manifesto.
You’re driving down a divided interstate following the flow of traffic in the left lane. Weather is clear - normal you’d say. Music is playing, but your awareness of the lyrics comes and goes. You are overtaken with a thought: What if I just wrenched my wheel and collided with the barrier? Just full force left turn head-on into sudden death. That’d be crazy. You don’t actively think of killing yourself, but you’re made suddenly aware of your fragile mortality. What’s stopping you? Why do you choose to ignore the begging of your mind to see what it would be like to follow through? Is it because you’d miss someone? Something? Because of fear? Because of pain? I argue that these chaotic thoughts serve a purpose for something more intrinsic. You may not be conscious of your motivation to progress, to become a better person in some way. Whatever residual stress, anxiety, or adrenaline triggers these intrusive chaotic thoughts does not outweigh your mental strength, your drive, your ambition.
Too often in design, contemporaries boast of the true purpose of design: to better the lives of the users. “This advertising campaign will make people start to take their risk of heart attack seriously.” “Putting a pot filler faucet by the range will increase kitchen efficiency and therefore happiness.” These are not exhaustive examples, so you mustn’t stop listening yet. Design will not make your life inherently better. It does not have any special powers of affect or influence past being a machine, an object, a space made to do something, be something, exist somewhere. Yes, the latest John Deere tractor model complete with every attachment of your dreams will till your soil, move your hay bales, tow your trailer, but it will not change your crop yield, nor increase your profits, nor make you happy. Design as a practice will not fix your human woes. The will to be better, the motivation to progress, the awareness to make a change. None of those will come from design alone. This is not to say the world is bleak and dry. Quite the opposite! Don’t be so quick to draw such harsh lines.
In light of what I’ve just said, I feel I must zoom out to a more general definition of design before moving forward. Design today is no longer bound by its dictionary definitions. Design is no longer only viewed as the act of arranging and deciding compositions of elements. Design is not only applied to creative professions or endeavors, but also in things like schematic, data-driven ventures, and animal kibble. Then, what does design mean today? Is it a lifestyle that’s followed? A badge of skill? Something to avoid? Some people define it as a way of problem-solving. Design Thinking. You’d think it was engineering’s favorite word with the way they brandish themselves something fancy.[1] They’re not the only ones vying for a piece of the design pie (just the loudest), so we won’t dwell on that. What I think is much more important and ultimately lacking in today’s meaning of design is fun – whimsy, silliness, playfulness, utter tomfoolery! Where is the absolute casual nature of design in today’s world? Why must there be a greater social commentary or reasoning for a chair in the shape of a flower? Why must the flower chair be anything other than a large ass flower that maybe you can sit on? It’s just fun! I mean, dear god, you must stop taking life so seriously. It really will take years off your life. Design boasts that it serves the greater good and health and safety and wellbeing and fertility and marriage rates and yadda yadda yadda but all it can seem to accomplish lately is stir up drama and moral claims and pointed discourse. I recognize that art and design have come to hold a unique position as a tool for social justice and that’s admirable and purposeful in time and place and not what I am talking about in this moment. What I’m more concerned with are the mega-mansions in the multi-millions with cinderblock sofas and fully planar concrete walls and floors. First of all, how are you even relaxed in that space that seems like a prison complex. That aside, it feels like these designers go out of their way to suck every ounce of soul and energy and jollification and merrymaking from these spaces. I’m begging for something out of scale that isn’t a granite wall to show off the multitudes of wealth you’ve accumulated, good sir. Give me something wacky, make someone smile! Design won’t make my life or your life better but damn if it shouldn’t give you a chuckle!
[1] I thought better of it and edited myself, but I have to say my piece. Design is used as a marketing strategy by other industries. One of the biggest examples of design as a strategy is the widespread use of “design thinking” for any and every profession that does more than the bare minimum thought pattern. And the largest sought-after group of “design thinkers” today are engineers. They represent the epitome of “avoiding the heuristic thinking processes and always innovating!” When did engineering break through the barrier of actualization into conceptualization? I argue that it came about during this ongoing revival of craft and DIY. The general public’s view of conceptualization and actualization became attributed to the same individual once again, blurring the lines between design and creation. Those strictly trained in “design fields” have lost the expertise edge they once had, now that a larger group of skilled workers can supposedly do what we do and more – they can actualize it physically. But what they do is not more than what those in interior design, architecture, urban design, because they view the designer and creator as being so far detached today. They don’t see the more technical, fabrication and assembly knowledge and application of designers.
