Information consumes the attention of its recipients, therefore “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”* Attention is scarce in the post-scarcity of information, giving rise to the attention economy, enabling the Internet to become an economic medium again. The attention economy is a system that revolves primarily around paying, receiving, and seeking the attention of human beings, like social media platforms profiting from the display of advertisements.
In graphical displays, attention is primarily focused on the surface; thus, an informative layer—whether printed or digital—acquires value akin to real estate, which is proportionate to its surface area. In Instagram's advertising policy, for instance, an impression is defined as an advertisement view lasting longer than three seconds. In 2023, a thousand impressions on Instagram cost $6.70. An “impression” is typically mediated through a square image on a phone, with a width of approximately 7.15 cm on iPhones. Paying $6.70 for 1,000 impressions on Instagram equates to roughly occupying 5.1122 square meters of digital screen for three seconds during which attention can be harvested. This crucially informs the economic use of surfaces in graphic design.
*Terranova, Tiziana. 2012. "Attention Economy and the Brain." Culture Machine 13
💧Extraction by Graphic Design
💧Commodification by Graphic Design
💧Reduction by Graphic Design