NextD Journal I ReReThinking Design Special Issue, April 2007
Kristian Bengtsson |
Beautiful Diversion
FutureLab, Sweden
HATS OFF FOR RENAISSANCE PUNKS I was asked to comment on Bruce Nussbaum’s article ‘Are designers the enemy of design?’, and from reading it upside down, inside out, between and in between the lines, discussing and arguing with friends about it. I cannot get my head around it. It left me with feelings of ambivalence, tiredness and inspiration. It was supposed to be 500 words and it is not. These are my thoughts and ramblings regarding Bruce’s article and design. THE ARTICLE It functions as a great basis for discussion and dialogue. It has some valuable insights, as well as some strange and naïve accusations. It is too much of a rhetorical and dissecting game. It seems to have the ability of creating confusion and feelings to appear. It is dissecting and sometimes pointless in its nature. It tires me as well as inspires me. THE THIN RED LINE OF SUCKINESS The American language is sophisticated; it is a language that, mastered and used in the right way, can turn the combination of many ones into a single powerful whole. American English is also confusing in its ability-through-usage to confuse and trick people into (false) belief. It is about material and once you know the material you are working with, you will become friends with it, you will hate it and love it, you will be able to do things with it that other people cannot. Bruce’s material is words and through that material his intentions take shape. Sometimes shapes suck. An interesting perspective with knowing your material is that you are now capable of getting it to do things that are amazing (and sometimes misleading). When it comes to working with words as your material and knowing it, you now have the power to assign qualities to things that they possibly cannot or should not have. A misleading shift of focus happens... we focus on things instead of actions, on nouns instead of verbs. We lose original meaning and project (formerly only human) abilities onto dead things, as if they were able to take action themselves. And it is also the way I consciously chose to describe the article in the paragraph above this one: I simply gave the article qualities it cannot possibly have. There is no danger in that action by default, as long as we remember that it is Bruce’s intentions and expressions that take shape through the article. It is when we lose track of that and mix things up, when verbs become nouns. This is happening with design. PEOPLE CAN SUCK I know a bunch of people. I have known more and met many over the years. Some of them do and some did suck. But most people I have met or that I know are truly engaging and inspiring. All of them are human beings, some of them are designers. DESIGNERS DO NOT SUCK In the context of me being asked to comment on Bruce’s article, I have picked up on and read both interesting, very interesting and just plain angry articles and thoughts about design. In hardly any of these expressions have I read about what it actually is that makes a person a designer. What kind of human capabilities and qualities are needed?
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