One of the defining characteristics and driving forces of late capitalism expresses itself in the momentum of competitive markets. Within a market economy saturated with competing goods, the difference between product, information or service, A or B, comes down to design. Recently, for this reason, design has received media attention for its more integral role in the life of companies. In the July 5, 2004 issue of Business Week, the editor’s note describes design as part of a company’s core competence.
Design’s origins in the work of expressionists, futurists, cubists and constructivists fighting against the spirit of capitalism, evolved dramatically in the work of the Bauhaus around the turn of the century lead by Walter Gropius. The practical innovations developed by the Bauhaus profoundly effected design’s relationship to industry and perhaps respectively to its anti-capitalist roots. Since the time of the Bauhaus design education, answering the demands of industry has taken on the character of training in the arts of service industry more than a branch of liberal art education. By the early 1970s, design was more commonly known as commercial art than an art of its own, the innovation which defined the spirit of the Bauhaus with its numerous achievements of form, affecting the most basic aspects of life, had given way to more conditional and constrained form making.
In the 1980s and 1990s design like so many other institutions found itself dealing with the developing rhythms of multinational capitalism and media society, with planned obsolescence and rapid fashion and style changes, design came under the spell of a perpetual present, and lost focus of both its past and a drive toward self-definition. Within this postmodern frenzy the field became defined from without by its clients. To quote Business Week editor, Stephen Shepard, “Companies use design like paint, to slap on a color or fancy shape after engineers and marketing people had come up with a product. Out of this dynamic design became more identified with one aspect of form, style, and designers, saddled with the waning myth of individuality became quasi celebrities identified by their individual style and forms.”
Design defined from without, as an accessory in the function of markets, has led over the course of several years to a more sophisticated, yet no less capitalist identity. Style and functionality have become more and more integrated leading up to the current developments of “experience design”, where design in some people’s eyes, has reached its zenith as a service to the western ideology of conquest in its drive to remake the world into a well-furnished environment for man.
This view of the state of design captures the feeling of frustration and dissatisfaction expressed in the First Things First manifesto. However, this is not the only way to look at design and society; it is probably somewhat accurate and at the same time, a very harsh assessment of a profession functioning in an age of multinational capitalism and media. To sight only one positive aspect of design today, consider the rise in variety and multiplicity of style and how those increased options have enriched people’s lives, giving them affordable personality enriching choice. First Things First, at its depth, seems to be a call for meaning, a call for the definition of the practice from within, and perhaps for the creative abilities of not just design, but for humanity, to be refocused to include a deep and abiding contemplation of purpose.
Out of this dissatisfaction and negative criticism there is a rich source of potential. It is a sign of the times, of our tumultuous, dizzying culture of metaphysical angst. First Things First 2000 reflects a larger feeling in the body politic, from the pages of Tricycle to Wired, writers are reporting on a fundamental absence of a clear sense of purpose for both technology and society. In the September 2004, issue of Wired, Bruce Sterling opens up the question of technology and the crisis of purpose. His article focuses on the problem of technological singularity, which he defines as a moment when runaway advances have outstripped human comprehension and all our knowledge and experience become useless as a guidepost to the future.
The glass half full then is that FTF2000 is a calling, and that it has come at a crucial time. Dissatisfaction is a key ingredient for change. The opportunity for design today is to attend to itself unconditionally. Having reached the art of “experience design“ It is natural now for the form of life processes to be considered with the aim of reconnecting to the source of life’s meaning. The questions of Ontology could be vitalized in our processes of making; deeply investigated and contemplated in an effort to give human dimension and form to the rolling momentum of technology and economy.
What is design for? As questions go, this is an important one. On the surface it seems to beg for a practical answer, and in many discussions of this topic today, and in the past, various excellent points of view have been brought to light.
Practical answers such as the post-war view that design’s purpose is to help make people’s lives better by designing our environments and information effectively, cannot serve as ends, the fundamental questions which ought to guide such action remains, more effective for what, what kind of a life, and what is this life for? These more fundamental questions draw out the problem of meaning, arguably among the greatest questions for which the human condition bares responsibility. With meaningful experience, as with other qualities of experience, people express certain common elements that distinguish it and lend it the character of meaningfulness.
Design, like so many other institutions today, shows signs of being affected by a crisis of meaning and value. So long as design remains determined by outside interests, by practical aims and authority, the meanings of the practice will produce a kind of value relativism. The institution of design may overcome this state, and become more vital as it supports the development of purposes, which come from within the art energy and qualities in and through which its products are produced. In philosophical terms, design must arrive at its “unconditional imperative” as a foundation of action.
The challenge is to nurture a culture of practitioners aware of the art’s purpose, guided by a horizon of possibility for life and society. Design educators empowered by a renewed discourse on what ends design may serve, contribute to the development of a culture of design unbound by the traditional conceptions of design as the generator of typography, fonts, information structure, products and style alone. As an art, when not strictly bound by market conditions, design can become a profession dealing with deep and vital questions of life and society in and through its giving of forms.
Brett continues to write on design from a philosophical point of view following completion of graduate studies in design at the California College of the Arts. He has a B.A. in Philosophy and Religion from San Francisco State University, and lives in San Francisco.
design as performance art? and my rent will be paid by... ?
Interesting thoughts though.
On Oct.06.2004 at 09:29 AM