Blah Blah design blahblah
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- cannonball19780
@ian00 - The criteria for good work is the tightness of grip on your balls.
- Hombre_Lobo0
I do kinda agree with you cannonball. Being a designer these days often uses the word very loosely.
Sadly all you can do is produce as much great work as you can and try your best to strengthen the proper meaning and image of the designer.
- 20020
As a designer, you will always be grabbed by the balls. Either by clients or peers.
Crit is double edged. You may get a good perspective or it will form your style. The key is to take crit and form your own style.
Designers usually have it or they dont. Most of us sit in between the two in a bell curved world. You can't teach someone design. You can also bring a designer out of them.
- ian000
@2002. You make two interesting points. First, I agree that design can never be fully deterministic (a red color field will make the viewer angry). Yet, it is neither completely relative. For instance, take the MTV magazine cover posted earlier. I suspect that we could probably reach some kind of consensus as to what it produces. Surely it is not a sleek, minimalist design evoking a simplified lifestyle. We might even agree that it captures a Carson-esque counter-culture, DIY aesthetic. It seems to me that we operate in a kind of bracketed determinism – never fully controlling, but cajoling, seducing, and suggesting. We can have intelligent conversation about form without absolutes.
Second, I completely agree that “pursuit of good design should drive designers.” How do you evaluate that absent being grabbed by the balls? I think we need engage criticism with as much passion as we do form and technique . We should be able to talk about what we produce as solving problems and as contributing to a larger discipline.
- 20020
Pursuit of good design should drive designers and knowing that they will never be good at it to talk about it.
- 20020
Much like politics, art and everything else, anyone can talk and have an opinion about design.
You can talk about techniques and process as well as dissect the work in hand but it all doesn't matter. It is all subjective.
Collective agreement gives you merit but by no means that it is a license to talk about design with authority. Conversation of personal experience with design is valid but it does not supersede any preconceived notion on the subject.
- ian000
@canoe. If I ruffled feathers, or is any way came across as hating on design, I apologize. Also, I’d like to say that I’m under no illusion that I value design any more than cannonball1972 might. I simply thought that this thread may be a good way to engage in disciplinary discourse – something which has been sorely missing on this site for quite some time.
Whoever is engaged in the discipline – whether it’s designing logos for $100 or a costly institution re-brand – are “real” designers. Their efforts are reified in some way and circulate within our cultural currency. But if by real, you mean successful, talented, or prolific designers, then I would argue that they are among the ones who actively question the boundaries of the discipline. Take the 1964 and 2000 First Things First manifestos as an example (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fi...
I am not advocating for any moral (or even ethical) rules. Nor do I think a standardized examination would prove that useful (the US public school system is clearly not benefiting from that). What I am advocating for is a critical conversation about the discipline. It is unfortunate that a site such as this, which runs on the participation form its user base, fails to engage the serious questions of design’s socio-poitical, cultural, and aesthetic impact on the world. This kind of dialogue is exactly what we need to separate the hacks form the “real” designers.
- canoe0
I think that there are plenty of boundaries, and ways to measure design. Real designers don't have a problem with that...I'd rather see your "rules" be applied to the hacks that take jobs for half a professional rate. Put your money where your mouth is ian00 and lobby for a some kind of professional standards examination that focuses just as much on history and theory as it does execution.
- ian000
While I sympathize with the ball gripping capacity of good design, it unfortunately does not offer an instrumental set of criteria through which to evaluate one's own work (not to mention teaching or criticism). Justice Potter Stewart's "I know it when I see it" defense would have us all shooting at shifting, invisible targets. Defining our disciplinary boundaries might give us the efficacy to projectively shape out future as opposed to simply reacting to the whims of the market.
- futuremongolian0
I've been a professional designer since I was 8 years old, and yes, the rhetoric has decline somewhat over the past decade. I blame teh blogs.
- 20020
someone well known told me this once
"you can talk about design when you are good at it"
- monospaced0
ghetto snack
- 20020
wizbang all the way
- ian000
@ cannonball1978. I agree wholeheartedly that the discipline is already watered down and that design shit talking is laughably out of control. All the more reason to draw clear boundaries around our own version of it rather than redefine it. Perhaps I am overly idealistic, but I care about our agency. It seems to me that whatever you do, whether you are conscious of it or not, has an impact. So why not own it? Why not understand the potential and the limits of our own particular area of expertise both in production and criticism?
- cannonball19780
Ah I see you want intelligent discourse. Well, it's already an overly watered down and generalized word, yet people still see it as some intellectual land grab ever since the business world started (sort of) recognizing it's applied value. This has cranked the volume of design shit talking to 11, since, well, designers need to sound like the be-all-end-all authority on design and design thinking.
Sorry... zoom bang thinking. Who cares about what agency we have. Those that can do, do, and those who can't twiddle their thumbs.
- ian000
Given how little agency we have in the world, why would we want to give up the core definition of our discipline? Others are envious of it – MBAs "design" business plans, system engineers "design" processes – but if we surrender, the very notion of design will get watered down beyond recognition. Autonomy über alles!
- ian0
We should call it zoombang.
Did you see that new Fucknugget? Siiick.
Bill, get those Fucknuggets over to the client pronto.
Etc.