lessbaddesign

RESPONSIBLE DESIGN

The fact that the term “responsible design” exists strikes me as a bit troubling. Once we acknowledge that design impacts everyone’s lives every day, shouldn’t our baseline of practice be nothing less than acting responsibly? I’m trying to imagine going to a doctor who bragged about practicing “responsible medicine”. That term doesn’t exist. There’s just “medicine”, and then there’s “malpractice.” I prefer this paradigm. “Responsible design” implies that the norm is not necessarily all that responsible. Instead, let’s make the exception the rule, and begin to assume “design” means “responsible design”.

Maybe the only problem with such a shift is that we’d have to charge 95% of  designers with malpractice.

GOOD DESIGN

what is ‘good design’?

somehow i find this question to be more and more difficult to answer. the challenge has been magnified by a proliferation of the term, applied to a myriad of plans and products wrapped in a cellophane of sustainability.

too many examples of ‘good design’ make me wonder whether or not the ‘best design’ would have been no design at all. this is a discouraging situation.

herbert simon famously defined design as “the transformation of existing situations into preferred ones.”

a transformation of a bad situation into a preferred situation is fundamental to design, but by no means ensures that the result can truly be deemed ‘good’. perhaps the best that we can do in many cases is to simply make situations ‘less bad.’ confusing these two qualities may prove to be harmful as we partake in the delusions of so called solutions.

and so, this is my exploration and my aspiration: “less bad” design and less “bad design.”

with some luck, maybe i’ll stumble upon something good.

THE NEW STANDARD

if a design improves the world, we call it good design.

we are far too generous.

better isn’t always “good”.

it is simply “less bad.”

design needs a new reference point.