Self-study
Advertisers typically prohibit graphic designers from signing their works because the purpose of a graphic design is to draw attention to an advertised product or service, not to the designer. ████████████ ██ ██ ██████ ████ ███████ █████████ ███ ██████ ██████████ █████████ ██████████ █████████ ███████ ██████ ██ ██████ ██ █████████ ██ ████ █████████ ███████████ ███ █████ █████
Argument Summary
The first sentence gives us context: advertisers typically don't let graphic designers sign their work, because the point of a graphic design is to highlight the product, not the designer. This is background information that sets up the author's argument.
The word "nonetheless" signals a pivot. Despite the common practice of keeping designers anonymous, the author believes graphic designers should not remain anonymous. That's the author's conclusion. Why does the author believe this? Because anonymity undermines effective graphic design by making it hard to hold designers accountable for their work.
So the argument structure looks like this:
- Context: Advertisers usually prohibit designers from signing their work because the design should draw attention to the product.
- Conclusion: It's better that graphic designers not remain anonymous.
- Premise: Anonymity undermines effective graphic design by making accountability difficult.
Notice that the conclusion is a value judgment: the author is telling us what should be the case. The premise, by contrast, describes a consequence of anonymity. The premise supports the conclusion because if anonymity hurts design quality, that's a reason to think anonymity isn't desirable.
The Main Conclusion
The conclusion is
For Main Conclusion questions, be careful to distinguish between the conclusion and the premise that supports it. Here, the claim about anonymity undermining effective design is why the author holds the conclusion. It's the support, not the thing being supported.
13.
Which one of the following ████ ██████████ █████████ ███ ███████ ██████████ █████ ██ ███ █████████
a
Prohibitions against graphic ██████████ ███████ █████ █████ ███ ██████ ██ ████████████
This restates the first sentence of the stimulus, which is background context. It describes what advertisers typically do, but it's not what the author is trying to prove. Nothing else in the argument is offered as a reason to believe that prohibitions against signing are common. The author simply states it as a fact to set up her own argument.
b
In advertising, the ███████ ██ █ ███████ ██████ ██ ██ █████ █████████ ██ ██ ██████████ ███████ ██ ███████ ██████ ████ ██ ███ █████████
This is also part of the context. It explains why advertisers prohibit designers from signing their work. Like (A), it's a factual observation the author presents without argument. The author isn't trying to convince us that graphic designs should focus attention on products rather than designers.
c
It is not █████████ ████ ███████ █████████ ██████ ██████████
This accurately restates the conclusion. "Not desirable that graphic designers remain anonymous" is another way of saying "it is better that graphic designers not remain anonymous." The author uses the premise about accountability to support this value judgment, making it the claim the argument is ultimately trying to establish.
d
Graphic design is ████ ████ █████████ ██ █████████ ██ ███ ████ ██ ███████ ██████████
This captures the premise, not the conclusion. The claim that anonymity makes graphic design less effective is the reason the author gives for the conclusion. If you think (D) is the conclusion, you might be reading the last sentence as having its own mini premise-conclusion structure: "Anonymity undermines effective graphic design" (conclusion) supported by "making it difficult to hold designers accountable" (premise). But that's not what's happening. The last sentence is a single causal claim: anonymity undermines effective design, and the mechanism is that it makes accountability difficult. Causal claims can sound like premise-conclusion structures, but "X happens by Y happening" is just describing how X works, not arguing that X is true. The entire last sentence functions together as a premise supporting the conclusion that designers shouldn't remain anonymous.
e
Holding graphic designers ███████████ ███ █████ ████ ██ █████████ ████ █████ █████████ ███ ██████████
This is the specific mechanism described in the premise. As explained in (D), the difficulty of holding anonymous designers accountable isn't a standalone premise. It's part of a causal claim about how anonymity undermines effective design. The whole causal claim then supports the author's conclusion that designers shouldn't remain anonymous.