'Designing for what?' rather than 'designing what?'; or The Designer's Disciplinary Anxiety

This post is the English translation of an article I wrote in Turkish, which was published by Radikal Newspaper's monthly Design supplement on 27 December 2009.

Cover of I.D. Magazine's June 2009 issue. (Copyright: Kenzo Minami.)

The last month of the year witnessed I.D. Magazine (USA’s oldest product design magazine) cease publication after 55 years. The fall of such a symbolic institution took the product design world--especially, its young and aspiring design students--by storm. Most reactions on the web portray anticipatory lamentation with a touch of anxiety, best captured by a blogger who says he is "scared for the future of design in the US." I, on the contrary, suggest that this development can be interpreted as one of the first calls for an inevitable transformation towards a brighter future for design, let alone as a sign for a darker one. Let me explain.

Last September, Jon Kolko from the San Francisco based studio Frog Design told of his impressions after the IDSA Miami Conference: "the IDSA is now essentially irrelevant." In order to lay the grounds for his argument, he pointed to a number of developments concerning design's position in the developed West: First, product-oriented design services, which have been provided largely by 'Western' designers up until today, are now demanded by the industry from designers in the developing world (especially Asia). To be sure, the primary reason for this shift has to do with the fact that the costs for the latter's services are much less than that of the former's. Second, the professional expertise necessary to handle industrial processes with confidence is increasing in depth. Subjects like materials science and manufacturing technologies, which were until recently considered to be well within the professional scope of designers, now require high levels of specialization, transcending the range of a conventional product designer's competencies. Add to those the rapid advances in digital components and networked services, which has already led to their enormous expansion to include the traditional commodity "product" as a detail, a prop. The question that sums up all these observations is "does the conventional role of designers (in the developed world) who entirely rely their practices on specific branches of the industry (hence, categorized as 'industrial designers') really continue to hold any relevance at all, let alone that of their professional organization? Product-oriented 'solutions' that used to lie at the core of their profession are fast fleeing to India and China; the increasing digitalization in their own culture is shifting the focus of the practice from material to immaterial value creation; the scientific knowledge presented as part of their design education is limited to the traditional frame marked by "wood, metals, plastics and composites"... If that be the case; if designing products/graphics/textiles is losing relevance in the West, what is replacing it?

A view from the IDSA Miami conference, entitled 'Project Infusion' (Copyright IDSA)

Before jumping to any conclusions, we first need to ask the right question: that is, 'designing for what?' rather than 'designing what?' It was precisely the former question posed by Bruce and Stephanie M. Tharp, in an article they wrote last February, entitled "The 4 Fields of Industrial Design: (No, not furniture, trans, consumer electronics, & toys)." For reasons not unlike those put forth by Jan Kolko, they suggest "commercial design," "responsible design," "discursive design," and "experimental design" as the four new fields. What they boldly underline in their article is that today's designers should focus on not only what the end-result/product of the design process will be (e.g. product, graphics, textile), but more importantly, for what primary purpose it will actually be used (e.g. to create commercial value, to improve lives of the underprivileged, to experiment with materials, to start a discussion). And so should design education and its institutions, by reforming their curricula according to recent shifts in global culture.

To be sure, new proposals toward a taxonomic and/or academic reform do not only come from design spheres. Another example comes from Mark C. Taylor, professor of religion at Columbia University, who wrote an Op-Ed article last April for the New York Times. In his article he proposes a six-step action plan for transforming higher education into one that fosters innovative and agile individuals who could address crucial needs emerging from contemporary issues. In the second step--perhaps the most relevant one to our discussion--he suggests the following:

Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs. These constantly evolving programs would have sunset clauses, and every seven years each one should be evaluated and either abolished, continued or significantly changed. It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized: Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water.

Assuming that Taylor's groundbreaking action plan will soon be realized in all areas of higher education may sound a little too idealistic. However, why should we not be able to start pursuing such idealism in the relatively narrower realm of design education? Even the very idea itself is extremely exciting: Imagine that four-year long, conventional product/graphic/textile design departments give way to brisk and temporary ones focused on crucial issues such as 'drought in Konya Basin,' 'floods in Istanbul's outskirts,' 'communication problems between government officers and locals due to regional language differences'... Does design not have any words to say, or any 'added-value' to create, regarding such matters?

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I come from "The Idiot Factory"

Life in Stockholm is pretty easy to get by for the most part, it is rare that one experiences social tension or feels unsafe in public. However, as I walked through the doors of the Central Train Station several days ago, I felt a weight of unease fall down on me. My reason for being there was to do some fieldwork for one of the courses I am taking, as a part of which my group and I are to propose a new media art/design project for the Central Station. I was going to take a bunch of photos/videos, interview people, and who knows, maybe even do some situationist private detecting if I had enough motivation to. You might think that it was natural for me to feel uneasy being involved in such 'suspicious-looking' activities, in a major public space, with a Turkish passport, in the wake of 9/11 or 7/7 or 11/26, etc. Surprisingly enough, it was not my nationality, but rather the school I attend, that gave me the shivers. Let me explain why.


About three weeks ago, Anna Odell, a 35-year-old student from Konstfack faked to commit suicide by trying to jump off a bridge in Stockholm. Let's tune in to thelocal.se for the rest of the story:

As a part of her final project before graduation, Odell pretended she was going to jump off a bridge to commit suicide. Horrified witnesses called police, who then tried to restrain the kicking and screaming Odell. After arriving at the hospital’s psychiatric ward, Odell proceeded to scream at the medical staff who attempted to help her, even spitting in the faces of several nurses. She was eventually restrained on a gurney and given drugs to calm her down, remaining in the hospital overnight as doctors attempted to diagnose her psychiatric condition.

The whole thing caused a big public outburst with citizens saying that they cannot possibly believe that this is a part of an academically-approved project, which means it is being funded by Swedish taxpayers' money. Views ranged from inquisitions saying why art students cannot just paint nice pictures instead of doing such crazy things to doctors saying that the artist is "welcome to come back so I can give her a shot of Haloperidol, and then we’ll see how much fun she has. That would make a great installation.” All in all, this hot issue evolving around Konstfack was beginning to cool down, just when a second 'incident' took place to set things off once again.

Last week, Sweden's minister of culture Lena Elisabeth Adelsohn Liljeroth visited an exhibition in central Stockholm to witness an artwork that was apparently not her cup of tea. The work was a performance video that showed the artist--in disguise under the nickname 'NUG'--breaking train windows and tagging in the subway. She went on further with her fury to ask the gallery owner for more details about the creator of this work, upon which she was informed that it was another Konstfack student behind 'the heinous act'.

Now, SL, the urban transport authority in Stockholm, claims that travelers and customers feel offended, and asks for a compensation 100000 SEK (approx. 10000 euros) for both the moral and the material damages this act has caused. Dr. Ivar Björkman, president of Konstfack airs on major TV channels to answer questions, and school is visited by reporters. One of the viewer comments on the Dagens Nyheter--a major daily Swedish newspaper--website, calls Konstfack "The Idiot Factory".

Considering the fact that the Konstfack campus is an old telephone factory, the second half of that analogy might not be so irrelevant after all. And my group and me will try to do our best to substantiate the first half of the analogy.

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