Designers are becoming more and more aware of the ramifications, both social and ecological, or are we. We the next generation of designers are constantly reminded of the great burden we carry into the future, the burden of solving the problems created by those before. When designing a product, you must ask yourself (and others) “am I advancing the good or propagating the bad?” When you design something in this day and age, even if you are designing only for yourself, there is always a minimum of two users you are designing for, yourself and the environment.
It seems to me that a lot of what we label as conceptual design, the design that blurs the boundaries between art and design, does not reflect these considerations. I think design varies from art in its resolution and the scale on which touches the world. I believe that good design
and art are both born on a conceptual level but it is in the execution where their paths diverge. Conceptual design is in many ways easier, by taking user groups out of the equation the design is about self-gratification. If you are only “designing” for yourself, it is easy to say, “well they just can’t appreciate conceptual design” about those who don’t respond to it. You don’t have to take others or your design’s impact on others into consideration you can do whatever you want. This is all fine and well but as designers our products do affect the world and those in/on it. Take Max Lamb’s “Poly chair” for example, how do you feel about it? I personally think it total and utter garbage! Literally. Perhaps as a sculptural statement it says something about the danger to the environment and the ugliness of being wasteful but this is not its intent. In fact it is the complete opposite. It was designed to show “The chair illustrates the beauty of speed and spontaneity.” Yeah right, what a schmuck! Lamb hides behind conceptual design, spinning a lot of eloquent “art speak” around it to make the product seem like avant-garde design. What is this “product” in actuality? A F&%$#@ing UGLY blob looking chair made from an non-recyclable, environmentally unfriendly material, which is formed using an utterly wasteful process. Lamb gives design, conceptual or not, a bad name.
It may seem that I am down on conceptual design but this is not the case. My concern lies in how and why it is used and executed. There is a lot of self-serving egotistical design that is called conceptual design but is manly used as a means to attain fame. Conceptual thinking is what progresses design. Without conceptual thinking design is uninspired, stagnates and we wind up just rehashing the same old design in perpetuity. Boooooorrrrriiinggg! The Campana brothers are a better example of the positive vision of conceptual design. “The eternal attempt to make function poetic and poetic functional which is never reachable but at least if we come close we make people happy and dreamy”. They gray the line between art and design yet they still approach it as a design project. They are inspired by their environment, users, THE environment. They push material boundaries while trying to minimize the impact. They seem to be more humble and matter of fact about their designs. Love or hate their designs their passion, approach and humility inspires.We design in a time when thinking conceptually may be the only way to solve our global problems but though contrived conceptually it must be executed conservatively. Want to make whatever you want? Be an artist, produce on an individual scale and try to put forth a meaningful message. Want to make product? Then design it. Draw your inspiration from the conceptual
No comments:
Post a Comment