Design Writing

What to call this new design thing?

I did an interview the other week with Louise Campbell who is lovely, wonderful and had very interesting things to say about where design is today and where it should (and shouldn't) be going. The interview will be online soon and I'll post the link but she said one thing that really stuck me. She said that intangible design—all these new forms of design that doesn't always produce physical objects—isn't really design at all or at least it should be called something else. 

She almost convinced me. And then I thought about the birth of modern art and the tedious (and ongoing) debate about whether it's art or not. Now think about the newer forms of design, of how people are designing service interactions or systems that don't result in a physical thing. Is it really that different? You could argue, as Louise does, that we need to call it something else or you could expand your sense of what design is, in just the same way that we've had to expand our sense of what art is or could be. I must admit that I'm torn.

The unbearable sameness of design

I tend to write in a horizontal position. If there’s no sofa (or the sofa available is clearly a decorative object that is meant to convey a sense of pleasant working comfort but clearly not for sitting on) I make do with a chair for my feet (currently a Jacobsen Ant chair). Reading takes place in cafes. And meeting rooms are generally terrible places to meet. Hate them. Much better to go for a walk.Place matters. 

Richard Florida says that choosing where you live is the most important decision in life—everything flows from that. He could be right but it’s interesting how little sense of place there is in design.Take city planning. It’s all the same model these days, a kind of bourgeoise SimCity planning kit: 1 swirly art gallery, frothy coffee bars, boutique shopping, bike paths, a metro, pocket parks. It’s nice but really boring. Honestly it could be Rotterdam, or Copenhagen or anywhere at all. 

New York now has cyclists, cappuccino drinkers, swirly art galleries. Barcelona has cyclists, cappuccino drinkers, swirly art galleries. Munich has cyclists, cappuccino drinkers, swirly art galleries. Yawn. It’s the same with furniture or websites or graphic design. It’s all looking stupefyingly similar. And the cars! They all look the same now. When I was in Paris (new bike paths, coffee less frothy) last weekend I was teased for dressing like a frenchman, though I didn’t pack a special wardrobe for the city of lights. Clothes are the same everywhere. The only things that are different are that things that are old. And that’s sad. 

Efficiency is great and it’s cool to learn from other cultures but it’s no excuse for a lack of imagination. Go head and build bike paths but have them run over the roofs of buildings. Skip the pocket park and install a pocket farm. Make 10 small museums scattered across the city rather than one big swirly one. And ban the fucking frothy coffee.