Rethinking ‘Good design’ which means rethinking almost everything!

“If i could do it again i would not want to be a designer” — Dieter Rams

Dieter Rams is 80 something! He is seen it all, done it all. He is a master, sensitive, wise and careful, probably the greatest Industrial Designer, alive. He beautifully summarised his 10 Principles of good design, and left a long lasting influence of next gen designers. Check out what Jonathan Eve has to say about the master designer. He is saying something very important today to all of us.

What I am especially bothered by today is that, particularly in the media, design is being used as a ‘lifestyle asset.’ I’m bothered by the arbitrariness and the thoughtlessness with which many things are produced and brought to the market. There are so many unnecessary things we produce, not only in the sector of consumer goods, but also in architecture, in advertising. We have too many unnecessary things everywhere. And I would even go as far as to describe this as inhumane. That is the situation today. But actually, it has always been a problem.

We need to deal with our resources differently, in terms of how we waste things. We have to move away from the throwaway habit. Things can, and must, last longer. They must be designed so that they can be reused. We need to take more care of our environment. That means not only our personal environment but also our cities and our resources. That is the future of design, to take more care of these basic elements. Otherwise I’m not sure what the future of our planet will be. So designers have to take on that responsibility, and to do so we need more support from government. We need political support to solve the problems with our environment and how we should shape our cities. As designers, we shouldn’t be doing this for ourselves, but for our community. And the community needs support, not only to interact with each other democratically, but it also needs support to live democratically.

He is clearly worried about the “Context of Design”, which he probably missed in a constrained corporate setting of Braun when he worked. He is worried about hyper consumption, about the value of life we share collectively, dysfunctional political establishments, Profit driven Corporates, cultural confusions created by objects and communication pieces, he is worried about our ability to manage resources and insensitivity to the ways of natural systems.

Most designers know this intuitively and the path looks so difficult to pursue. It is filled with uncertainties, social complexities, cultural ambiguities, industrial ironities, political atrocities, collective insecurities, symbolic tragedies, economic disparities and what not. It is a dead end and there is “No way out of it”. Modern designer like any other professional is a puppet of Modern Industry/Business ecosystem limited with his limited knowledge which he has gained by limiting modern education based on language system. After latching on to it for years, few brave design thinkers are daring to question the norm and try to get a clarity of their situation in which they feel they are bounded. They want to free themselves from their context. What made Dieter Rams to say something like this is an example of “Designer’s reflection”.

How do we deal with this monstrous thing called “Context”? Can we really address it? Is it not beyond our control? What is today’s “Good design”? Is it that green banana leaf packaging idea, which is developed by few community ladies in a village setup that burns zero fossil fuels, that targets rich classy buyers of Paris? Is it growing hundred trees for every product you design? and one for every purchase? Is it eco-villages? Is it too big to be solved? Should we stop material consumption and focus on richer spiritual connect with nature?. All of this looks so complicated, absurd and chaotic.

There are many attempts. Type “Sustainable”, you see 29,90,00,000 initiatives on Google, that it cannot address! Yet something seems wrong. So how do we go about approaching this “Designer’s dilemma”?

Listing my Utopian Ideas!

1. Accept and get aware of current state — “We may have not fully explored our sensitivities with Natural or the Cultural world. Our cultural knowledge based on Language or Technology may be limited in its capacities.”
2. Collectively slow down — “When we know there is a problem in engine, we normally slow down, stand still and repair”
3. Give time to establish your personal connect with Nature — “Figure out your own ways to listen, talk, adapt with divine creation and not blindly rely on objective symbolic, religious, cultural, scientific (so on) systems”
4. Play — “Experiment, note down, enjoy, share your experience by building new live situations for experiencing directly, not by writing papers, documenting or sharing on facebook!”
5. Make it Alive — “There are already countless dead projects! Pointless to add one more. Something can come to its liveliness when participants are alive with it, however small that could be”
6. Dump old tricks- “They have not worked, so no point basing new ideas on the top of them”Jack Canfield once said, “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” and i will add “ and knowledge” to it?
7. Allow it to brew — “Slowly like wine. Older the better”
8. Watch and involve yourself with “Processing” along with the ways of Nature — “Separation of any sorts may just divide and create mess that is not needed”
9. Allow next Generation get sensitized to nature — “We are too spoilt, toxic! We have nothing great to pass on to them except ‘not’ butt in with our ideas and conceptions”
10. Rethink co-nsumption — “Contemplate on Co-existing with everything around, that should reduce the unnecessary bulk of waste we create.
11. Work with spiritual capacities — “ There is nothing out there! once said a old wise man. Feel thankful for what you have and forget everything”