Design Philosophy
“There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a few of them. And possibly only one profession is phonier. Advertising design, in persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress other who don’t care……Never before in history have grown men sat down and seriously designed electric hairbrushes, rhinestone-covered file boxes, and mink carpeting for bathrooms, and then drawn up elaborate plans to make and sell these gadgets to millions of people.” – Victor Papanek
This provocative tone permeates Papanek’s popular and highly polemical text, Design for the Real World. Papanek’s book accuses contemporary designers of squandering natural resources to devise trinkets, when their social and moral responsibilities are required to create designs that serve mankind’s basic needs and solve environmental crisis. In this book, Papanek identifies himself as a ‘world designer’ within the ‘social context’, influenced by third world groupings and underpinned with contempt for the modern consumer market. Essentially, he argues the need for reprogramming of designer rather than re-evaluating the present state of ‘purchasing- disposing’ consumer society.
To begin, Papanek defines design as the conscious and intuitive effort to impose meaning order. The mode of action by which a design fulfills its purpose is function. Aesthetic value is just an inherent part of function. He explains the six aspects of the function complex in his view as following:
Methods: The interaction of tools, processes, and materials. An honest and optimal use of materials. Example: Dow Chemical’s ‘self-generating’ Styrofoam dome.
Use: ‘Does it work?’ Example: A vitamin bottle should dispense pills singly.
Need: Much design has satisfied only evanescent wants and desires while the genuine needs of man have often been neglected by the designers. The economic, psychological, spiritual, technological, and intellectual needs of a human being are usually more difficult and less profitable to satisfy than the carefully engineered and manipulated ‘wants’ inculcated by fad and fashion. Example: To prevent food from perishing in Third World countries.
Thesis: ‘The deliberate, purposeful utilization of the processes of nature and society to obtain particular goals’. The content of a design must reflect the times and conditions that have given rise to it, and must fit in with the general human socio-economic order in which it is to operate. Example: Americans who try to couple a Japanese interior with an American living experience in their search for exotica find that many elements cannot be ripped out of their context.
Association: Our psychological conditioning, often going back to earliest childhood memories, comes into play and provides us with antipathy against a given value. Example: what shape is most appropriate to a vitamin bottle: a candy jar, a perfume bottle or a style salt shaker?
Aesthetics: A tool that helps in shaping design. However, there is no yardstick for the analysis of aesthetics. Thus, it is simply considered to be a personal expression fraught with mystery and surrounded with nonsense.
To continue, Papanek blames ‘The cancerous growth of the creative individual expressing himself egocentrically at the expense of spectator and/or consumer……” and advocates strongly for better design for the disabled, infirm, developing world community and others who are not normally benefiting from the work of ‘western’ design studios. Papanek sees a straightforward negotiation between customer and designer to produce rational, socially conscious designs that are relevant to the needs of people in the world today.
Moreover, he emphasizes the designer’s social and moral judgment must be brought into play long before he begins to design, since he has to make a priori judgment, as to whether ‘his design be on the side of the social good or not’. In order to see what might happen if social and moral obligations were removed from design, he wrote a satirical piece “The Lolita Project” with a proposition that, in a society that views women as objects for sexual gratification, an enterprising manufacturing might well begin for the production and marketing of artificial women. To his surprise, he received many responses, including a Ph.D. teaching social psychology at Harvard contacted him four times regarding a license to begin Flesh-like vinyl body manufacturing. This leaves him much contempt on the admittedly notional world of consumerism.
In the design of disposable items, Papanek advocates two rules: that an item’s price should reflect its disposability, and that the designer considers what happens to the item after it has been thrown away. He promotes pricing items based on how often they are replaced, and leasing often-replaced items. He envisions the development of ecological design and ‘green’ technology by commenting on biodegradable plastics, and new energy such as methane and wind-power. He was expecting to see the implementation of these new technologies within 10 years from the time his book was written.
In summary, Design for the Real World tries to awaken designers’ awareness on their social and moral responsibilities for the world today. Since Papanek first blamed the design profession for creating wasteful products and customer dissatisfaction, new product focused environmental legislation has been introduced. However, the fact still remains that mainstream product design draws on scarce resources to create and power products which often have little or no consideration for impact on society and the environment. Survival will depend upon designer’s ability to learn how to redesign. At last, he hopes that ‘the designer should not be a pimp for the excess of big business interests’, rather the designer can bring ‘the insights, the broad, nonspecialized, interactive overview of a time……combined with a sense of social responsibility’ to world problems.
Analysis, Reflections, and Relevance to Today’s Life
Without doubt Design for the Real World is a historically important text, with widespread influence as a catalyst in the practice of design. It offers numerous examples of sidestepping formalism and self-conscious stylization. However, I feel Papanek’s views upon consumer are too dismissive: ‘A picture emerges of a moral weakling with an IQ of about 70, ready to accept whatever specious values the unholy trinity of Motivation Research, Market Analysis and Sales has decided to inculcate in him’. But his sharp-edged text is apocalyptic in many aspects such as ‘green’ technology, social and ecological responsibilities, etc. It also attempts to align design thinking with real needs, which is so crucial in our time as we are still facing oil crisis, global warming, unsolved poverty and social problems. This requires a radical change in designers’ thinking to consider wider implications of their actions in terms of purpose of design, quality of life, and the future of society.
After Papanek and other designers such as Packard and Bonsiepe first suggested the concept of design for sustainability in the 1960s, people like Manzini and Ryan urged to make radical changes in the 1990s. This trend has continued and gained momentum in our time as design for sustainability became more widespread. Although designers have been motivated and interested in improving the environmental and social impact of the products they produce, opportunity is still limited within the industrial context. Companies such as Apple, HP, Philips, IBM have already began to promote the work in this area. Large industry commitment to integrating environmental and social issues into product development has also continued to rise, but little effort has been observed in the commercial design industry.
Today, there’re many forms of active research in the field of design for sustainability, ranging from implementation of legislation, corporate social responsibility, to eco-redesign, impacts of user behavior. As designers of our century, we need to understand the breadth of the problem and be aware of many issues relating to sustainable development, not just recycling waste materials. Now I understand why Nathan said that it is depressing to read this book, because what Papanek wrote 40 years ago is still very applicable to the world today. We need to redesign in order to solve those “wicked problems”.
Design Philosophy
“There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a few of them. And possibly only one profession is phonier. Advertising design, in persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress other who don’t care……Never before in history have grown men sat down and seriously designed electric hairbrushes, rhinestone-covered file boxes, and mink carpeting for bathrooms, and then drawn up elaborate plans to make and sell these gadgets to millions of people.” – Victor Papanek
This provocative tone permeates Papanek’s popular and highly polemical text, Design for the Real World. Papanek’s book accuses contemporary designers of squandering natural resources to devise trinkets, when their social and moral responsibilities are required to create designs that serve mankind’s basic needs and solve environmental crisis. In this book, Papanek identifies himself as a ‘world designer’ within the ‘social context’, influenced by third world groupings and underpinned with contempt for the modern consumer market. Essentially, he argues the need for reprogramming of designer rather than re-evaluating the present state of ‘purchasing- disposing’ consumer society.
To begin, Papanek defines design as the conscious and intuitive effort to impose meaning order. The mode of action by which a design fulfills its purpose is function. Aesthetic value is just an inherent part of function. He explains the six aspects of the function complex in his view as following:
Methods: The interaction of tools, processes, and materials. An honest and optimal use of materials. Example: Dow Chemical’s ‘self-generating’ Styrofoam dome.
Use: ‘Does it work?’ Example: A vitamin bottle should dispense pills singly.
Need: Much design has satisfied only evanescent wants and desires while the genuine needs of man have often been neglected by the designers. The economic, psychological, spiritual, technological, and intellectual needs of a human being are usually more difficult and less profitable to satisfy than the carefully engineered and manipulated ‘wants’ inculcated by fad and fashion. Example: To prevent food from perishing in Third World countries.
Thesis: ‘The deliberate, purposeful utilization of the processes of nature and society to obtain particular goals’. The content of a design must reflect the times and conditions that have given rise to it, and must fit in with the general human socio-economic order in which it is to operate. Example: Americans who try to couple a Japanese interior with an American living experience in their search for exotica find that many elements cannot be ripped out of their context.
Association: Our psychological conditioning, often going back to earliest childhood memories, comes into play and provides us with antipathy against a given value. Example: what shape is most appropriate to a vitamin bottle: a candy jar, a perfume bottle or a style salt shaker?
Aesthetics: A tool that helps in shaping design. However, there is no yardstick for the analysis of aesthetics. Thus, it is simply considered to be a personal expression fraught with mystery and surrounded with nonsense.
To continue, Papanek blames ‘The cancerous growth of the creative individual expressing himself egocentrically at the expense of spectator and/or consumer……” and advocates strongly for better design for the disabled, infirm, developing world community and others who are not normally benefiting from the work of ‘western’ design studios. Papanek sees a straightforward negotiation between customer and designer to produce rational, socially conscious designs that are relevant to the needs of people in the world today.
Moreover, he emphasizes the designer’s social and moral judgment must be brought into play long before he begins to design, since he has to make a priori judgment, as to whether ‘his design be on the side of the social good or not’. In order to see what might happen if social and moral obligations were removed from design, he wrote a satirical piece “The Lolita Project” with a proposition that, in a society that views women as objects for sexual gratification, an enterprising manufacturing might well begin for the production and marketing of artificial women. To his surprise, he received many responses, including a Ph.D. teaching social psychology at Harvard contacted him four times regarding a license to begin Flesh-like vinyl body manufacturing. This leaves him much contempt on the admittedly notional world of consumerism.
In the design of disposable items, Papanek advocates two rules: that an item’s price should reflect its disposability, and that the designer considers what happens to the item after it has been thrown away. He promotes pricing items based on how often they are replaced, and leasing often-replaced items. He envisions the development of ecological design and ‘green’ technology by commenting on biodegradable plastics, and new energy such as methane and wind-power. He was expecting to see the implementation of these new technologies within 10 years from the time his book was written.
In summary, Design for the Real World tries to awaken designers’ awareness on their social and moral responsibilities for the world today. Since Papanek first blamed the design profession for creating wasteful products and customer dissatisfaction, new product focused environmental legislation has been introduced. However, the fact still remains that mainstream product design draws on scarce resources to create and power products which often have little or no consideration for impact on society and the environment. Survival will depend upon designer’s ability to learn how to redesign. At last, he hopes that ‘the designer should not be a pimp for the excess of big business interests’, rather the designer can bring ‘the insights, the broad, nonspecialized, interactive overview of a time……combined with a sense of social responsibility’ to world problems.
Analysis, Reflections, and Relevance to Today’s Life
Without doubt Design for the Real World is a historically important text, with widespread influence as a catalyst in the practice of design. It offers numerous examples of sidestepping formalism and self-conscious stylization. However, I feel Papanek’s views upon consumer are too dismissive: ‘A picture emerges of a moral weakling with an IQ of about 70, ready to accept whatever specious values the unholy trinity of Motivation Research, Market Analysis and Sales has decided to inculcate in him’. But his sharp-edged text is apocalyptic in many aspects such as ‘green’ technology, social and ecological responsibilities, etc. It also attempts to align design thinking with real needs, which is so crucial in our time as we are still facing oil crisis, global warming, unsolved poverty and social problems. This requires a radical change in designers’ thinking to consider wider implications of their actions in terms of purpose of design, quality of life, and the future of society.
After Papanek and other designers such as Packard and Bonsiepe first suggested the concept of design for sustainability in the 1960s, people like Manzini and Ryan urged to make radical changes in the 1990s. This trend has continued and gained momentum in our time as design for sustainability became more widespread. Although designers have been motivated and interested in improving the environmental and social impact of the products they produce, opportunity is still limited within the industrial context. Companies such as Apple, HP, Philips, IBM have already began to promote the work in this area. Large industry commitment to integrating environmental and social issues into product development has also continued to rise, but little effort has been observed in the commercial design industry.
Today, there’re many forms of active research in the field of design for sustainability, ranging from implementation of legislation, corporate social responsibility, to eco-redesign, impacts of user behavior. As designers of our century, we need to understand the breadth of the problem and be aware of many issues relating to sustainable development, not just recycling waste materials. Now I understand why Nathan said that it is depressing to read this book, because what Papanek wrote 40 years ago is still very applicable to the world today. We need to redesign in order to solve those “wicked problems”.
การแปล กรุณารอสักครู่..
