The Graphic Thing : Ambiguity, Dysfunction and Excess in Designed Objects - Phil Jones

• Rather than approaching 'thingness' as a quality existing independently of human agency, my approach has been to reflect on the ways that experiences of things and thingness arise at different stages of or in levels of in processes of meaning construction. 
• There are issues of thingness in perception, for example where the amount or quality of sensorimotor data is insufficient to completely resolve the thing in question. 
• When we are overwhelmed by sensorimotor data so that there is a veridical experience of the physical existence of a thing, the thing becomes 'larger than life'. 
• Attention is another issue - things attract attention because they resist straightforward classification and understanding. 
• There is also the experience of becoming aware of the existence of something when it becomes the focus of our attention. 
• Our experience of things also seems relevant to apperception when it is difficult or impossible to locate an entity within a conceptual frame or scenario. 
• In graphic design the experience of thingness can be detrimental to user experience e.g. in cases in which the readers concentration is broken by badly set type. 
• Designers can also use this experience of thingness to call attention to the designed object, to create impact to suggest emotional and affective states and to foreground certain attributes and qualities so that new meaning may emerge.