Freya Wilson - Graphic Branding & Identity In an article for the Art History Archive entitled ‘Anti-design’ Charles Moffat describes the Italian art movement of the 1960’s to the 1980’s as “a reaction against what many avant-garde designers at the time saw as the perfectionist aesthetics of Modernism” by so-called “dissatisfied” “design rebels”. Essentially, Anti-design is a subversion of minimalist principles and everything that people believed that design ought to be and do within this time, turning ordinary objects on their head to consistently question and challenge the status quo. With reference to the poster child of the Anti-design movement, the Panton chair designed by Vernor Panton in 1963, the iconic S shaped chair embodies all of the rebellious principles that summed up this time - asking its audience why does a chair have to have four legs? Why does it have to be perpendicular? Why does it have to be boring? With this in mind, I must admit to appreciating the core principles of anti-design, championing the questioning of existing practices and the act of challenging the status quo. As after all it is only critique like this that can lead to the much needed change and innovation that we want to see within our society In the exhibition ‘Waste Age: What can design do?’, the concept of design started to transform from being seen as the problem of our capitalist and wasteful society, to the solution that can save us from it. It is this constant reshaping of what design is and what it should be that really has the ability to do good in our world. However, to me this is the purpose of design anyways - we should not need to invent and name a subcategory for this - it is not anti-design it's just design, plain and simple. To me, the whole purpose of design is to question, critique, to evoke reactions, and to solve. Therefore it is my opinion that anti-design is not anti at all, it is very much ‘for-design’. Furthermore I find this label of ‘anti-design’ rather classist. It is perpetually perceived within the media that if middle to upper class people adopt values of minimalism like the trendy ‘capsule closet’ it is chic, desirable and heavily praised - and yet if those with lower disposable incomes have to go without the basics that a lot of us take for granted, it is trashy and looked down upon. William Morris' famous quote “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful” is quite patronising to someone who doesn’t live in a large stately home handed down to him from his wealthy family like Morris had the comfort of doing. Additionally, in the critical piece ‘The Rise of Anti-design’, published in Creative Review by Megan Williams more recently, Williams describes the new-found popularity of designers “battling against minimalism with a visual language evoking the early internet.” And also summed up in Aiga Eye On Design 'The New Wave of Anti-Design’, as the increasing popularity of “the ugly, the untidy and the cheap”. This notion can also be seen entering popular culture and the fashion ecosphere with collections from big name brands like Yeezy and Balenciaga donning clothes for $1625 and up distressed and riddled with holes, as well as Offwhites signature ironic quotation marks on their “clothing”. As someone from a lower economic background, I do not agree with the trivialised fetishisation of the working class for fashion under the name of ‘anti-design’. Despite this, it is fair to say that in my short time within the design industry during my DPS year, I have seen first hand that abundance of strict rules with design, and the right and wrong answers that people seem to constrain design down to. But design to me should break rules, not create them - design is subjective and so will mean different things to different people - it cannot fit into a box, in fact we are told so often to think outside the box. We do not need to pick a side, ‘less is more’ vs ‘less is a bore’ - why can't we just appreciate, enjoy and learn from design, whilst continuing to question it. I personally do not think that we need to overcomplicate design by recategorizing it into subjects like this. I am anti anti-design. Design is simply design. In the same way we could argue whether jaffa cakes are cakes or biscuits - or we could just tuck in and enjoy them for what they are.
1 Comment
Robert Urquhart
1/7/2022 12:24:47 pm
Anti anti design is a great title and I love the design is just design - interesting from a design criticism point of view. You do a great job of describing things - therefore if it 'just design' then the context wouldn't be important - I reckon it's more than that - as you have displayed here - it is context and intent! Thanks for sharing
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