Is Design Dead?
Out of context: Reply #47
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Is design dead? I dont get it. What do u mean is design dead? Do you mean innovation in design is dead? Do you mean noone is doing new design anymore? Do u mean noone is doing design that inspires u anymore?
How can design be dead? That's like saying Engineering is dead. Sure there are a limited number of solutions to a problem. But how can the discipline die? Do you mean it doesn't matter to u anymore? I can understand if u say art is dead. But art and design aren't the same thing - are they?
I'm not into the whole Academics of design so maybe that's why i cant see what u're on about. Like the history of design. But what design are u on about? Print design? Motion design? Interactive design? Interior design? Fashion design? Or the whole process of designing anything by anyone?
New possibilties and mediums are opening up all the time. Especially in interactive design. Guys like Josh Davis and Yugo Nakamura are still
blowin me away. And all those quirky little flash things that dynamically gather all this information off the web and display it - like that Newsmap guy. His whole website is some amazing innovative shit that wouldn't even have been possible few years ago. Not to mention the new technological possibilities in motion design that got me into this whole thing in the first place; people like Kyle Cooper, Unit 9, Richard Fenwick, Shynola, the Light Surgeons, and loads loads more.Maybe u are talking about just print design - like the title of David Carsons book The End of Print. But even then i'm not sure if i understand what u mean. So what designers who are now dead or in their 50s/60s still inspire u. Is that a problem?
Film makers from the 1920s still inspire me. But does that mean i think film is dead? Having recently watched Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, i have to categorically say no.
Design like our very culture, is fluid. Ever changing, ever shifting. It is a language just like our oral languages, that we
use to communicate. So how can Design be dead if language itself is still alive?Francis Fukoyama published a book following the fall of the Soviet Union called The End Of History. In it he confidently
predicted "capitalism is the last stage of development in humankind - the end of history is here". Fuckin capitalism and it's supporters. The kind of neurotic Millenarian anxieties it's created in all of us. He said "The spread of liberal democracy does not happen automatically or in a linear fashion...It is American and European business, acting in its own long-term self-interest, that will have to provide the East with the wherewithal to rejoin us at the end of history." Even Wired magazine jumped on this bandwagon. "Immersive technology represents, on the one hand, both the grail at the end of the history of cinema and on the other hand, the beacon that draws creative energies toward the culmination of computing...In the world of immersion, authorship is no longer the transmission of experience, but rather the construction of utterly personal experiences." Bullshit. History is not like physics. There are no voids. Something comes next baby.Ok, i'm digressing. But this whole "design is dead" talk seems to stink of the same "post-modernist" obsession with Endisms.
Even if u say print design is dead. I dont get how that can possibly spell the end of design. The essence of design is communication. And just like it has moved beyond books, it is quickly moving beyond television and computers. This is the most exciting period in design since the birth of the printed press. There are designers all over the world who wait with baited breath until technology catches up with the vision of what is in their heads. And it's coming.
But i understand the anxiety. And this goes back to the whole "end of history" question. Most designers embrace the
technology that will produce the new instances of communication. But few of us are prepared to grapple with the issues that will form the CONTENT of this communication. And this is what the triumph of Capitalism and the Corporation has done. It has commodotised culture. And design is an integral part of our culture - our visual culture. Capitalism is shizophrenic. It has
a problem creating anything new. It's locked in an eternal cycle of destruction and regeneration. It continoulsy recycles our culture as commodity. As a simulation of reality. There's no need to go to Disneyland. We live in it.You should read Tibor Kalman's own essay The Edge of The Millenium. In it he says:
"So, in the apocalyptic spirit of the millennium, we are calling for the end of design... What we are calling for is the end of a design profession that has, as its sole purpose, the propagation of style devoid of content, form devoid of function, and commerce devoid of culture."
Designers who give people the tools to "talk" to each other, and therefore create a fluid culture - and a society
that is in a process of constantly redefining itself along truly democratic lines - is always replaced by design that is used to reemphasise the Consumer society.Maybe u're looking for a new word to define urself - instead of designer. Like that link that was posted on ComputerLove a
while back - about coming up with a new word for graphic designer. Visual communicator or something else lke that. It was an instresting "article" (anyone got a link to it???) because it talked about how the designers role encompasses so much these days. Across hugely varying mediums and disciplines of art direcion, and illustrator, and layout, and project management and blah blah lah.The invention of the printing press was one of the greatest thing society ever acheived. It allowed people for the first time
in history to communicate to the whole mass of society outside the control of Churches and Aristocracies. New methods, and new visual languages had to be invented, spontaneously, to communicate messages. A whole new design language was created and which developed as our culture and technology of producion developed. Today with computers and software like photoshop, and illustrator, and flash, and the internet and re-writible CD's and all those 24hr high street print shops- communication has become even more democratic. In this chaos, there's even more of a need for designers. Design can't be dead. We need it.Society needs it.