A number looks dispassionate. A line seems merely to connect. Yet as soon as numbers grow, shrink, cluster or spread along an axis in a graphic, they tell a story: of ascent and crisis, majority and margins, cause and effect. Information does not reach us unwrapped. It is selected, ordered and made visible. The question is not only whether a representation is accurate. Its form, too, determines what we consider important, plausible or self-evident.
The exhibition “On Display. Wie Grafikdesign uns gestaltet” (On Display. How Graphic Design Shapes Us) at Frankfurt’s Museum Angewandte Kunst explores this quiet work. It brings together contributions by Robin Coenen and Danielle Rosales, Aline Bavier and Sophia Becker, and Anja Kaiser and Rebecca Stephany, among others. Its starting point is political without being heavy-handed: graphic design is not merely an attractive wrapper for a message. It can produce knowledge, open up access — and help structure power relations.
The Invisible Decision
An infographic has to simplify. The very choice of which data to show, what basis of comparison to use and where to place the zero point shapes its message. A bar starting at zero conveys a different impression from one whose axis is truncated. A map can give weight to areas according to their size, thereby shifting perceptions of importance. This is not automatically manipulation. Without selection, there would be no readable representation. But selection is a decision, not a given.
Under the title “Design Macht Wissen” (Design Power Knowledge), Coenen and Rosales examine how graphic design communicates information and what power relations it contains. The exhibition describes their work as a spatial approach; a representation of knowledge is thus not merely viewed but experienced as a designed environment. This involves an important shift: we ask not only what a graphic communicates, but also who arranged it, whom it is intended to be intelligible to and which perspective it presents as neutral.
These questions have long ceased to concern printed charts alone. A user interface organises possibilities before anyone clicks: what appears at the top? What is preselected? Which button catches the eye, and which function stays tucked away in a submenu? A map on a smartphone, a search result or a form also embodies an idea of what matters and how people should act. The design does not determine every response. But it makes some routes easier and others more laborious.
Clarity Is Not Neutrality
The strongest objection to this kind of critique is that good design has to simplify. A wayfinding system cannot explain its political premises at every arrow; a graphic should provide guidance at a glance. Anyone who regards every selection with suspicion risks making comprehensible information impossible. That is true — and it is an argument not against design criticism, but for it. Transparency does not mean showing everything at once. It means not presenting one’s own simplification as the whole of reality.
Media literacy therefore means more than recognising false reports or checking sources. It includes an eye for form: what unit is being compared? What remains outside the picture? Where do colour, size and sequence create a sense of urgency? Such questions cannot automatically disprove a representation. But they make it clear that design stands between data and interpretation.
Tools Help Shape the Outcome
Aline Bavier and Sophia Becker’s video installation “re constructed” shows that tools, too, are not neutral. The pair use generative image models to process shared memories of childhood and adolescence. Here, memory is not simply stored content that a machine could retrieve. What becomes visible emerges through a process in which human storytelling and a technological image-making tool work together. The exhibition thus gives tangible form to a pressing question: who or what shapes an image when a system is involved in its production?
Anja Kaiser and Rebecca Stephany strike a different note with the “Glossary of Undisciplined Design”, a project developed jointly with other authors. Rather than defining design through timeless rules, it emphasises an open, contradictory field that thrives on collaboration and different voices. This is more than a rejection of order. It is a reminder that useful order remains open to negotiation.
The exhibition closes on 8 November. Its central argument extends beyond the exhibition space: those who can read design need not distrust it. But they can distinguish more precisely between where a form offers guidance and where it creates an appearance of certainty. Information is never just content. The way it is organised is part of what it means.
Original reviewed by the editors · 4 November 2026
