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the designer as
"Pity the high-powered,
market-driven, |
Awake
to the brink of exhaustion, bleary-eyed from a glittering array of tiny points of light, face bleached drowned-blue in the glow of a monitor; the designer sits and perfects a single line. Outside, a siren shrieks down a rain-slicked street painted in shades of neon, distracting her for long enough to wonder: on which side of the window is the design actually taking place? Too often we try to shield ourselves, comfortable in our safe bubble of kerning and colour studies. Too often we allow ourselves to believe that we must struggle to create a world of perfect shapes and forms, an anorexic, minimalist utopia on glossy paper with plenty of white space. As we make an art of the product, as we hurtle forward on an endless quest to make more and more, we risk severing ourselves from a genuine understanding of the importance of design, and from our role as designers. We do not exist in isolation from a badly designed world. Design is not created in a vacuum. It is manufactured by and for human beings within a specific social context. Its importance stems from this context - it is the fabric of our visual environment. Not only must designers understand this, but it is also their role to analyze it, to become active participants within it, and ultimately, to change it. The designer is not an artist. The designer is a loudspeaker into which the ideas of some are whispered, then blasted out to others. Design is too condensed, too sleek a word for what we do. We are the propagandists of the information age, and what we create is neither neutral nor transparent, neither pleasant nor pretty. And to begin, we must ask ourselves two questions. 1. Why am I not an artist? 2. What is the difference between a computer and me? Marinetti wrote of the Italian Futurist movement: A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath - - a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace. The same can be said for the difference between art and design. Art is no longer a living, breathing, vital force. It has been murdered - confined to corporate offices and museums, inaccessible and indecipherable to those who would benefit most from it. Its role as a communicator has been conquered by design, by the mass-produced, the mundane, and the ephemeral. Art is peripheral to the lives of most - it is design that surrounds us, design that exposes us to beauty, and design that shapes our opinions. Why would anyone want to be an artist? Marinetti's car is modern design, sweeping past the frozen artifacts of the past. It is fast; more people can see it, but it is there only for a moment, and they have less time to examine it. Few take the time to appreciate it, choosing instead to accept it as part of the urban landscape. The designer at the wheel has a vague sense of its power, but the car drives him with its own sense of purpose, potentially either creative or destructive. But it is not enough to recognize the potential of design. It is not even enough to love the vehicle for its own nature, to live for serifs, rules and grids. If one lives only for design, then one is still only an artist. Just as there was never "art for art's sake", there will never be "design for design's sake." Eventually, a computer will be able to create the perfect web site, the ideal proportions for any brochure, and it will render these passionate designers obsolete. Without content, without a message, the designer becomes a tool, playing with ornament. The difference between the designer and the computer is that the designer has something to say. As is the case with many professions, most designers like to see themselves as apolitical. Aloof, removed, they perform their tasks with extreme objectivity, their emotions stirred only by the frustration of deadlines or a lack of balance in their compositions. Seldom do they address the ramifications of their work, the influence they wield over the world beyond their studios. Could the designer of the Nike swoosh have ever envisioned the logo shaved into the back of a teenager's hair, tattooed on an athlete's body, or sewn by tiny fingers in an Indonesian sweatshop? Every designer can claim that it is not her responsibility to change the world, that she cannot afford to refuse to work for large corporations, that she has no interest in or control over the conditions under which her designs are produced and distributed. Perhaps this assertion has validity for the individual, but it is self- justification; the role of the designer is still political. Leni Riefenstahl claimed the defense of impartiality, that ultimately, she was an artist, and thus somehow removed from the politics of her time. The distance of time allows us to evaluate Triumph of the Will as propaganda that contributed to the atrocities of Nazi Germany; we do not have the same luxury with today's design. Whether we like it or not, as designers we have a collective responsibility with respect to our work, a responsibility to seize control of our racing cars and force them, shrieking, towards something better. Whether we like it or not, we are far from objective. And yet, we continue to lull ourselves, delude ourselves into thinking that all that matters is form and aesthetics. If anything, our great contribution will be to make the world a beautiful place. Part of the blame for this condition lies with design education and with the organizations that have emerged as the profession begins to realize its value. We are taught a strange sort of ethics that protects designers but does little to recognize the impact we have on the world around us. The deadly sins of design - plagiarism, working "on spec" - affect the profession in isolation, failing to acknowledge our social, economic, and political interdependencies. Is the violation of these rules any worse than creating a successful logo for a multinational company with a record of human rights abuses and environmental devastation? Why should these official organizations be accountable solely to the handful of designers who pass their exams? Desperate, clinging to our annual reports, our award-winning web sites, our corporate identity packages, we assert: we are professionals, this has nothing to do with us. From Bauhaus and the Constructivists to Grapus and First Things First, a handful of designers have tried to push in the opposite direction, questioning their role and transforming it from one of "making things" to "changing things". They understood that design is something more than "commercial art." It is a fundamentally different process with a fundamentally different nature. We rely not on our own interior world but on the reaction of a wide spectrum of viewers. We have an intimate connection with industry. Our audience is not the well-bred museum patron, observing our masterpieces from a respectful distance, but the pedestrian who stops to look up at our poster, half- buried beneath another equally vibrant poster, pasted to a wall with condensed milk and a paintbrush. Mayakovsky urged the artists of his day to: Wipe the old out of our hearts! Enough of penny truths! The streets our brushes the squares our palettes. And we, the designers, must push further. Armed with our skills, with the knowledge that we are vital, that the ad campaigns, the brilliant packaging, the flashy marketing will not happen without us, we must provoke, we must agitate, and we must reshape the sensory landscape. We must approach the profession of design with sledgehammers. We must go beyond merely assuming the cultural forms of the new, the slick, the post-modern, and we must use our creativity as a weapon. Design is not what takes place in a studio, with a G4 Macintosh and a structured grid. Design is the collision of the visual with the intellectual, the clash of the inspiration of the individual with the demands of the world. We cannot afford to be indifferent. Our talents are useless if we blithely accept conventional notions, dangerous if we do not examine our own purpose and meaning. We must abolish all illusions of objectivity and neutrality and begin to view ourselves as an interconnected part of a greater whole. Bleached paper and hazardous working conditions lower our professional standards more than intellectual property theft. Design ethics should take into account not only designers and their clients, but also those involved in every segment of the process - those who produce our work, those who receive the messages we transmit. Design education must expose the designers of the future to politics, to economics, to literature, to art. We must raise the expectations of our work and our collective potential to encompass something beyond our own individual careers. We must turn away from our monitors, if only for a moment, and walk out to the street below us, memorize its rhythms, its dynamics. We must be awake and aware. Our voices must project beyond the field of design; we must draw from all avenues of experience and affect every level of society. We must no longer be tools for whichever company foots the bill; we must reshape ourselves to become a meaningful, powerful force, to put our labour and our skills toward significant aims. We should struggle to shape the values and ideas that surround us instead of merely reflecting them. We must begin where art left off, at the end of the Modernist vision and invent new ideas, new design, and a new world. Don't think outside of the box -- obliterate the box. Bibliography Lasn, Kalle. "Design Anarchy" Adbusters. Fall 1999. Harrison, Charles and Paul Wood (ed.) Art in Theory 1900-1990: an anthology of changing ideas. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. Mayakovsky, Vladimir. "An Order to the Art Army December, 1918" Old Mole, 1972. Kalle Lasn "Design Anarchy" Adbusters. Fall 1999. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (ed.) Art in Theory 1900-1990: an anthology of changing ideas. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, p. 147. Mayakovsky, Vladimir. "An Order to the Art Army December, 1918" Old Mole, 1972. |