Is Design Dead?
Out of context: Reply #49
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- winter0
Kuz: you are astonishingly right. design is not dead.
wtm(mighty)f! i've been thinking on this for about 6 months now, so my post will be a bit longer than yours.
design is... design. somehow i feel that (like many of you, i guess) this design boom over the internet seemed like a very new thing. like a very new WE that could be utterly explored into new sorts of relations between people. it has been so. but it isn't solid either, because there is a lot of confusion and a lot of info that is wrong and meaningless. as it went along, it came "down" to the very same stuff already done (like the advertising here on the left, AHAH!). that is baffling. that everything comes to things already made. like having all your effort, your underground dreams brought to naught.
BUT it isn't really. it's just how we go along. fro, back and fro. In all my life, one of the most baffling statements was made by a lunatic called Syd Barret (1967 - 1st Pink Floyd Album - one of the most innovating things in what i call pop culture) where they quote the I-Ching: "a movement is accomplished in six stages... and the seventh brings return...!"
this is happening now. by the most cutting-edge designers we've come down to the basic stuff visually. modernity. neo-platonics. wim crouwel. swiss graphics. bauhaus. after a long loop of experiments we find that we're still dealing on the same stuff and that is why some observing people ask "is design dead?". because there is nothing sooo new. because what is new is based on the interface and not on the graphics itself. this is our current state. almost everything that we can imagine has been done on the same principles, and that feeling of browsing thru and thru the same stuff is clear to everyone (or this thread wouldn't happen).
so. there's a step to be made. the next step. as far as i know any art (any speech) de-constructs its own basis to bring new things.
visually this means that we need to purge all content into new basics arrangements of visual elements. and bring (this time, a solid post-modern thing) new philosophic content. this new stuff (in my op) should not be about DJ's, skate, MP3, and wicked fucking parties. because that it's just kid stuff and is based on that common view that design is going to cahnge the world. well, it isn't.
design is just design, an open field where all the best things can happen if we study enough to change it. what i realise is that most designers neglect other aspects of culture, like philosophy, history, literature and even ART.
ART is the sum of all the knowledge that happens in a current society.
so i say, we must study like fucking bastards and sail this vessel on!
jeesus, i think i have had more than a few drinks. never trust the scotch!