This week's readings include We're Here to be Bad, by Tibor Kalman and Karrie Jacobs, and Professionalism, Amateurism and the Boundaries of Design, by Gerry Beegan and Paul Atkinson.
We're Here to be Bad
The authors in this article comment on the majority of advertising design and denounce it, ranting on how designers have lost focus on design as an art and have sold out to big companies. Kalman and Jacobs claim that design has reached a point where designers can choose a safe design that appeals to everyone, instead of choosing to design something that questions the company and and viewers. Big corporations also support "safe design" because they would prefer not to take risks with their advertising campaigns where money is involved. The authors also mention that designers have become cogs in a machine, that design sometimes fades out into business. They turn their focus on vernacular design, telling us that good design is design that isn't noticed on a daily basis. I feel that this point is a bit contradictory since everyday design could be affected by today's culture anyway. Just because big corporations or a marketing department isn't involved doesn't mean that recent trends in design don't affect local design. However, overall I generally agree with the authors. A good design (or bad in this case) isn't design that follows the guidelines of what is good or imitates another professional's work, but design that works to solve the problem or communicate an idea. This design could challenge a client, but I feel that it doesn't necessarily have to either.
- all good design isn't good
- make an effort to be bad, to challenge the conventional
- Designers have been sucked into the process and are cogs in the machine
- Designers have sold themselves out, using their skills for money instead of art
- Images that corporations churn out fools consumers, whether rich or poor
- Best design takes place outside of the profession: vernacular design
- Need to forget what we learned in design school and need to inject art into commerce
Professionalism, Amateurism and the Boundaries of Design
In this article by Gerry Beegan and Paul Atkinson, the changing positions of design are examined. One of these changing trends are the relationship between the amateur and professional and how various people reacted to the DIY (do it yourself) movement. Steven Heller, for example, argues that by making design easier, it closes the gap, and professionals lose their elite status that give them credibility. However Ellen Lupton counters with the point that credibility should come from the design's relevance to everyday life, and that everyone can design something for themselves whether big or small. The point is made that not only do professionals influence amateurs, but amateurs can also influence professionals because of their ability to work outside the closed system and provide new ideas. Architecture is also referenced in terms of design, where an essay by Edward Prior, he states that architecture started focusing on architecture itself instead of the people inside the buildings. The "ghosts" of the profession were the workers that worked with the master architect since only the master architect is credited. In this case this could also be seen as amateur designers, who can silently influence a professional's work. Some of these influences can include vernacular design and dilettante design. For example, while vernacular design can be seen as good or bad, these judgments clearly dictate that there is a decision on what is good or bad design and thus what can be used for good design. Dilettante design can also bring new ideas from other disciplines despite people's opinions that dilettantes spread themselves out too thinly over many activities. Overall I think this essay is a good examination of how non-professional design can affect professional design and that design is evident everywhere. We can always draw our ideas from many sources because design exists in so many forms and places.
- Perhaps amateurs also affect professionals
- Similarities between architecture as a profession and design as a profession
- ghosts could be seen as amateurs
- Vernacular design
- Various names of Italian vernacular architecture suggest ways the vernacular relates back to the culture
- Dilettante design
- The Miriskusniki's approach - knowledgeable about theatre, ballet, and opera
- both viewer's and creators
- Amateurs
- various examples - self-building, web design, etc
- Vernacular modernism - generative principles of the modern condition
- The designer is connected to the user
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