{"id":444514,"date":"2026-02-02T11:14:30","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T11:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/444514\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T11:14:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T11:14:30","slug":"aldon-chens-exploded-infographics-challenge-our-assumptions-of-sight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/444514\/","title":{"rendered":"Aldon Chen\u2019s exploded infographics challenge our \u201cassumptions of sight\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

At first glance, New York-based designer Aldon Chen<\/a>\u2019s work consists of graphic design \u2013 naturally, it\u2019s what he studied and it\u2019s the work he\u2019s most public about, but it\u2019s only really a useful shorthand. For Aldon, his work is what he calls \u201corganised intention\u201d, which covers a range of practices from typeface design, sculpture, writing and interface construction. In fact, it\u2019s writing that Aldon does the most of, and although the writing stays mostly private, it informs the context of his design.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found out about Wittgenstein\u2019s notion of the inexpressible when I was a teenager, through Maggie Nelson\u2019s Bluets and The Argonauts, both of which had a profound effect on me,\u201d says Aldon. \u201cThe notion that language is not only incapable of capturing and expressing reality but also corrosive to its meaning, inverted an assumption I had about language that I believed was self-evidently virtuous: that more language, more articulation of the world, was inherently a good thing.\u201d This led to a longer, personal study of postmodern theories of agency, objectivity, subjectivity, and power, grew alongside Aldon as a student in school \u2013 now we can see the fruits of his curiosity.<\/p>\n

In his graphic design work, Aldon transforms periodic tables and dense masses of information into maximalist pieces of design, expressing information whilst also challenging the impossibility of taking it all in. Data sprawls across screens and pages, overlapping in overloads and feedback loops, communicating more the aesthetic of information rather than its substance, playing with images we have all seen in science classes or colour palettes. These are exploded infographics.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew to become very sensitive to the ways language and design engendered certain modes of interfacing and interpreting the world, which made design and language not only an issue of power, but an inherently political activity too,\u201d says Aldon. \u201cThis is where my ethical and aesthetic affinities correspond, it\u2019s why I think I tend to gravitate towards designing systems of some kind: interfaces, tools and more.\u201d It won\u2019t come as a surprise that Aldon\u2019s major creative influences come from thinkers outside of the design tradition: Chris Kraus\u2019 autofiction novels, Ursula Le Guin\u2019s essays, Ludwig Wittgenstein\u2019s ideas and also the larger liberal arts and humanities sector that taught him how to understand design as \u201csituated within a larger continuum of human thought.\u201d It\u2019s exactly the kind of lofty philosophy that drives boundary-pushing design, interweaving the capacities of our own understandings with pleasant, clinical data presentations and the poetics of computation.<\/p>\n

Aldon Chen is part of It\u2019s Nice That\u2019s Ones to Watch 2025 \u2013 a curated list of next generation creative talent from across the globe. Discover all 65 creatives in our directory, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At first glance, New York-based designer Aldon Chen\u2019s work consists of graphic design \u2013 naturally, it\u2019s what he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-444514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}