[c]

Design’s Place in the Current Social and Environmental Paradigm

posted by [c] on June 30, 2009

The discipline of design may be a relatively recent development, but the practices it utilises have ostensibly existed since the beginning of civilisation, in fact, civilisation is the result of these design practices. Historically, design was directed toward mediation between man and the natural world, and there are myriad examples of how early cultures used design to improve the conditions of life. Shelters designed by the nomadic plains Indians¹ of North America, entire floating communities of the Uro Aymara² culture in the high Andes, or the Sumerian³ development of organised agriculture—in the face of a natural world that challenged not just man’s creature comforts but his very existence, design has been intrinsic to the development of mankind and civilisation.
Design for the purpose of communication can also be traced back thousands of years. An early example of this is the songlines of Australian aboriginal culture. For thousands of years, on a continent that held families of disparate spoken language, the song was used as a way to communicate visual way finding. These songs, taught to one another at meeting or junction points in a journey, translated the visual and physical spaces into an aural map that, through singing, would reveal points of significance such as landmarks, watering holes, and hunting grounds.
Centuries later, the industrial revolution can be seen to have carried forward this simple theme—it was a design-centred epoch that sought to make things better for people. There are many lucid arguments that claim the industrial revolution substituted one form of indentured servitude for another⁴ and that much of the human suffering of the period was merely supplanted from the countryside to new urban centres of industry, but it’s also beyond dispute that with this change came many advancements in social freedom and access to products and services that improved the quality of life across Europe.
However, as early as 1754 Jean Jacques Rousseau questioned the optimist notions of western civilization in “Discourse on Inequality”, laying the foundations for modern day concerns of social injustice. A little over a century later, in 1867, Karl Marx wrote the famous critique of an economic system that had its roots in the Industrial Revolution. In “Das Kapital”, Marx dedicated a large portion of Volume 1 to the consumption model that, having developed out of industrialization, today has spread throughout the vast majority of the world. Marx explains how the capitalist economic system requires continual increases in production in order for it to sustain itself and, as a result, an ever-increasing level of consumption is required to create the demand for such production. This consumption would not be possible if not for what Marx called “commodity fetishism”, a condition where there is a perceived intrinsic value in a commodity that extends far beyond the labour required to produce it.
Design was an effective tool in adding such value to a commodity. Whether decorative or utilitarian, design was capable of modifying an existing commodity and making it either more appealing or more useful. Design was also capable of persuading consumers that new products or services were a significant improvement over what they were meant to replace. Communication design could create the perception of value where little existed, and by doing so it could contribute to increasing the production required to perpetuate economic growth.
As the economy grew, other ways of creating demand were needed. The rapid successions of product improvements or aesthetic changes were not enough to perpetuate the short consumption cycle required to maintain a growing economy. While the creation of new emerging markets for consumption was one way of addressing the problem, advertising and design began providing opportunity for further growth in existing wealth economies. In 1972, Jean Beaudrillard reintroduced the term “commodity fetishism” to explain the relationship of objects as signs that represented, or stood in for, individual identity. Through advertising, branding, and communication design, consumers could be persuaded to purchase goods and services as a way to help construct their personal identity and display their self to the community. Though the presentation of identity has always existed, the commodification of individual identity would not have been possible were it not for the work of advertisers and designers.
By the mid 70’s, “design for need” had become, what Tony Fry refers to as, “a functionalist rally call.” Led by the work of Victor Papanek and explored in his seminal text, Design for the Real World, the movement was a significant step toward a return to the principles of what design is really about—“making things better for people” (Seymour quoted in Design Council) . But as Claudio Pinhanez has pointed out—if you go to the design section of your local bookstore “you will find books on […] furniture, houses, gardens, books, cars, clothes, posters, textiles, glass, type, ceramics, literature, logos and, more recently, software interfaces and websites” (3)—it suggests the ambiguous nature of design but also challenges the notion of need in design. The “true” need that Papanek refers to in Design for the Real World is an important qualifier and one that addresses the importance of examining what is meant by the word, particularly in the context of its use as justification for design and production. Need is often “called upon as if it were a self-evident empirical reference [and yet] the needs of the poor are not the same as the needs of the well off” (Fry 42). There’s been an absence of recognition and clarity within design theory when it comes to felt need, and this has limited understanding “of all design activity during the rise of industrial culture” (42). Given the historical role of design in the context of a consumption-based capital economy, it’s unlikely that these traditional design practices can effectively address the true needs of our privileged western society let alone that of the underprivileged, particularly when these practices have contributed significantly to the ecological and social paradigm that currently challenges both.
Design was originally a response to the true and immediate needs of people at a time in which everyone designed, but it has evolved to become responsive to the false needs of a divided class system, where underclass labour is used to produce the objects of upper class consumption and where the waste from everyone is threatening our shared future. There have been attempts within the design community to address this problem and with them have come some positive results, but real change has largely failed to take root in a fundamental way. Design is currently faced with a perceptual and real problem—it no longer knows its role in society and the one that it has adopted is viewed by many in a negative light, particularly given the unsustainable social and ecological situation that we currently find ourselves in. While the relationship of designer and commercial client is continually being refined, we have lost our mandate to design for society—to make things truly better for people. As a discipline, we seem unable to adequately assess the true needs of individuals, communities and our global society⁵. Now, technology has returned us to a paradigm where once again everyone designs, albeit in a different sense than in the past. Today the computer-based digital domain of design practice has made it open and accessible to more people than ever before⁶.
If we are to again design for the betterment of society then we need to first acknowledge these realities. First, “the screen of mediation between us and need is so thick [that] the authentic is unviewable” (Fry 49) and we can know longer assess true need. Second, we can’t continue to practice the kind of design we have grown accustomed to and also ensure a socially and ecologically sustainable environment—the two are not compatible. Finally, given the existing communication and technology paradigm, design can no longer be viewed as existing within a silo of elite knowledge. Ezio Manzini clearly expresses what he perceives to be an emerging challenge for today’s designer:

“In the present times, designers have to operate in a society in which, as contemporary sociology points out, everybody designs. In other words, they have to consider themselves part of a complex mesh of designing networks: the emerging, interwoven networks of individual people, enterprises, non-profit organizations, local and global institutions that are using their creativity and entrepreneurship to solve problems, to open new possibilities and, sometimes, to take some concrete steps towards sustainability.” (1)

This paradigm can pose a challenge to some design practice, particularly that type which is rooted in traditional modernist notions. Many designers today continue to “advocate for educating the public in modernistic design values [rather than] promotion of the design values of consultation and participation” (Holm 59). Where design tends to impose its ideas on society, albeit with good intention, it will face resistance to its historically paternal approach.
Rather than warning signs, these should be viewed as opportunities for transforming professional design practice and, in doing so, finding new and effective ways of designing for a socially and ecologically sustainable society. Recent developments in design thinking are showing resilience in design practice and methodology. Adaptations within design suggest an acknowledgement that there is need for significant change if we are to point a new direction. This is notable in areas of investigation and practice such as open source, multidisciplinary collaboration, user-centred design, and co-creation, all of which are methods that re-envision the role and responsibility of design in the context of both present opportunities and the emerging future of our highly globalised society.
And then there’s Meta-design.

1. 1. The plains Indians designed a shelter that could be constructed with readily available material, simple tools, and relative ease of construction. The tipi, made of buffalo skin and tree saplings, could be taken down and packed up easily for transportation, making it an ideal solution for a culture that used seasonally nomadic practices of hunting and gathering. [↩]
2. 2. The world’s highest lake, in the altitudes of the Andes Mountains, would not surprisingly be a place where nature would challenge man’s existence. Yet here on Lake Titicaca the people of the indigenous Uro Aymara culture continue to make use of the reeds that grow on the lake’s shore much as they did before their subjugation by the Inca civilisation hundreds of years ago. Not only do they make their famous totora rafts of this material, they also construct mats, baskets, fishing traps, homes and even floating communities. These design solutions allowed them to adapt and survive where there was no ready access to timber and allowed a degree of protection from other groups. [↩]
3. 3. Around 5,500 BC the Sumerians utilised what could be called early systems design in the development of large scale and intensive land cultivation that included the planning of crop location and rotation, organised irrigation systems, labour practices, storage, and product distribution. Along with the domestication of animals, the organisation and later commercialisation of agriculture would allow for the expansion of the Sumerian culture and early empire building. [↩]
4. 4. One cogent example of this is the chapter on slavery, in An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin. Here Zeldin uses a socially current existential exemplar to suggest that indentured servitude has never really left the human condition (1-10). [↩]
5. 5. This should not be viewed as an isolated critique of the design community. The capital economic model has become so ingrained in western culture that it seems to be wholly unassailable and individuals in every walk of life have found it difficult to recognise its limitations and potential negative impact [↩]
6. 6. 3d modelling software, WYSIWYG web design, desktop publishing software, and online software like Google’s Sketch-up, are all making it easier for the layman to become the designer. [↩]