Superficial
All graphic design is superficial when we understand superficial as part of the structure of an object. In part, one makes the object through the graphics embedded on it, and even without depth it is not any less part of the whole. This critique leads to see what one can initially deem as a creation with shallow depth of thought, as something that in whatever graphic form it presents itself, is literally shallow, but by no means untethered or unrelated in meaning from the volume of paper/wood/metal/etc. it is on.
The surface of any object is the limit at which matter stops being; the superficial border with the void surrounding it. Through this exposed material all and any mechanical forces will reverberate in the matter underneath. It is only at a surface that we can peer, and even when we slice or disassemble, we create more surface in the process. That makes for an interesting thought that there are parts of our objects that we canʼt quite touch only if we, say... slice very finely, or sand down the volume of an entire object.
The surface, or if youʼd like to call it the superficial, is the way through which we interact with objects, but it is not the only part we can perceive about an object. The way we sense those untouchable areas are through the weights and vibrations we send through surfaces, and they will give you information back. You first come in contact with the superficial layer of the object, but when you grab the whole, the presence of mass will communicate within your muscles and tensioned arms that it does have more of itself than its surface. And because of these interactions with the outer skin, a very magical event happens in the air closest to it, because with time all actions done to the surface become layered and collected on this superficial.
Observe your touch-points with the pages and contemplate on where you think you will wear down the most the things you place yourself on. We spend more time remembering an object than using it. And maybe you can say that about a lot of places we see, actions we do and discussions we have, that remain longer with us as a memory than was the actual action itself. We clock in far more time with anything having it saved as a memory than we do using the object. (Of course there are exceptions to this which are the everyday objects that we keep reusing, that in perpetuity sit too close and are too mundane to evoke memories even more often than their use, until we throw them away.) And then the question can be what is it that we remember particularly about objects? As we donʼt live in a sterile environment free of potential scratchers and dinters, is it the ways we erode the objects that make us remember them, and how we altered their superficial?
