| The Art Directors Club Newsletter |
Designism
Brian Collins kicked off the evening by introducing Tony Hendra, whose book, The Messiah of Morris Avenue, partially inspired the event. In his remarks, Hendra discussed fundamentalism and how it excited outrage and passions in art and design in the early 70s and early 80s. "For some reason...I don't see these extremes of feeling and thought mirrored in the images and designs, the visual vocabulary of my day-to-day environment." He asked, "Is it true that design, in a general sense, is not reflecting the great passions of our time? Is there a hunger for a revolution, or perhaps a re-energizing would be a word, of design? Is it worth organzing that energy into a group or movement?"
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Left: ADC vice-president Brian Collins introduces the concept and inspiration behind Designism.
Right: Tony Hendra provides opening remarks.
When Steven Heller asked Milton Glaser to define "designism," he explained that the "-ism" expressed the idea of a movement and the assumption of a political position that says something about your relationship to the world. "In this case," he said, "it raises the issue of whether design, as an activity, has a social context, whether or not it's only about persuasion and selling goods, or whether it has a social intention that creates a better world."
Each panelist showed key examples of work that exemplified design for social change. George Lois, cited his campaign to free Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. "All I ever tried to do was kick-ass in a big proletariat way," he said. "All I understand is how to communicate fast and change people's mind fast in a big popular culture way. What you try to do is come up with ideas that generate big goddamn big thinking." |
Jessica Helfand remarked, "I think that there are many ways to do this. You can write, you can collaborate, you can take pictures, you can do design, you can do anything. But you have to do something." She continued, "Creative people have no excuse because you can all do so many things well. Find some point of entry where you can make a difference, because you will."
Kurt Anderson advised creatives to "take it beyond preaching to the ideologically-converted-already." In comparing today's media landscape to that of 40 years ago he said, "It's more difficult now, I think, in the age of the internet, where media is so diffuse. There are fewer things that have that 'everybody looks at that' impact. It was more possible to galvanize opinion by being brilliant with posters and the covers of magazines in 1966 than it is in 2006."
Glaser noted, "The truth of the matter is that Karl Rove is the greatest designer in American history. He's so much better than anyone else around. He's much better than you, George! He has transformed this culture by using symbolic language and imagery. He has made us a nation of sheep. He has transposed everything. Why is it that this guy has come up with a vocabulary of form, the images, the marketing. I mean, this guy is the greatest marketing genius of all time, but you have to call him a great designer as well. We are infants, compared to this guy. He has understood the central issues of peoples' responses in a way that nobody on this panel or in this room has ever understood."
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"We know a lot of people," said James Victore. "And a lot of us know really important people who can just do it like this [snaps]. It's always about getting on the phone and talking to people and seeing how far it can go." |
"The field that we are in has always had an ethical and moral dimension to it," Glaser continued. "There was no such thing as the idea of design, independent of a good society. It's those people who make forms and who perceive beauty and think of that as being essential to their life have some link to ideas about ethics. That's why we can even initiate a conversation like this. Morality, ethics, the idea of creating a good society and worrying about what people did in that society is a pecularity of the art world."
A when a student asked if the panelists see this kind of energy in young designers today, Helfand responded, "You have an incredible asset, which is great facility in a world of communications. The fact is, you have at your disposal unbelievable communicative tools and a future with which to use them."
"You guys are powerful," said Victore. "We can do this stuff. So go do it tonight, and have fun doing it." Hendra summed up by reiterating that the approaches put forth by the panelists are not mutually exclusive. "I think you can get into peoples' bloodstreams and you can get into their faces and these two things are, perhaps, extremes. But in between, as Jessica says, you can provoke, you can subvert. You can do things quietly, but effectively. What you can't do is do nothing."