DESIGN MIAMI 2011
TOKYO DESIGN WEEK 2011
DUTCH DESIGN WEEK 2011
VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2011What if they gave a war and nobody came? I dunno--ask Ernest Borgnine--but I can tell you what happens when they open a store and nobody comes: just look at lower Broadway in Manhattan. As more and more spaces get shuttered, vultures like me line up outside them on Saturdays, picking through hardware at the inevitable Fixtures Sales. That track lighting didn't move any product but it's damn sure gonna light up my living room real nice.
Beyond the stores going out of business, how will the current I'm-Not-Spending-a-Damn-Thing-Unless-I-Have-To mentality affect the world of products and, specifically, product design? Over at Metropolis, journalist John Hockenberry has been thinking a bunch about what effect the crap economy is having/will have on industrial design.
The entire piece is worth a read, so much so that I can't print a pullquote that I feel adequately conveys Hockenberry's stance, but this blistering passage is the one that's burned into my brain:
Design lives in the demand side of global capitalism, which in only a few generations has gone from a narrative of technological ingenuity to a frenetic quest for personal identity through brands and objects, before finally turning into an extreme ideology of shopping as a form of geopolitical defense.
Ouch!
Read the rest here.
Comments
This is one of the best articles on design in a long time. It is rather bleak, as likely is also the future for those practicing design as essentially marketing-driven product cosmetics aimed at increased sales. Change will happen gradually but consumer attitudes had already begun to shift towards living with less stuff years before this recession. I liked his take on the current "green products" nonsense which essentially leads to the same waste (huge amounts of energy spent to "recycle") and mindless indebtedness as before, now dressed up as socially responsible. As always, marketers dictate, designers humbly comply, even more so when jobs are scarce. That is the real tragedy of ID today.