Designs for fragile personalities in anxious times

Dunne and Raby Designs use design to stimulate to discussion and debate. Instead of designing objects that stimulate to behaviour, they design objects that stimulate questions. They work within the field of Critical Design, not meaning that they are negative to everything, anti-consumerist and against design. Their objective is to use critical design in terms of critical thinking and that it is about questioning things and to understand what is behind them.

They develope a design approach that embodies an understanding of the consumer as a complex exhistencial being.

In the project ´Design for personalities in anxious times 2004/2005´they focus on irrational but real anxieties such as fear for alien abduction. Rather than ignoring them, like most design would, or to use them to create paranoia, they treated them as phobias as they were perfectly reasonable and they designed objects to humour their owners.

These objects take in consideration the psychological realisme of people and designs for real problems and for how people really are, rather than for how they are supposed to be.

´Hideaway furniture is for people who are afraid of being abducted. Each opens in a surprising way without disturbing objects displayed on its surface. The poses encourage the occupant to feel in control, proud and comfortable, the opposite of a foetal position. There are three versions.´  Michael Anastassiades

Paralell worlds

Jeremy Rifkin on "the empathic civilization" | Video on TED.com

´ Empathy is the opposite of utopia. Is it possible that we could extend our empathy to the entire human race -as an extended family, and to our fellow creatures? If it is possisle to imagine that , we may be able to save our species and save our planet. Empathy is the invisible hand…´

Jeremy Rifkin on "the empathic civilization" | Video on TED.com

Ex-designer

Marti Guixè is a Barcelona-based ex-designer. Ex-designer began in 2001 as a definition of Marti Guixè´s activity in the context of design, emerging as a consequence of the decontextualization attributes to his work. With his project ´ ex-designer` he took on a new status within his own profession, trying to break free of the limits implified by the discipline. 

Marti Guixè is outspoken in his dislikes of design as stylized objects and form. His work claims to alter ways of seeing and thinking and evokes active engagement on the part of the consumer. He has a critical and provocative attitude towards design and therefore his work is sometimes associated with the critical design movement, popularized by Dunne and Raby, but his work seems more playful and less moralistic.

´HIBYE pills´ was a project in 2001, where he provided pills for the worksphere that accomplish the following functions and desired effects: 

1) Consentrate everywhere

2) Carry Nothing

3) Filter

4. Relax everywhere

5) Breathe-e

6) Write Everywhere

7) Switch on/off

8) Flirt

9) Approach everyone

10) Collect experiences

11) Taste local food

12) Get AURA

13) Share

14) Give Memory gifts

15) Take Care

16) Convince

17) Develope ideas

18) Isolate everywhere

19) Consider everywhere as indoor

20) Drink water

21) Consume

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unkwREGyphg

Delete

Ji Lee is a designer and creative editor at the Google Creative Lab, who is known for his illustrations and public art projects.

The streets of New York and our outdoor spaces all over the world are cluttered with intrusive and ugly ads, filling each and every empty wall. In 2009 a massive takeover of these billboards was organized and 126 billboards were whitewashed by dozens of volunteers. Over 80 artists transformes the advertising spaces into their personal piece of art. This picture shows Ji Lees contribution.

He has also done a ´Bubble Project´ which consisted of 500, 000 printed stickers that look like speech bubbles used in comic strips. He posted these blank speech bubbles on top of advertisments throughout New York city allowing anyone to write their comments and thoughts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7emqK4Kb_8g

Nothing

The New Zealand- based graphic designer Fiona Jack created in 1997 an anti-ad campaign, where she conducted a campaign for a non- existent brand called ´Nothing TM`. The billboards showed slogans like `Nothing TM. What you´ve been looking for´. People even started ringing up asking where they could buy `Nothing`.

In some advertising campaigns the product doesn´t play any role at all. You could easily advertise air as a product.

Ethics, or Aesthetics?

`Our western culture has gone ´aesthetic´. Everything has to be beautiful. In other words it has to have style. The beauty of the exterior suffers no dissonance gladly. Wrinkles are ironed out, muscles are broadened and spots washed away. Everything gleams and glistens.´

Ref. Renny Ramaker, Droog Design in Context

Many designers today are distancing themselves from simply creating beautiful forms and objects. Rather than being inspired by glossy design magazines and glossy materials, they take their inspiration from the anonomous, everyday, meaningless and the natural. 

Tejo Remy´s ´Chest of Drawers´ partly represents a distancing against trendy design. Todays emphasis on the young and new, encourages us to recycle forms, materials and objects. I find it invaluable to base design on what is already there. The reasoning behind this work interests me because I too am interested at looking at reuse of everyday objects. I like the notion of using everyday objects in a variety of new ways, in new contexts, to create different outcomes. Although I am not solely concerned with the use of readymade items, I find it interesting to look at the benefits of secondary use in our ´throw-away´ society.

In the welter of new things we look for recognizability and familiarity.

What´s behind design?

I believe that design has to be about something and that it should be meaningful. It seems as though todays design stands and falls with the choice of the right shape and materials. The immaterial factors of an object or product are of great importance to me and is something I will think about in the design process. 

Why does a doorbell have to be a plastic button that makes a terrible noice?

Peter van der Vagts doorbell ´Buttoms Up´ has little to show for itself at first sight. It is only when you press the button that you experience something. The combination of seeing the hammer tapping the glass illusrtates the whole principle of the doorbell. Here experience definetly comes before product. Recognition and surprise together provides the experience. 

The world is changing....

Starting to feel a vague discontent with the developements in our society, I began to think about the designers´responsibility and to question my motives for producing work. I believe that the designers responibility must go beyond how the work is recieved in the commercial market place.