MCCC DMA 250

I am SO GLAD everyone was in class today because, PHEW, now I don't have to worry if I forget more than half of all we covered today. Most of you found the Victor Papanek essay to be very hard to read be it because of language barriers or problems reading off a screen or even the essay being too academic. After scolding you all for not being more responsible college students, we went through the 3 major sections of the essay together:

Discernible Directions of Design

• To persuade people to buy things they don't need with money they don't have to impress people who don't care.

We discussed the financial crisis and defined some key terms like capitalism, free market, and commodity. We learned that much of the disaster we find ourselves currently entrenched is due to people people purchasing homes with mortgages they couldn't really afford and then taking out a 2nd mortgage to purchase big screen tvs, boats, vacation homes, et cetera. They certainly were not, for the most part, investing that money back into their homes to increase its worth (that's the intended use for 2nd mortgages, by the way).

Why would someone do this? Are they insane? Its totally illogical! For whatever reason, our society convinced these folks into believing that this was not only just okay, but it was good! And it would make them happy.

This is hardly a new idea either, since 30 years ago, it was obvious enough to Victor Papanek that he wrote a whole essay warning us about how bad this could be for our future! He observed that the concept of happiness was being replaced by the experience of consumption and that designers were major players in bringing about that shift.

• To persuasively inform about the class-merits of an artifact, service or experience.

Our class was able to enumerate lots of great examples of this one! Be it driving a Lexus, or own the biggest flat screen tv, or possessing an American Express Black card - we could list TONS of examples ways in which we can determine someone's socioeconomic status based upon the things they possess.

We then could plainly see the way that the desire to appear to belong to that class could motivate purchasing items that we "don't need with money we don't have."

• To package in a wasteful and ecologically indefensible way, artifacts, services, or experiences. (Look at any undertaker's coffin!)

The free market gets to determine what materials and manufacturing processes are best for the market. What is best for the market is supposed to equal what is best for us, the consumer, but we were able to list tons of examples disproving this theory.

Packaging is used to convince us to purchase an item and sometimes that is its only purpose. Once we have purchased an item, its packaging gets discarded - never having actually been utilized for any real purpose. Instead of investigating and researching ecologically sound materials - the market tends to favor those that are inexpensive and cost effective.

We talked about ways in which packaging could be designed with re-use in mind. Example: Paper that has seeds embedded into it, allowing us to plant our garbage instead of throwing it away.

• To provide visual delight or visual catharsis to those classes taught to respond "properly."

In this section, we discussed how advertising is used to reinforce classism, racism, sexism, elitism, nationalism and all the other -isms. The classes can be used to either inflate our ego or beat us down.

We sited examples like the Staples commercial which shows three or four frumpy women administrative assistants proudly explaining how Staples saved them enough money to buy more great things for their male bosses (of course concluding with one of these fine executives not even remembering the poor girl's name correctly). Another example was American Express Black Card commercials: "rarely seen, always recognized."

AmEx is pretty genius here, inventing a status symbol which demands spending money to gain recognition. More importantly - spending money on credit! linking directly back to Papanek's first point: spending money you don't have to impress people who don't care.

• To undo with one hand what the other has done. (Anti-pollution posters, anti-smoking commercials).

We agreed that in 1975, Papanek was onto something with this. Think about how many people actually walk by a poster in a day, then think about how many people actually read that poster. The impressions that medium yields are very low. But in today's day in age, we think that with the rise of the internet, television and radio - in addition to all other forms of communication, real good can be achieved through media campaigns.

While it may seem counterproductive to launch a green campaign online, considering all the energy "wasted" in turning on the computer, accessing the internet, et cetera - if the message is profound and affects enough people, the carbon footprint of the internet usage needed to spread the word could be less than if everyone who was moved by its message had never seen the campaign and never changed their way of life because of it. The internet could be a necessary evil (and won't need to be considered as such once an alternative, sustainable form of energy is found to power all of the connected technology).

• To systematically research the history, present and future practices of the five fields listed above.

Design education and professionals perpetuate these directions as the "correct approach" to design, thus entrenching these practices in the concept of design.

10 Myths of Design

1. Design is a profession
2. Designers have taste
3. Design is a commodity
4. Design is for production
5. Design is for people
6. Design solves problems
7. Designers have special skills developed through education
8. Design is creative
9. Design satisfies needs
10. Design is time sensitive
    

Papanek is extremely frustrated with what has happened to designers and the work that they do. He views design as a natural form of human expression so when he sees it being professionalized, homogenized, marketed, bought and sold, mass produced, falsified and used for manipulation, he is outraged and hurt.

It is important to note that these myths represent the way in which Papanek views the designer's place in contemporary 1975 American society. He does believe that designers are supposed to be creative, and he does believe that they are perceived to be so in 1975 by mainstream society, but he does not believe that 1975 designers are creative.

Papanek next outlines ways design can be rightfully re-established in mainstream society:

10 Remedies for Design

1. Some designers will be able to connect themselves differently in the future.
2. Designers will have to concern themselves consistently with the important differences between non-renewable and renewable resources.
3. Designers must enable people to participate directly in both the design development and production stages of objects. Cross-disciplinary teams must contain makers and users.
4. Designers will form new coalitions with makers and users; new coalitions between users and reusers.
5. A well-designed technology must be one of self reliance. That is a technology that is capital saving (the word "capital" here is used to denote non-renewable resources). It will further be a technology that is simple, small in scale, and aware of ecological, social and political consequences of the design act.
6. Design must cure peoples of product addiction. This can only be done by demythologizing not only design but also the object itself.
7. Some of us through schools can bring our students into direct and continuous contact with real people's real needs in a real world, instead of manufacturing needs for them.
8. Design will still be concerned with tools. But they will be unlike most of today's products as feasible: products and tools that only create the very demands they are specialized to satisfy and thus eliminate or diminish human labor, participation, and ability.
9. All men are designers. All that healthy men do is design. We must take note of that and through our own work enable more and more people to design their own experiences, services, tools and artifacts.
10. Technology as such should not be feared; the alphabet, Arabic numbers, movable type, typewriters, photo-copier, tape-recorder and camera have given us the "open-ended" tools to move design from myth to participation, from participation to a joyous, autonomous way of personal fulfillment.
    

These ten remedies clearly lay out a road map for the creation of the internet and web 2.0 technologies. The level of participation and the amount of opportunity which the internet grants the user would have blown Victor Papanek's mind. We can interact as designers with our users and communicate clearly with our makers and producers.

Papanek asks us to imagine a life where design isn't used to merely sell things, but to enhance our existence and help us achieve happiness. Think about how you can incorporate these remedies and be mindful not to fall victim to the directions and myths that he outlined for us.