During the past months, inevitably, graphic designers' behaviour in relation to the pandemic is a recurrent discussion with students and colleagues. There's a general sense of déjà-vu (more precarity), confusion (overload of information) and paralysis (effective and perceived).

There's also a feeling of powerlessness—what can a group of students do? What can they do in their institution? How can they reach out to other groups of students with similar concerns to gain some leverage?

And will these micro-gestures matter if political change will only take place through voting? This creates substantial (and additional) anxiety while being bombarded with coronapreneurialism discourse and the hopefulness of institutions belief that the 'normal' will return.

Many, if not most, weren't already happy with the normal—the normal was deeply flawed. And it wants to resume quickly. There's also a (solutionist) tendency ingrained in designers to be proud to be flexible and adaptable, even if damages their education.

This pride fades from BA to MA, with more maturity and experience. But there's a realisation that degrowth in design and slowing down are possible if imposed under the current circumstances, but unrealistic financially if the 'old' or the announced 'new' normality arrives.

What would be possible to do as graphic designers if, for example, universal basic income was a reality? What kind of practices is their education promoting beyond production (print and digital)? And would edu institutions be open to radically different uses of their facilities?

Under an asphyxiating tech imperialism and rampant surveillance that shows no signs of slowing down, graphic design students—the ones I discussed with, in the UK and Portugal—see the discipline at odds with the kind of change they think it's necessary. And difficult to do online.

The recent past shows a multitude of unhelpful examples: from more Shepard Fairey posters to Adobe selling their products and giving tips to keep creativity going; from minimalist screenprints to a pathetic typeface inspired by Greta Thunberg's handwriting. Design is prolific.

Is it enough to reduce graphic design to 4 possible outcomes? 1) Signage (to enforce rules) 2) Celebration (to praise health workers) 3) Relief (humorous or hopeful posters, memes, etc) and 4) Aid (online docs with useful info, printed forms to distribute around neighborhoods).

Groups of design students are faced with 3 dimensions: 1) what can they do at home, with family and hyper-local interventions? 2) what can they do at the college with a group of colleagues that will go to different countries after graduation? Can they test scalability?

And 3) if they succeed at 1 and 2, will that be effectively blocked by the government and the political economy, as the majority just voted for a Tory government—in the case of the UK? In this sense, 1 and 2 become more (tools for) resistance than actual systemic transition.