Writers and thinkers can use the tools of graphic design to study and change social relationships. The words and concepts we use to talk about design ripple through the critical writing about race and feminism. Terms like axis, intersection, and orientation are familiar to graphic designers. Writers and philosophers use these terms too, creating spatial metaphors for concepts like racism, sexuality, and gender. Spatial ideas such as “margin/center” help people create vivid mental pictures of dominance. These concepts prompt readers and listeners to construct diagrams in the gray matter of the mind. White savior narratives are told from the perspective of White people who become enlightened and help improve the lives of people in marginal groups. Such narratives are said to “center Whiteness,” a process of erasing the margins and focusing on the emotional needs and seemingly heroic actions of the dominant group.
Sara Ahmed’s book Queer Phenomenology unpacks the spatial language of queerness. The phrase “sexual orientation,” commonly used to label a person’s attraction to people based on their gender identity, suggests how bodies gravitate toward other bodies, as if drawn by a magnetic force. Ahmed wants to rethink how a body’s turn “‘toward’ objects shapes the surfaces of bodily and social space.” She states that queer comes from the Indo-European word meaning “twist.” Historically, to be queer meant to deviate from the straight line of social norms. Today, people use the word queer to express pride and solidarity.