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The Bigger Future of European

Guy Julier, 2004

This article was written for PFC 02/03: Eina, Escola de Disseny i Art.

Design history tells us two things. One is educational institutions might do. We shall do that the design profession has always been this by using a mixture of what they call in the shaped by economic, social, political and futures forecasting business, 'extrapolators' cultural forces. The other is that many (extending current trends) and 'intuitors' and design educators are idealists. (making informed predictions based on what These two issues remain in conflict. The we already know). former suggests that design is a passive, pragmatic activity destined to respond to the The Post- Boom ebbs and flows of local and global change. It is driven by service to wider interests. But Design is bigger than ever. The latest designers are also interested in improving on exponential expansion of the design what exists. Nonetheless, despite a history of profession began in the 1980s. Wave after reformists, from John Ruskin, Henry Cole and wave of deregulation of financial and service William Morris to Walter Gropius to markets and the privatisation of public sectors Buckminster Fuller to Tomas Maldonado to led to increased competition and positioning Victor Papanek and beyond, designers and the growth of retail and leisure services. continue to express consternation at the gap The net result was more packaging, more between their ideals and the reality of what is signage, more interior, more annual report around them. This is perennially felt by design. The European design market grew at graduating design students as they collide around 25% between 1982 and 1989 (NDI with the professional world of design. As 1994: 10). Indeed, the well-tried Spanish joke Adrian Forty famously argued, 'both chat-up line, '¿Diseñas o trabajas?' emerged in conditions [the idealistic and the realistic] this 1980s context as did, of course, Barcelona invariably co-exist, however uncomfortably, in as design tourist destination and Spain as a the work of design' (Forty 1986: 242). serious player in the European design markets. Individual 'works of design' continue to express compromise between conception and While the quantity of design practice execution, artistic ambition and client continued to rise, there were significant demand, producer and consumer. However, qualitative developments in what design the relationship between these two camps is meant and how it was practised in the 1990s. being redefined and the bigger 'work of The design industry moved up a gear because design' is far from over. It will take further of rather than in spite of the global economic change on the part of designers and the recession of the early 1990s. The many clients context in which they work before the who had engaged design services for their meaning and values of what design is can first time in the 1980s became more reach a mature state. demanding with experience. So while the European design market shrank drastically So let us look at the principal issues that are between 1991 and 1993, many established driving the redefinition of a bigger future of design professionals learnt to be more tactical European design, taking the wider view first in the services they provided. Here we see the and then focusing on what individuals and beginnings of the extension of design into 2 related disciplines such as marketing, generation of design consumers within a management and public relations as capitalist context has emerged. professionals in these sectors saw how they could use design and some designers realised Out of these trends the study of creative that they could take a larger fee and retain industries has emerged as a new branch of clients through providing more integrated sociology. This is partly in response to the services. More prosaically, studios and increased growth of their economic consultancies became smaller, keeping importance. But their relevance to global overheads down, while embracing a broader change in the nature of individual identity, range of design disciplines. Indeed, this is a work and the role of cultural goods has also pattern that has been repeated in the shorter- been noted. This awareness began with the term recession in the past two years (see publication of Lash and Urry's ambitious study 2004: 14). of global flows of commodities, information and people, Economies of Signs and Subsequently, design growth returned with (1994). They map the dissolution of industrial even more energy. An array of statistics bear society and the freeing of individual subjects this out. By 1994, the Netherlands Design from its structures. Moving beyond the Institute was optimistically predicting a traditional rules of family, religion, fixed growth of the European design market from community and the workplace, individuals are $9.5b. to $14b. by 2000 (NDI 1994: 9). In the required to take up a more knowing, self- UK, the number of first year design students conscious and reflexive negotiation of their has risen by 35%, from 14948 to 20225, lives. For example, shopping has come to be between 1994 and 2001 (Design Council regarded not just as the instrumental 2004). It is in this decade that we see the acquisition of goods. It also implies the emergence of the term '' or creation of identity through acts of choice and 'cultural industries' - of which design forms a consumption. significant proportion - and measurements and forecastings of them taking place. From these observations it has been a short According to a 1998 European Commission hop for many sociologists to regard the report, 'cultural employment' - that is work in activities of creative industries workers as , design, broadcast, film, internet, emblematic of these changes (see, for music, publishing and computer games - grew example, Davis and Scase 2000). The by 24% in Spain (1987-94) while employment creatives' relatively unstructured work in Germany of 'producers and artists' grew by patterns and the facilitation of creative 23% (1980-94) (cited in Hesmondalgh 2002: freedom, their emphasis on fluid networked 90). transactions with project partners, their sense of 'self-creation' in terms of positioning To this production-centred view, we must add themselves in a competitive market and the the notion of a growing, design-aware and importance of negotiation with others all add design-critical audience. A mere glance at the up to underline this sense of 'reflexive global rise of Ikea evidences. This 'McDonald's modernity' (see Beck 1992 and Giddens 1991). of modern domestic furniture' moved its annual turnover from € 4b (1994) to €12b Design is not only a professional activity or (2002), achieving outlets in 31 countries. In artefactual outcome but a 'way of being'. It is addition, the collapse of state socialism in about task- rather than time-based jobs - the Central and Eastern Europe since 1989 has result being that designers work long hours. drawn some 350m. people into liberal Designers not only design things but to some democracy and market capitalism. To this we degree have to design themselves and must also consider the effects of business communicate their particular way of working liberalisation in China and the startling in order to get noticed - look at any 's economic boom in India. A new global website and you'll see how they 3 themselves. Design requires working across This era is far from over. Things continue to cultural boundaries - designers may not only be made visual in order to be 'sold' to us, be work in international markets, but design to they dream holidays or illegal wars. But the many user groups outside their everyday quality by which these are conceived, by experience. And finally, the aim of design is to which they are circulated and the sensibility breach the yawning gap between production by which we live with visual phenomena is and consumption - fashioning beautiful shifting. We are experiencing a 'design turn'. spaces, things or forms of communication that are of use to and appeal to consumers As visual information has become ephemeral ensures the designer's weekly wage. and immediate so the ground on which is played out has shifted. The At one , then, we might attribute the rise increasing use of product semantics in of design in recent years to local and global consumer goods turns them into information economic and political change. At another it is goods. We unconsciously encounter some about an increase in the of the aesthetic 3000+ daily. The muzak in our in everyday life and a growing awareness of shopping centres, endless consumer design as a form of cultural distinction. satisfaction surveys and junk mail all add up Government ministers, university rectors, to an invigorated design culture. The growing television presenters and high-street shoppers ubiquity of design as a self-consciously are all keen to talk about design. With the distinguishing feature in everyday life expands massification of design as both a professional the grounds on which visual values lie. As practice and a consumer consciousness, its Scott Lash notes, 'Culture is now three- future terms of reference will alter. dimensional, as much tactile or textual, all around us and inhabited, lived in rather than From to Design Culture encountered in a separate realm as a representation' (Lash 2002: 149). We are an We are moving from an era of visual culture architectonic, spatially-based society and to one of design culture. The era of visual information is reworked in these planes. Our culture firmly belongs to the period of post- culture is no longer one of pure enlightenment, modernity and representation or narrative where visual industrialisation. The era of design culture, I culture conveys messages. Instead, design would argue, is just upon us, itself belonging culture formulates, formats, channels, to post-industrial, information society. circulates, contains and retrieves information. It is all around us. Design is more than just the The emergnce of a 'visual turn' in Western creation of artefacts. It is also about the society was the effect of the creation of mass structuring of systems of encounter within the consumer markets and urbanization during visual and material world. the industrial revolution. Indeed, the proliferation of images became a key To give you an anecdotal example of how this charactersistic of modern social organization shift has taken place in the context of global (Evans 1999: 16). Commodities and services economic and political change, let me cite a needed to be made visual in order to conversation I had with a friend in Budapest in advertise and market them to a wide, 1996. At the time, the Coca-Cola Company anonymous audience. The Victorians saw the were offering the then city mayor, Gabor growth of the department store, catalogue Demszky and his impoverished office a large shopping, mass tourism and entertainment as sum of money for permission to decorate the spectacle - all of which hinge on the famous Chain Bridge across the Danube in the mediation of visual experience. And, of national Hungarian colours of red, green and course, this was also the period of new visual white for Christmas. The catch was that the technologies such as film, animation and red was to be 'Coca-Cola' red, not 'Hungarian' . red. Naturally this ignited a heated debate 4 throughout the city over the potential design within the profession as designers seek compromise of national values to a and clients demand greater integration of multinational corporation. 'But isn't this the product, graphic and in order same as the statues of Lenin and Marx that to create coherent and fullsome design filled every city corner during Communism? solutions. It also explains the design Isn't one form of propoganda being replaced profession's increased integration with by another?', I naively asked. 'No, there's a big marketing, management and public relations, difference', my friend replied. 'The Lenin and mentioned earlier. Marx statues were separate from us. We could ignore them if we wanted. Coca-Cola is The quasi-religious quest for coherence everywhere. It is designed into every part of around brand values certainly ends up in ordinary life. You can't get away from it. You some idiotic language spoken by brand drink the stuff - at least you couldn't drink management gurus, particularly in the United Soviet leaders!'. States. While brands only really exist in their design manifestions, they talk about them as So ideological markers have been replaced by autonomous beings. They talk of, 'the heart brands, for the time being. and soul' or 'personality' of a brand as if it were intrinsic, self-sustaining and The Rise and Fall of Branding autonomous. (People have personalities, brands cannot.) It is expected that brands The rise of branding in the 1990s has played a relate to us in deeply emotional ways, fundamental role in promoting this quality of 'stroking the senses' (Artus 1999). And as if a design ubiquity. It is also partly responsible for brand was some appalling Disney cartoon decentring the focus of design away from character, some branding experts believe that objects to experiences and systems. they will command our utmost loyalty and dominate our belief systems. Brand websites, Brand management rhetoric tells us that for example, can become, 'deep gravity wells', producer agents - be they corporations, which offer, 'bright compelling cyberspace institutions or individuals - are responsible for destinations around which stakeholders can controlling a coherent brand message take orbit' (Moon 1999: 61). throughout its , from production through mediation to The hyperbole on branding momentarily consumption to consumer feedback. If a masks the brittle nature of much of its reality. brand is typified into a clear, simple message - Fortunately it is highly unlikely that branding which is often crystallised as a slogan - then will continue to dominate in this should be reflected in all its the way it has done. It is just a phase on the manifestations. This might include the way way to somewhere else. corporate workers dress, talk and act with customers and clients. Branding obviously Branding has two major internal extends into more traditional designed contradictions. Here is the first. The creation elements such as promotional literature of simple messages allows consumers to make graphics or the design of retail spaces, choices more easily. If what a brand stands for reception areas, websites or other points of - through, for example, graphics, copywriting corporation and consumer interface. The and product semantics - can be quickly read, expectation is that the consumer will then then the content has to be straightforward understand and feel that same message. So in and reasonably generic. This immediateness this way, the systems of branding inhabit means that they can be just as easily much of the space of design culture, turning relinquished as adopted. If brand loyalty is to information into an 'all-around-us' be subsequently built, then the message has architectonic form. The rise of branding to have subsequent layers of complexity to accounts for the growing interdisciplinarity of maintain interest - a bit like any relationship, 5 really. But how do you develop complexity In its defence, branding has instigated many within the stifling boundaries of branding qualitative shifts in favour of a more vital role whose priority is coherence? How do you for designers. At a basic level, awareness of its keep a conversation going with a limited importance among business managers has common vocabulary? The superficiality of forced them to think more frequently about much branding, as currently practised, makes the aesthetic dimensions of their it very dull. organizations. At its best, branding has engaged designers and managers in closer Secondly, brand management rhetoric places proximity within strategic decision-making its emphasis on the consumer experience. As processes when launching new products or brand strategist Paul Southgate argues, services. At its very best, designers have also 'brands are no more and no less than what become strategists, sometimes taking the consumer believes them to be' (Southgate decisions about corporate or insitutional 1994: 19). This interest in consumer policies that do not appear to be aesthetically sovereignty might be a noble aim. The important on first examination but help to ambition to engage consumers in a shape consumer response and action. meaningful relationship with corporate interests should provide useful feedback The last of these is still rare. But it points in a systems wherein the consumer feels some direction where design might go. Design measure of control and is not alienated from culture is just beginning. Read on. production. The invitation to fill out a customer feedback form at the end of a futures stay is a neat way of showing that your corporate hosts care about what you think. If the branding model for design has largely Brand museums or 'experience centres' such been imported from America, then its more as Niketown in Chicago, New York and interesting extension in the future may come London, celebrate their own histories and from Europe. In its favour, branding has de- provide a glimpse into a corporation beyond centred design thinking away from the the transaction at the point-of-sale or alienated formation of products and services following an ad campaign. But branding can to a more engaged and strategic view of the only go as far as providing only a distant role of aesthetic experience. It has forced relationship with a corporation. Corporate managers to talk to designers, thinkers to openness and responsibility often makes engage with makers. Designers, as them vulnerable. Witness the cat and mouse imaginative, interested people, can be relationship that Nike has had with its critics. innovators, not merely in the sense of As soon as criticism is levelled at it for its technical or formal advancement, but also subcontracting policies in the Far East - the innovators of the relationship between alleged use of exploitative working conditions producers and consumers. At this point it is - then it makes a feature of its self-evaluation worth quoting something by the Italian of these conditions and the positive professor of , Ezio contribution it makes those communities. Manzini that has become a mantra for me in Meanwhile a design-literate public becomes recent years: increasingly adept at reading between the lines. Design is not perceived as a brokering Today design, understood not only as an mechanism between producer and consumer operative method but also as culture, is - so that they can get to know each other oriented in two directions: the one aiming better - but as a gloss over understanding the towards isolation, focusing on the formal real conditions of production (see Nixon qualities of products with the most evident 2002). An informed, design-aware public can aesthetic content (the predominant trend just as easily be a questioning or even cynical during the 1980s). The other approach public. consists in facing the present-day challenges, 6 and intervening on the strategies that system of consumption of a product through determine the social and environmental its service support. Examples are various. One quality of the changing world of today. combines apartment tenancy in the German (Manzini 1998: 57) town of Wolfsburg with access to a car- pooling systems managed by the automobile What are the challenges that Manzini is manufacturer Volkswagen. The Dutch office referring to? furniture producer, Gispen has piloted the provision of office hardware management. I need hardly repeat the seriousness of the Not only will they provide furniture, but they environmental and social time-bombs set to will maintain, repair it and redesign and install go off within a generation. For every tonne of new layouts in case the demands of users product that reaches the consumer, there are change. These are pragmatic business 30 tonnes of waste in production. And then innovations to maintain market share which 98% of those products are thrown away also have environmental benefits. Through within six months (Datschefski 2001: 17). providing a car-sharing system Volkswagen Most design artefacts have a hidden ugliness. allows a lower financial threshold for new clients. Gispen ensures that their products But as design for sustainability consultant always come first when new office Edwin Datschefski maintains in his upbeat arrangements are laid out. They are also able message, low environmental-impact goods to retrieve, re-cycle and reuse their products and services can have both outer and inner more effectively. beauty (Datschefski 2001). Likewise, environmental campaigner George Monbiot This requires a more nuanced and informed argues that, surely, isn't beauty alone a strong understanding of consumer practices. enough reason to protect biodiversity Traditional approaches to products typically (Monbiot 2004)? Concern with sustainability involve undertaking market research to goes beyond a mere instinct for survival to ascertain target audiences, designing the quality-of-life issues. Similarly, we might see product accordingly, manufacturing and for an increasingly complex launching it and then hoping for the best. demographic structure of the European Product Service System thinking involves not population as an interesting opportunity only the origination of products but for the rather than a debilitating threat. Dealing with designer and manager to study and change these challenges requires designers to be as patterns of use at highly localized levels. much strategists, innovators and managers as Branding foregrounded consumer experience, form-givers. but in rather vague, superficial and brittle ways. Product Service Systems follow the One of the most exciting opportunities for the same concern for consumer engagement, but future of design is through a more rigorous breach the producer-consumer divide in more integration of products and services that meaningful ways. As consumers have more ensures more effective use of material interactions with the product-service resources. Innovation and testing of so-called provider, so a closer and potentially more Product Service Systems has been most loyal relationship is built. Finally, beyond the advanced in The Netherlands and Germany. innovation of these systems, there is a more They involve, 'a marketable set of products obvious design intervention in providing an and services capable of jointly fulfilling a integrated approach to the product, graphic user's need' (Geodkoop et al 1999). This and spatial elements that support them. means that a company may be responsible not just for delivery of products, but for their The emergence of the Product Service maintenance and disposal - taking care of the Systems concept is symptomatic of the cradle-to-grave product lifecycle. Within this, increased prominence of service over a Product Service System may re-organize the manufacturing industries in Europe. But it 7 may also signal a quantum shift in what therefore became more of a focus for consumption means. Household expenditure intellectual debate - as much head as hand. on service-based consumption has continued How to form an avant-garde in design and to rise and outstrip expenditure on material what role that might have is a methodological goods (see, for example, Mintel 2003). debate that has subsequently rippled through Material consumption is being replaced, in design schools ever since. This was felt most some quarters, by non-material service-based acutely in the schism within the Ulm consumption. We might be gradually moving Hochschule für Gestaltung during the late away from the twentieth century notion of 1960s. But the crafts revival, among many fetishized ownership of utilitarian goods - that other factors, added the third dimension to was the century of cars, washing machines this debate - that of expression. Indeed, this and entertainment products. The focus of uneasy triangulation of head, heart and hand individual European lifestyles might turn indeed was replicated in debates over further away from these private, domestic pedagogical direction within Eina in 1971 material goods - itself an American import in where one faction of the staff and student essence - to a more public engagement with corpus demanded a greater technical immaterial activities. component in addition to what was already on offer while the other half campaigned for The present and future role in this, to repeat, the retention and strengthening of its is not just about giving visual form to these theoretical base in order to respond to and habits, but re-structuring what these might be challenge society with increasing efficacy (see and mean. The promotion of this new model Rafols Casamada 1987). for design requires a determination for social and environmental agency on the part of If the schools of design have been held up in designers. It is not just a question of design their development to some degree by their culture as a ubiquitous expression of society, constant internal, but highly necessary but design culture as an encultured practice. debates, then the external administrative Hansjerg Maier-Aichen has referred to the climate of many has frequently unnecessarily development by designers of a 'Utopia of blocked progress. With little subject expertise, less..but better' that requires them not only many national governments have adopted a to create compelling design products, myopic, dynastic and overly rigid view of what graphics or interiors, but, 'to find innovative should constitute their curricula. Spain's ways of communication, materialising and central and regional adminstrations are dematerialising things' (Maier-Aichen 2004: notable cases of this problem. 10). European design schools have a fundamental role to play in this direction. The result has been that while design schools preach innovation in practice, they have not for the Future often been allowed to practice innovation in their academic direction. A design industry Design education is in its infancy. Schools of that is about invention, but also about art and design have only existed for little constant re-invention of itself, largely does more than 150 years. The first 70 years of this these as a responsive act. The dodging and history were primarily dedicated to design as weaving of designers is a self-preservation dessin or disegno, with an emphasis on the tactic. Moving into new domains of practice - hand, emphasizing artesanal, psycho-moto be it reducing studio size into flexible creative skills to lubricate the wheels of industry. Only interdisciplinary groups, developing digital since the Bauhaus has design education self- media applications, straightforwardly consciously dedicated itself to the production embracing the rhetorics of branding or of an avant-garde that attempts to lead designing integrated produce and service society rather than be merely responsive to systems - have been intelligent ways of the demands of political economy. Design moving with the marketplace. 8

The intellectual and cultural ambience of responsible for establishing Barcelona's many design schools (but not all, thankfully) reputation as a European centre of design has been unable to equip its graduates with excellence. In many respects, Eina was a test- the power to move from being responsive to bed of ideas, a place to explore possibilities. It being pro-active and responsible. Art and would seem to be an apt location to continue design schools could provide a solid base from in this vein. which new methods of practice can spring to then lead the wider design industry. Technical Finally, versions of this new kind of design skills such as visual sensitivity and plastic profession can be found on both sides of the expression will be no less important. But we Atlantic. In the United States it is commonly will also see the orientation of design referred to as '' and implies education around cross-disciplinary platforms, the designers' role in brand and new product where the role of design in response to development strategies. It remains very much specific contemporary problematics - for a minority activity and is mostly motivated example, changing demographic structures, within the parameters of the profit motive. transcultural lifestyles, health promotion or But as a European strain emerges, there is the community participation - can be opportunity for it to be more deeply investigated. They could provide a deep well embedded in social and environmental of enquiry into the world not only as it is, but agency. The longstanding idealism of also show what the world could be. designers may find greater opportunity for expression in the context of communitarian, This bigger future, then, is about embracing civic and environmental realities rather than design culture not as an overwhelming and the conservative orthodoxy of free market ennervating postmodern condition, but as a capitalism. As such, the bigger future of project of analysis and creation. Design design resides in Europe - one that is capable culture is a field of academic enquiry, reaching of embracing diversity and complexity, while into an understanding of the role of design in being sure of its own values. European design contemporary society. It studies the can be both politicized and pragmatic. motivations and structures of economic, social and cultural interests and subsequently © Guy Julier 2004 where and how designers can engage in these. Furthermore, though, it can References appropriate 'pure' academic disciplines such Artus, Mark (1999) 'That's Entertainment', as sociology, , anthropology Fitch Flypaper: the 'E' Issue, Columbus: Fitch and toward a more informed, critical and productive practice in Beck, Ulrich (1992 [1986]) Risk Society: design. The designer of the future's toolbox Towards a New Modernity trans. Ritter, Mark, will necessarily have to be more extensive, London: Sage taking in a wider set of both technical and Datschefski, Edwin (2001) The Total Beauty of conceptual skills. Sustainable Products, Hove: RotoVision Eina was born in 1966 of deep ideological Davis, Howard and Scase, Richard (2000) motivations. The school's first student briefing Managing Creativity: the Dynamics of Work maintained that, 'Its syllabus is directed and Organization, Buckingham: Open towards implanting in [professionals] a deep University Press humanistic consciousness and to awaken a Design Council (2003) Design in Britain 2003- responsible conscience before society' (cited 2004, London: Design Council in Rafols Casamada 1987: 50). During these early years, Eina became a magnet for artists, Evans, Jessica (1999) 'Introduction' in Evans, designers and cultural theoreticians. Out of Jessica and Hall, Stuart (eds.) Visual Culture: this generation came those largely the Reader, London: Sage 9

Forty, Adrian (1986) Objects of Desire: Design (ed.) The Role of in Post- and Society since 1750, London: Thames & Industrial Society, Ankara: Middle East Hudson Technical University, pp. 43-58 Giddens, Anthony (1991) Modernity and Self- Mintel (2003) Report: British Lifestyles 2003 -- Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Where the Money Goes, London: Mintel Age, London: Polity Press Monbiot, George (2004) 'Natural Aesthetes' in Goedkoop , Mark J., van Halen, Cees J.G., te The Guardian 14/01/04 Riele, Harry R.M. and Rommens , Peter J.M. Moon, Michael (1999) 'Branding in the (1999) 'Product Service Systems, Ecological Networked Economy', and Economic Basics' report available at Journal, 10.2: 61-70 http://www.pre.nl/pss/ Negus, Keith (2002) 'The Work of Cultural Hesmondhalgh, David (2002) The Cultural Inter-mediaries and the Enduring Distance Industries London: Sage between Production and Consmption' in Lash, Scott and Urry, John (1994) Economies Cultural Studies 6(4), 501-515 of Signs and Spaces, London: Sage Netherlands Design Institute (1994) Design Lash, Scott (2002) Critique of Information, Across Europe: Patterns of Supply and London: Sage Demand in the European Design Market, Amsterdam: Vormgevingsinstitut Maier-Aichen, Hansjerg (2004) 'Idea Factory: un repte global en un marc de recessió Rafols Casamada, Albert (1987) Eina, Escola mundial' LliVó inaugural Curs 2003-4 de Disseny i art, 1967-1987: Vint Anys Barcelona: Eina Escola de Disseny i Art, d'Avantguardia Barcelona: Eina Escola de PlecsEsparsos Disseny i Art Manzini, Ezio (1998) 'Products in a Period of Southgate, Paul (1994) Total Branding by Transition: Products, Services and Interactions Design: How To Make Your Brand's Packaging for a Sustainable Society' in Balcioglu, Tevfik More Effective, London: Kogan Page

© Guy Julier 2004