There are plenty of things to say about bad design practice and 'design by committee' would rate highly as one method to avoid. The term plays on the old adage that 'too many cooks spoil the broth' and bears the warning that trying to be everything to everyone can hopelessly dilute your vision.

But despite many instances supporting this argument, there are also many notable exceptions, and Streetwize, a social communications agency that has been producing comics on a wide range of tough issues including HIV, refugees and unemployment since the mid-1980s in Australia, is one of them. The group has established a creative design process that casts a wide net, producing issue-based comics for a wide variety of communities. Their philosophy is that they're trying to communicate with the community-at-large, so why not include them in the creation process from day one.

Among their most recent popular projects was a comic for young people about political refugees in Australia. The comic attempts to sift the facts about refugees from the emotive press around the topic, and was produced with funding from the Myer Foundation. Two years in the making, the comic is now used in classrooms across the country and by the United Nations as a part of their educational campaigns.

'[After securing funding] we hold a brainstorm,' says Jo Taylor, the general manager of Streetwize Communications. 'We get interested parties and key stakeholders in a room together and ask them what they think the issues are going to be.' In the case of the refugee comic they gathered representatives from the Department of Education, the Department of Immigration, and refugee groups such as the Refugee Council, Migrant Resource Center and legal centers, among others.

To find out what young people in Australia thought about refugees Streetwize did as it always does: went out and talked to them. 'Vanessa, the writer/researcher and I tried to talk to a big cross section of young people,' says Ross Carnsew, Streetwize’s artistic director (and chief illustrator) since 1988. 'We went to middle-class schools on Sydney's North Shore and we went to schools around Bankstown and Punchbowl. We went down to Wollongong, and out to Dubbo to get a rural perspective as well.' They also asked many young refugees to share their personal stories.

From here a research report and script is created and Carnsew roughs out a draft of the comic. The pair then goes out and does it all again, this time with different groups of young people, to test whether the issues and facts are clear, the story and characters are engaging, and the comic stimulates an informed discussion. If it fails in any of these areas, then they do it all over again.

'With the first draft of the refugee comic we thought we'd make it more generic but we found that people wanted specifics,' says Carnsew.

The story now follows a group of suburban teenagers going out to see a movie. One of the group is a recent immigrant, Yasmin, who came to Australia as a refugee. All of the myths and prejudices about refugees are spouted by a male character, Matt, and Yasmin proceeds to combat these misunderstandings by telling him her story, a composite based on the many refugee teenagers they spoke with. The comic managed to put a face to the issue, albeit a colourful line drawing of one. Young people loved it.

'A comic can suck you in on the first page,' says Carnsew. 'You can relate to the characters – we try to make them as contemporary as possible so that readers can identify with them. And most people know how to approach and read a comic whereas with a page of text, a large segment of the population is turned turned off straight away. Comics are a genre that's easily understood. People know how speech balloons work, they know how time flies in a comic.'

Somewhat paradoxically, a comic can also take on issues that we have been desensitized to, due to media overexposure, and make the issue real again. In the refugee comic, one frame shows Yasmin's uncle dead in pool of blood in an Iraqi prison. It's a powerful image that jars the reader into the realisation that this stuff is really happening; it's not just a news story. Says Taylor, 'Sometimes we get feedback suggesting it's inappropriate for a comic to be used for such a serious issue. They say, 'Surely you can't cover things in a serious way.' But I think this comic is a great example of how you can cover something incredibly serious in a way that makes it manageable for people to understand what is actually happening out there. In a way we've all been desensitised to violence – it's all around us on TV – but that image is really powerful.’

Carnsew admits that there can be frustrations working to please so many. 'Frustration is tearing up a really good draft that you're really proud of and thinking 'Damn that's such a waste of six pages of really good pictures,' he says with a laugh. But at Streetwize, he points out, there's no room for divas. 'You can't really hang on to it because you know that it's not just about sitting down and doing a comic. We have this process and I'm just a cog in the machine that is the process.' It's not that design doesn't matter, it's just that in this case, it's part of the process.'

You can see work by Streetwize in the new exhibition In your face: contemporary graphic design, 5 August-5 November at the Powerhouse Museum for Sydney Design 06.

Sydney Design 06
Streetwize Communications
Design by Committe
Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics



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+ In your face: contemporary graphic design