Doing Digital Humanities with Design in Mind

I recently went through a few pieces discussing the role of design in digital humanities, a field still rife with developing practices. Stephen Ramsey’s look at what digital humanities really means struck me the most. While warning about the dangers of over-definition, he hit the nail on the head when he focused on digital humanities as active. There is a creation involved in DH, one that moves the historian out of a more passive role of reading to a more active role of creating. This, at first appearance, appears as a gross oversimplification and a slap in the face of the “old ways”. An article a friend sent me the other day reminded me that historians do just as much by disproving the old as they do discovering the new, which goes to show that tried and true methods will always have a purpose.

Having had a taste at DH in a historical cartography course, I felt the excitement of creation Ramsey refers to. My class blog chronicled my journey through such programs as Photoshop, Ortelius (a Mac-only cartographic software), and Natural Scene Designer. While there were certainly the expected software frustrations and learning curves, red-eyed nights staring at the screen, long work sessions with my partner in crime, there was the high of participation. I felt as though I was learning the tools necessary to make an impact in the current scholarly climate. It was exciting to be doing something I had no experience in (discussing typeface, designing a heading,  etc.).

Most importantly, learning all of these practices seemed relevant. Not to discount the skills learned in other courses (critical thinking, synthesizing information, argumentative writing), but as Ramsey argues, new skills lead to different insights. Knowing these tools would lead not only to something that looked more appealing than a basic paper, but to new ways of looking at the question at hand (in this case, using maps as an instrument for more than consumption). I felt armed with a new arsenal of practices that would make my work more appealing, efficient, and autonomous. The professor would remind us that knowing, for example, how printers use type would allow you more clout in your book design. It is an empowerment so to speak, knowing what good design practices are (as spoken to in this survey of what makes a web site “credible”).

It is important to remember that design still has rules, and is not an excuse to put out the ornamental for aesthetic’s sake. But, just as visual culture shifts and changes with current tastes and technologies, historical practices should at least bend if not accept the current state as well. I think it is still important to view something like design as a tool in the tool box and not a means to an end. The old with the new will hopefully lead to something fresh.

EDIT: This week I commented on David’s post.

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