+ 6.02.2014

CRITICAL DESIGN

   Critical Design is using conceptual design proposals to challenge narrow assumptions and preconceptions about the role products play in everyday life. It's more of an attitude than anything else, a position rather than a method. A lot of people practice that without even knowing to call it Critical Design, and they certainly have their own way of describing what they do. Giving it a name simply draws more activity and attention to the debates related to it.

   Design as critique has many roots, for example Italian Radical Design in the 1970's, which was highly critical of prevailing social values and design ideologies. During the 1990's there was a general move towards conceptual design and noncommercial forms of design like critical design found it easier to exist, though the shift happened mainly in furniture world, and product design is still closely attached to mass market.

   The term of Critical Design origins from Anthony Dunne's book Hertzian Tales (1999). The main practitioners are Dunne, Raby and their graduate students from Royal College of Arts, though there are also other designers who work the similar way.

   The aim of Critical Design is to make us think, but also to raise awareness, expose assumptions, provoke action, spark debate, even entertain in an intellectual way.

   The world where we live in today has become incredibly complex, our relations, desires, fantasies, hopes and fears are very different from those at the beginning of the 20th century, but many ground ideas of design come from the early 20th century. The world has changed, but design has not; Critical Design is one of many movements stemming from changes in design, for it to stay relevant to our complex lives.

   Critical Design also can be humorous, though it's often misused. The goal should be satire, but often parody or pastiche are achieved, which reduce the effectiveness of the message provided. The viewer should experience a dilemma - is this serious or not? Is it real or not? Making up your mind is one part of the process, which can engage the audience in a more constructive way by appealing to its imagination as well as engaging the intellect. Deadpan and black humour work best.

   The biggest misonceptions about Critical Design could be that it's negative and anti-everything; that it's only commentary and cannot change anything; that it's jokey; that it's not concerned with aesthetics; that it's against mass-production; that it's pessimistic; that it's not real; that it's art. To comment the last, Dunne has said that it borrows heavily from art in terms of methods and approaches, but it's not art. Critical design is too close to everyday to be shocking like art is expected to be. It has to be "a bit weird" - too weird and it's considered art, too normal and it will be effortlessly assimilated. If Critical Design is regarded as art, it will be easier to deal with it; as design, it's more disturbing.

   Critical Design is a bit dark, but that's not some goal to achieve. Dark, complex emotions are ignored in design, where people are viewed as obedient and predictable users and consumers. One area Critical Design is questioning is the limited range of emotional and psychological experiences offered through designed products. Design is assumed to make things nice, and that limits us from fully engaging with a designing for the complexities of human nature. The negative is used to draw attention to a scary possibility in the form of a cautionary tale.