How should we critique ‘Critical Design’?
There has been much talk about ‘design thinking‘, ‘critical design’, and ‘design interactions‘. And I have been following all the various different debates with great interest and with some confusion and frustration. So to let out some of that frustration, and hopefully to make some things clearer to myself, I want to just briefly focus (in my own way!) on a ‘relatively’ new and small ‘oeuvre’ which is gaining lots of interest but not much serious or constructive criticism or debate -’Critical Design’.
I was quite relieved on WMMNA that Jan Boelen the curator who worked on the Designing Critical Design exhibition said:
‘that the idea for the exhibition stemmed from a disappointment: when the work of Guixé, Bey or Raby & Dunne is featured in a design magazine, journalists usually focus on the gadget, gimmick side of the pieces‘ and that ‘There’s also an international crowd out there that merely seem to imitate that gimmicky aspect of the critical designers’ work.‘
… Maybe someone is finally trying to establish some criteria to how contextualise and critique this new genre/movement sensitively and seriously in all its good and bad forms?
For ‘critical design’ to be appreciated in the way it wants to, it must never be ‘above’ criticism itself. But it is difficult to criticise something that like some art, defines its purpose as purely raising debate. In effect it means that any criticism can actually be seen as confirming its success.
Art criticism can be vicious, highly intellectual, and steeped in the history of aesthetics, philosophy and art history. But although ‘Critical Design’ is often presented and behaves in a similar fashion to Art, it is not Art. Its makers’ state that it is Design - so luckily for some designers, it avoids the art criticism for which some of it would certainly be slated.
But traditional Design critics will also have a problem with trying to critique it. And both sides, (the designer and critic), might also feel that the traditional Design critic might be not in the right position. A traditional design’s success is often measured against how well they have worked with certain constraints, the qualities of the idea and how well they have been executed and the human factor of how easy it is to use.
Unlike traditional design, Critical Design is focussing on the communication of an idea rather the development of a product or service. Therefore any constraints that a designer might find in developing a product or service, such as budget, limited materials, time, physics, difficult clients, are for a Critical Designer only constraints in terms of the presentation of the idea. In a way, Critical design seems to need to set itself free of the constraints, and focus only on a thematic constraint so that it is able to be truly critical.
Often much of the work is a comment or a gesture, using communication channels such as photography, video and prototypes and sometimes through a specific - narrative way of naming the work. Often these comments and gestures are made towards scientific developments or political policy or on the design world itself. So maybe scientists and political journalists should be in a better position to critique it (there is at times certainly some dodgy and pretentious science going on). But … as this type of design work is mostly experienced in galleries, museums or through niche publishing, they might never get to see it.
I am trying to highlight, that by shifting a discipline into a new area it becomes very difficult to critique it and also very easy for designers not confront criticism by inferring that critics are interpreting it aims and purpose wrongly. I for one want to be able to critique some of the work without being told that the criticism stems from not ‘getting it’, when at the same time the creator fails to make the point with his/her work.
I see this type of design work as a really important element to the design landscape. Some of the works are fantastic food for thought and some pieces I want to take home with me and live with and some of it is really just lazy ideas presented slickly.
There have to be tough questions that go beyond the ‘is it art is it not’ debate and critiqued for what it is and what it is trying to be. Otherwise a lot of the one-liner and gestural work (reminiscent of some of the bad Brit art) will blur what is good and what’s not so good and it will be difficult for this genre/movement ever to evolve and establish itself meaningfully.
Maybe this exhibition will prompt a start to a more sophisticated and constructive debate - I for one, hope so.
5 Responses to “How should we critique ‘Critical Design’?”
Leave a Reply
March 22nd, 2007 at 11:23 am
Very good post. I agree that “critical design” needs to continue to exist, I don’t believe that it’s niche or even new, if you look at the works of a lot of young french designers like Matali Crasset, Phillipe Stark, or even Tibor Kalman and now more recently Tobias Wong most of it has always been highly critical and playful comments of the field of design, people’s relationships to the physical worlds that surround them. I agree with you that there is a very grey area esp. when we are too reliant on a traditional “art critique” eye. The latest show in NY of Droog design’s work (“ART REVIEW; Is It Design? Art? Or Just a Dutch Joke?” New York Times) is the perfect example of those missunderstandings. I think however that the links you mention at the beginning have a lot to do with how designers are trained in the first place and not necessarily with the results on the field. Is there a correlation? Does one enforce the other? All questions worth exploring.
March 23rd, 2007 at 12:21 am
[…] How should we critique ‘Critical Design’? » Monomo Interaction Design Good post about critical design and its place in the grey area between design and art. (tags: critical design education) […]
March 23rd, 2007 at 10:28 am
Thanks for the NY Times link Alexandra. Droog design is a good example as a potential way out of the dilemma I am referring to as it actually makes or manufactures products or prototypes and with that it is slightly easier to establish a critical relationship with it, what we like, what we don’t like and why (as it is laid out in the NY Times article). Our emotional response to the physical object or interaction is a bit easier to understand and to validate. But this becomes more difficult when we look at critical design which falls more into the ‘design interactions’ (read deliberately not interaction design) area. Sometimes there is no physical object, artefact or interaction as such, only props. There are scenarios and presentations of an idea or potential interactions or products. It is this virtual construct, which makes it so difficult to establish criterias allowing us to appreciate what it tries to do for us.
April 30th, 2007 at 10:55 am
Aside from ‘critical design objects’ we know that there are lots of design objects, that operate on a different level, they are everyday commodities: home appliances, cars, sports equipment, etc.. These commodities may also contain within themselves some sort of critique or social commentary, but this is usually unintentional.
Is the goal of the ‘critical design object’ to penetrate the market and become a part of design for production of all commodities? so that we acheive a ‘critical commodity object’.
If the ‘critical design object’ is intended to deliver a message, might this message be better delivered through other means? such as political and philosophical texts. It is apparent that as well as creating objects, some designers create a “philosophy” and talk at length about the underlying theme to their work.
I am unsure about the value of ‘critical design’. If a designer is focused exclusively on critical design objects, are they making use of design in an effective way? I am starting to think that if it is only our commentary and critique we care to communicate, then why not dedicate our work to writing and philosophy?
I also understand that some lived experiences can only be felt through objects and spaces around us. And so it is objects and spaces, that designers choose to manipulate, and to exploit their effect on peoples lived experiences. A way of communicating that maybe no other philosophy text can.
I am inspired by this, but I often wonder if ‘critical deisgn objects’ occupy an unfulfilling position in between philosophy and industry, acheiving only partially what a committed philosophical text or industrial product can deliver.
March 15th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Following on Edan’s comment “if ‘critical deisgn objects’ occupy an unfulfilling position in between philosophy and industry, acheiving only partially what a committed philosophical text or industrial product can deliver.” — how many people read philosophical texts? I think for me, critical design is more accessible and offers a way for the audience to grapple with technological issues associated with consumer society in relevant and essential ways. And it takes industrial design in a more meaningful direction. But I do understand people’s problem with calling it design, why not just call it art and leave it at that? Well, maybe that’s a good point, but there is so much crossover these days, having a genre called critical design offers designers an outlet to question design products and the many contradictions inherent in consumer culture. I find it very fulfilling in making people think about what we buy, use, make. and of course the work often has a good dose of humor and insight and probably inspires designers to make straightforward product design — maybe inspire a more human-centered design?