Are Designers the Enemy of Design?
"Design Democracy is the wave of the future. Exceptional design may only be done by great star designers. But the design of our music experiences, the design of our MySpace pages, the design of our blogs, the design of our clothes, the design of our online community chats, the design of our Class of ’95 brochures, the design of our screens, the design of the designs on our bodies—We are all designing more of our lives. And with more and more tools, we, the masses, want to design anything that touches us on the journey, the big journey through life. People want to participate in the design of their lives. They insist on being part of the conversation about their lives."
This article popped up on BusinessWeek recently, and I think its absolutely awesome. Give it a read, its food for thought for sure, and has direct relevance to the COLAB.
Click the post title for the link, or:
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/03/are_designers_t.html?campaign_id=rss_blog_nussbaumondesign
5 comments:
It's frustratingly interesting that he bashed design in the beginning and then said that it's "glorious." I do agree that designers have a bad name for being arrogant and not designing sustainably (is that the right way to use that word?). But personally, I think I think about sustainability more than most design people, so I got kinda offended when he just claimed that DESIGNERS SUCK.
But yeah, at the end, where he said the word "design" connotatively meant deocrations, I agreed with and I myself try not to use that word, because in particular, "graphic design" confuses people with "computer graphics" or video game designs. Maybe "visual communication" should be used? I like that phrase because it's very specific to what I do or what I want to do as a career. "Visual communicator"? Yeah, I don't know.
Visual communicator works well for me too, particularly because I'm trying not to limit myself to graphic design/2D design. And also, what a great tool it is to be able to communicate visually... sounds much more powerful than being able to design graphically. Calling it visual communication speaks to the end goal, as opposed to calling it design which hints at the trap of self-serving design and designers.
I've noticed however that stating that I'm majoring in visual communication just confuses people. When I follow it up with graphic design people generally do a bit better. I agree that viscom says more about what we do but design is just a more common word. People are exposed to fashion design and interior design so we just have to extend their understanding world to our sector.
"visual communication design"? haha. yeah, i agree, regular people understand graphic design more than visual communication. i just told my dentist that i major in graphic design, and he responded "advertising and stuff like that?" while i kinda don't want to do advertising, his understanding was closer than others. i guess some people get it, some people don't. and maybe i'll reserve "visual communication/communicator" more for people in the trade.
i didn't know there was a post about this article here...
i wrote my response on NNDG.
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