information into a transparent and trackable paper trail. Noted information is not a static or concealed given, but exposed and verifiable. Thus, rather than simply providing proof, footnotes declare information as a network of relational and traceable statements.
8. In digital environments notes often take the form of clickable links; designating a specific markup language and text-based encoding system known as hypertext. Therewith, as textual references, notes are providing interactive and re-directive content. Hyper, coming from the Greek prefix ὑπερ, suggests to go ‘over’ or ‘beyond’ and surpasses the traditional linear limitations of written text. Thus, hypertext turns language into a non-sequential and cross-referential framework.
9. The producing of associative links leaves the potential for the designer of the text to consider it an open work and enable communication as networks of transparent sources and additional content. As Philipp Heidkamp writes, “Designers have the task of structuring the content, determining the links, and making navigation via the nonlinear organization of information easily identifiable and intuitive.” Seeing notes as a cross-referential instrument, allows us to think of design as an approach to represent information as a constellation, rather than the means to an end.
10. When thinking of our highly polarized societies, however, design alone cannot reinvigorate trust nor counter the spread of disinformation. Would it be to devise a method to ascertain credibility, it would just as easily be used against itself. Instead, we will all need to play our part in learning to deal with (dis)information – which is probably more dependent on media-literacy than graphic design alone. Thus, we should not only focus on developing design approaches, but also consider how it is received by those trying to make sense of it. This was precisely the sore issue for the postmodern designers that sought to open up the linearity and one-sidedness of visual communication. It resulted in layered communications too complex to be understood by audiences accustomed to the manners of mass media; treating people as passive spectators. Yet familiarising ourselves with the structures and intentions of disinformation, by means of microdosing and debunking, can help to better understand and combat the spread and effect of it: as argued by Sander Van der Linden in Foolproof (2023).
11. While graphic design inevitably plays a role in the mediation of information, it has become clear that neither truth nor trust can be taken for granted. Therefore, it is relevant to rethink how design can foster exchanges, connections and dialogues to at last strive for the inclusion of a variation of voices and the representation of diverse perspectives in our public domain. This underpins the necessity to think about the rhetoric of design. Not only is it concerned with the actual argument or reason, but exactly because it also necessitates us all to think about by whom it is articulated and why we ought to care. At times troubled by a political climate of post-truth-polarisation and the rise of fascism, graphic design should aim to open up the rigid, biased, and unilateral flows of information to compassionate forms of communication. Information ought to be transparent and traceable. Herewith, notes are just one way to show that truth as multifaceted and verifiable. Other ways remain to be figured out on the go.