(This is my ‘yes but/yes and’ to Edwin Heathcote’s column in the Financial Times last month. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)
All you have to do is open the pages of a daily newspaper (or tap on the app) to realise the design industry has got nothing to do with progress. As a woman in the world, if I had to point to what has improved my life for the better in the past 10 years, I would point to cheaper access to HRT since 2023, the abolishment of the tampon tax (and the extension of the relief to period underwear), the decriminalisation of abortion last June and free NHS services when I need them.
If I think about what makes my life worse, the dark patterns of social media, e-bikes on pavements, restaurant menus I can’t read, recipe websites with a million pop-ups, clothes that don’t fit me because I don’t fit the national standard all come to mind immediately. All design decisions.
This isn’t a new state of affairs. The material world doesn’t provide us with answers to social and political problems, it is shaped by them. If we’re politically weak, shitty buildings are built by corrupt building companies (see the 2011 Québec scandal or Southwark council’s recent demolition of a 10 year old building) and public transport remains inaccessible to wheelchair users. If we don’t give legislators teeth, we expose people to BPA, microplastics and mold amongst other sins. Inevitably, if there’s a loophole, someone will design for it. Design doesn’t stop bad ideas from taking shape, people and politics do.
Continuing to point to Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s kitchen (built according to the principles of American home economics celebrity Christine Frederick) and the Masters’ Houses at the Bauhaus (the construction of which was funded by the city of Dessau, the only reason why they moved there) doesn’t get us anywhere because those were designers with very little interest in the common man. Only the elite could afford their buildings or their objects and so it remains today. We confused one off architectural experiments, interiors and furniture for ‘design’ when really we should have called it art. We saw a mission when we should have seen an advert.
The likes of Ingvar Kamprad’ IKEA and Gordon Russell‘s Utility Scheme actually translated the Bauhaus’s flat, polished or curved surfaces into objects the general public could afford but noone thinks of those as design. We have been trained on a visual diet of unaffordable interiors that in no way represents the way we live nor what really matters. Last time I checked, Eames furniture doesn’t feature in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. So why lay all these expectations at design’s feet?
Well, it’s easier to blame objects for our human foibles isn’t it? It’s easier to say design failed us, rather than admit we don’t have the patience or political will to shape the way designers work. It’s easier to think we’ll solve climate change with graphic design than to force our government to adopt the right to repair.
The plethora of bad design just reminds us of all the convening, organising, campaigning and voting we’ve failed to do in the past 20 years. But hey, it’s never too late to turn it all around. Just don’t blame designers for our apathy, they were just doing their job.