Good design is a joke.
Paola Antonelli is the Senior Curator of the Department of Architecture & Design, and the head of R&D at MoMA in New York City. She has this to say about humour in design:
“Humor is important in design. Some designers don’t really want to mess with it, but the ones that do have one more way into people’s souls.”¹
What is she talking about? Does she mean novelty products like whoopee cushions? Are they to be our gateway into the souls of fellow humans? Not at all, she’s actually referring to the work of Naoto Fukasawa. Fukasawa was a designer at IDEO before starting his own design office in 2003. He is a great designer with a huge breadth of products. All the photos on this blog are of products Naoto has designed. He is far from novelty. In fact, when I have spoken of him before on this blog, it has been about his aspirations to make his products ‘super normal’. Yet many see his work as humourous.
But he doesn’t mean to be, it’s not something he is trying to bring out. Fascinatingly, he accredits it to a deep understanding of people and how they tick. This is what he says:
“I don’t strive to express humor through my designs at all. But I’m asked about humor and the role it plays in my designs often. I think it’s because I understand human behavior better now. I have a strong desire to actually see human instinct and not just the psychology behind it. As a result I’m able to see beyond what the person himself can see or feel. When the person realizes that I’ve seen beyond what he’s conscious of, he’s taken by surprise. And when human beings realize something new about themselves, the new self-awareness can be a bit embarrassing. That moment of self-awareness and embarrassment can be humorous as well. It’s the same with jokes. You can make a joke and create humor because you know the timing at which your audience will laugh. People will actually laugh before the joke hits, because we can usually detect it, you know?”²
I find that really interesting. User or human-centred design so well done that people cannot help but smile or even laugh when they see it. Fukasawa has ‘seen beyond what we’re conscious of’ and takes us by surprise which makes us chuckle. It all comes from a deep understanding of people.
There’s nothing inherently funny about a wall mounted CD player, yet Fukasawa’s design makes me smile everytime I see it. It’s so unusual, and yet it’s not. It’s just a square with a CD spinning in it’s centre. It’s so unbelievably ordinary. It uses a pull chord to switch it on. Showers use pull chords. They’re boring in and of themselves. On any other product they would be boring. But here it is exciting.
And that is I think the key thing in all design, to be human centred. And Fukasawa just does it so well that it’s funny. The way to be a better designer then is to understand human behaviour better. To know and love people better. To know them better than they know themselves. Out of that will come inspiration for the best design, not out of glossy magazines or the examples of design that history has given us. Designers should know people inside out before they know anything else.
I struggled to get my head around the concept of ‘super normal’. Can that be an over-arching design philosophy for everything? I wasn’t sure. In truth I think it’s difficult to have any hard and fast rules that work for all design everywhere. There is only one, the golden rule: to serve the user. All good design should be user-centred. Every other design philosophy must flow from that fountain. It is the only rule for which I can find no exception.
- Paola Antonelli. Helvetica / Objectified / Urbanized: The Complete Interviews, edited by Gary Hustwit
- Naoto Fukasawa. Helvetica / Objectified / Urbanized: The Complete Interviews, edited by Gary Hustwit
