Born Shouting

I think that the concept of automation taking over routine tasks to the degree envisioned by Papanek in this piece is still a utopian dream (those children stitching footballs in Asia are still a long way from becoming designers) but the description of design as meaningful and crucial is one I wholly agree with.

I’ve hopefully tidied up some of Papanek’s tangled wording at the start of this quotation.

In a world in which [...] work [will] increasingly [...] be done through automation and in which most routine supervision, quality control, and computation are performed by word and data processors, the work of the design team (research, social planning, creative innovation) is one of the few meaningful and crucial activities left to man. Inescapably, designers will be needed to help set goals for all of society.

Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, Victor Papanek

Papanek hits the nail on the head again (almost) with his assessment of the most appropriate approach to good design:

Integrated design will concern itself … with unity …
…
If we speak of integrated design, of design-as-a-whole, of unity we need designers able to deal with the design process comprehensively.
…
Integrated design is not a set of skills, techniques or rules but should be thought of as a series of functions occurring simultaneously rather than in a linear sequence. These simultaneous “events” can be thought of (in biological terms) as initial fertilisation, developmental growth, production (…), and evaluation … leading to reiteration or regeneration or both, thus forming a closed feedback loop.

Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, Victor Papanek

Papanek’s assertion, that the functions of integrated design should occur ‘simultaneously rather than in a linear sequence‘, is a bit too much at the same time for me, I do agree that they can overlap or occur out of sequence or occasionally in parallel. I strongly agree with his overall process (as any good systems developer would) and his recognition of the need for breadth in the skill sets of designers. It’s a shame that more people who commission and manage projects don’t see things the same way.

For a long time I’ve had a bit of a thing about form and function working together not apart. It’s an ambition that I try to apply to my work, but don’t feel I succeed in - I too often get sidetracked by tacky form or unnecessary function. The visual imagery of the eviscerated creature that Papanek conjures up brings this concept across especially well in the following quote:

The “skin” designers ( … stylists) disdainfully avoid the “guts” designers (engineers … ); form and function are artificially split. But neither a creature nor a product can survive for long when its skin and guts are separate.

Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, Victor Papanek

One of the very many lessons we must relearn in order to reforge Western society into a more sustainable form us to cherish the old - to see ageing as growth rather than decline. Victor Papanek puts it rather well…

Throughout most of human history materials, being organic have aged gracefully. Thatched roofs, wooden furniture, copper kettles, leather aprons, ceramic bowls, for example, would acquire small nicks, scratches, and dents, gently discolour, and acquire a thin patina as part of the natural process of oxidation. Ultimately, many would disintegrate into their organic components. Today we are taught that ageing (of products or individuals) is wrong. We wear, use, enjoy things as long as they look as if they had just been bought. But once the plastic bucket deforms (however slightly), the fake walnut tabletop melts under a cigarette, the anodising on a tumbler slips, we get rid of the offending object.

Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, Victor Papanek

Despite his call for immediacy and having written this over twenty years ago, Papanek was spot on in his call for appropriate design - for needs not wants…

Design for the people’s needs rather than for their wants, or artificially created wants, is the only meaningful direction now.

Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, Victor Papanek

It’s a shame that those words seem to have been largely ignored.

…design is basic to all human activities. The planning and patterning of any act toward a desired, foreseeable end constitutes the design process. Any attempt to separate design, to make it a thing-by-itself, works counter to the inherent value of design as the primary, underlying matrix of life.

Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, Victor Papanek