Darling, did you manage to catch any of this years Sydney Design Festival? No? Oh it was fabulous, just fabulous. Be sure not to miss it next year. Why? Darling, what kind of question is that? Don’t you understand how important design is? Believe me honey, if there’s anyone who needs it it’s you.
Whether it’s with materials, colours, styles, or icons, designers tend to enjoy the feeling that they have an exclusive way of reading our material and cultural landscape. This expertise holds a lot of value when it comes to making design-related decisions – not an insignificant point considering pretty much everything we do is in some way supported by designed things.
This influence is more than function or style. Design also plays a part in the way we understand who we are. Even a cursory scan of a magazine newsstand shows the variety of ways that groups communicate to themselves an image of what they’re all about. But in the world of design, the image that designers promote to themselves through events like Sydney Design Festival 09 tends to prevent the kind of designing we really need.
The general thought is that design works best when it addresses genuine needs. Designers are often taught that their ‘creative process’ should begin by identifying such a need. Too often though design expertise means something more like superficial elitism. But the nature of needs is also bit tricky to pin down.
Do I really need a new portable gizmo to enjoy music, or is it more a case of wanting to buy into an idea of youth and freedom? Perhaps my need could be traced back to the manufacturers need to shift units? This, of course, involves fuelling the flames of desire, but also includes the design of products that deteriorate or become unfashionable in a short period of time. Remember Discmans? Not so long ago they were all the rage. Using one today however would make you look, like, so 1998 – an unbearable prospect no matter how well the one you own might still work.
But to trace the manipulation of needs back to manufacturers is still a bit too simplistic. Being a link in a cycle of production that includes material extraction, design, production, sales, repairs and wastage, manufacturers facilitate much needed employment for a wide range of people. If we admit that churning through endless gizmos is unsustainable, the manufacturer is still only one element in a complex network of needs, desires, economies and infrastructure – all of which are facilitated by design. The issue at the heart of all of this is that design has a profound effect on our ability to sustain.
This is probably starting to feel a bit heavy, and the logic of popular writing might suggest that now it’s time for me to explain how everything is actually going to be okay. Unfortunately though I don’t think the situation really allows for this kind of treatment. Basically this is because designers aren’t really provided with a sense for the real power and influence of what they do.
As a product of design education, my experience involved learning how to make objects, spaces and images that looked desirable. The heroes of the design, Newson, Mau, Westwood, Gehry and others, are idealised for precisely this kind of thing. The more pervasive influence of design, the impact of ordinary kitchens, shoes, tabloids, cars and cutlery, fades to nothing in the glare emanating from these design demi-gods. Sydney Design Festival 09 is the perfect showcase for this phenomenon. There are more than enough glass cabinets and white walled galleries to reinforce the kind of object fetishising that prevents designers from asking the critical questions – could we possibly be better off without some of these things, and what kind of changes to living would this require?
But doesn’t eco-design deal with this kind of thing? Well kind of, but there are a few issues with the general state of ‘sustainable design’. For one, all forms of designing either contribute or detract from our ability to sustain. To think that you can create a separate category of design that counters the damages made by all others, makes little sense. All design should be judged on its sustaining merit, not just what is nominated as ‘eco’.
The other issue for eco-design is that often it only amounts to more efficient products and the odd use of reused or recycled materials. Don’t get me wrong, these things are great, necessary even. But by themselves these strategies only ‘green’ the same damaging concept of design. The more important issue that slips attention is whether the activities that drive the need for designed things should change, and how design could be used to make this happen. With its highlighted ‘eco-exhibits’ and showcase of predictable ‘green’ solutions, it’s hard to accept that this year’s Sydney Design Festival was anything like the progressive agent for positive change we really need.
Despite all this doom and gloom I will try to finish on a more positive note. That’s not to devalue the power of facing the negative. In fact part of the very problem is that designers and design media are too eager to jump into easy answers. In making this jump they also carry the unchallenged expectations of users and clients.
Happily my glimmer of hope comes from the same festival I’ve been criticising. Exhibiting at UTS Gallery, Fashioning Now offers a few interesting visions of what a sustainable culture of fashion might involve. While it does include the same conventions of eco-design mentioned earlier, there are also displays like Bijan Sheikhlary’s Bespoke tailor, which brings to notice the craft and relationships involved in maintaining clothes, and Kate Fletcher’s Local Wisdom, a project that details stories connected with garments as a counter to the dominating talk of stylistic trends.
For me, the most fascinating display was Alex Martin’s Brown dress project. This year long ‘performance piece’ saw Martin attempt to wear the same dress every day, washed and in combination with other clothes, but without buying any new garments. Aside from purchasing a few ‘emergency sweaters’, Martin achieved her goal, and has documented the experience of what was clearly a strange but also more appropriate way to treat the garments we own.
These might seem like small time examples against the scale and complexity I mentioned earlier. But it’s the differences in the way designed things are considered that makes this exhibition interesting. Tailored clothing is not a viable option for most people, but perhaps it should be. How this could come about involves many areas of design, as well as alternative means of employment. In the same way, Martin’s experiment is completely alien to current practices, but if it were to become more acceptable it would only do so through the kind of work that designers are capable of.
Expertise and addressing needs will always be a part of being a designer. The issue today is that generally designers don’t have the kind of understanding needed to help construct material and social environments that are able to be sustained. This problem is complex, but it is also relatively easy to see that current institutions like museums and galleries, as well as mythologies surrounding star designers and iconic products do more harm than good in educating designers and the general public about design’s impact and possibilities. Potential for change definitely exists, but as far as design is concerned there is still a lot of work that needs to be done.
Picture credits
Liverpool Design Festival on Flickr
David Trubridge at Sydney Design Festival
