thinking about things

Designer as Social Engineer

What is the future of design as a discipline? What do design educators need to teach in order to create the next generation of designers?

Having had recent conversations with Karen Blincoe and Daniel Charney (Goldsmith’s BA Design External Examiners), I’ve been confused and concerned by what seems to be a split within the design discipline. Now this split maybe in my head – which is quite likely – but I’ve come across a couple of articles, blog posts and papers recently that have made me think this.

From what I can see, the split is this: some people are looking at the future of design as way to transform the world and peoples lives (this is arguably what design has always done), we can see clear evidence for this in the way that Hilary Cottam won (the rather ambiguous) title of ‘Designer of the Year’ in 2005. There were rumblings within the design community (and beyond) that this was a bad decision, that Cottam wasn’t a ‘designer’, she didn’t design ‘things’. Hilary Cottam represents a shifting view that design can “tackle some of the more intractable social problems of our day”. Designers will then need to work more closely with policy makers, politicians, and other ‘social engineers’.

What this signals is the use of design, both its processes and people, to engage fully in both political and social processes, enabling designers (and their collaborators) to find ‘solutions’ (even though this word is fraught with problems) to change peoples lives for the positive.

One of the main implications for me in this is: what skills and knowledge do design educators need to impart on their students? I find the question really exciting. I’ve always had a bit of a problem with ‘skills-led’ design education, it feels like putting in a gun in a child’s hands and telling it to go into the world and have fun. Designers need to learn how to think, how to create things that engage and change peoples lives… designers need to understand the implications of their work.

In my conversation with Karen she said something that has stuck in my mind, to paraphrase: “Eco-design’s biggest problem has been its failure to create leaders, instead its created designers with no confidence, who believe they’re losers”. At the core of this is the need for design education to value and instil cutting edge thinking, a critical practice, and the skills to enable the communication and implementation of this through design. Quite a challenge. So design education needs to create leaders – people with the confidence to go into the world and have a vision of what it can be in the future.

Now the split happens when designers have narrow views of their discipline, when they say “ideas are easy, now detail it and make it sell”. Understanding design as purely the detailing, production and selling of things, will continue to feed the view that designers are slaves to industry. And as Matt Jones said (via John Thackara) designers are the “shapers of possibility spaces, rather than things.”

Perec - Practical Exercises

Observe the street, from time to time, with some concern for system perhaps.
Apply yourself. Take your Time.
Note down the place: the terrace of a cafe near the junction of the Rue de Bac and the Boulevard Saint Germain
the time: seven o' clock in the evening
the date: 15 May 1973
the weather: set fair
Note down what you can see. Anything worthy of note going on. Do you know how to see what's worthy of note? Is there anything that strikes you?
Nothing strikes you. You don't know how to see.

You must set about it more slowly, almost stupidly. Force yourself to write down what is of no interest, what is most obvious, most common, most colourless.

Georges Perec, Species of Spaces, 1997:50

Best question: Do you know how to see what's worthy of note? How do i see? When do i know what i'm seeing is either interesting or relevant? How do i mark this 'note-worthy-ness'? How do i share my 'things worthy of note'? Are thier different ways to explain why i find things 'worthy'? Do i have hierarchies of 'worthy-ness'?

Perec the design tutor

I’ve been a massive fan of Georges Perec for years, the reason why, is due to his wonderful way of looking and capturing the everyday. His writing in someway captures the ordinary and elevates its beauty so everyone can bath in its glory. He’s the king of the banal, the prince of the quotidian.

Space melts like space running through one’s fingers. Time bears it away and leaves me only shapeless shreds…

To write: to try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive: to wrest some precise scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs. (George Perec, The Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, p91)

He literally writes the space of our everyday lives:

This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe it: to name it, to trace it, like those portolano-makers who saturate the coastlines with the names of harbours, the names of capes, the names of inlets, until in the end the land was only separated from the sea by a continuous ribbon of text. Is the aleph, that place in Borges from which the entire world is visible simultaneously, anything other than an alphabet? (George Perec, The Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, p13)

I think every design student should be given a copy of Species of Spaces and Other Pieces when they start design school. Perec is wonderful teacher of how to look and record the things that most people miss, the things that designers should revel in.

Zugzwang

Zugzwang is the German for 'compulsion to move' and is a chess move where one player is put at a disadvantage because he or she has to make a move - it places them in a weaker position.

Sometimes i feel i'm in a constant state of zugzwang, in lots of different ways - from the desire not to fix meaning (which ends up fucking with my head) to the uncomfortable compulsion to get and do something (which means i never relax). Hmmm... got to go - need to get up and move.

thanks claire