DANGER MUSE HAZARDS OF THE DESIGN CRITIC
Design is the intent of the maker. And today, so much that we take for granted has actually been designed: the genetic makeup of your filet mignon, the vanilla-scented atmosphere of the restaurant, your pharmacologically enhanced libido.
Cover of November 2005 Issue of I.D. Magazine
With
so much design pushing itself into the public eye, the critic must look
- and push back. Hazards abound: ad hominem attacks,
self-aggrandizement, the temptation of a handy-but-unfair pun as a
deadline looms ("Eyeland Castaway: Designer Overbored"). Some hazards,
though, uniquely plague design critics.
lists
The media love to rank the ten best blops,(1) the number-one frip, the 100 greatest pippadoos. The value judgments inherent in these shopping lists are not criticism.(2)
Instead, a critic interprets a work and explains to the public why the
design in particular and Design in general matters. The critic selects
but doesn't rank. The public may want a buyer's guide to fraggadorps,
but the critic is obliged to compose a thinker's guide to design. In
this sense, all critics are contrarians.
shopping
Every
consumer who buys tobacco-flavored toothpaste is entitled to fill out a
nasty feedback form, but that doesn't make him a critic. Consumers
don't need backgrounds in design or marketing to justify their
responses. They need only to open the magazine, turn on the TV, or walk
through the store to speak their minds about what they know best: their
consumption. Critics are consumers, too, but the greatest hazard of
being a critic is to equate it with being a consumer. The consumer
experience counts, yes, but critics don't think with their credit
cards. Nor are they personal shoppers for the masses.
To
buy or not to buy? That is the consumer's dilemma. For the critic to
adopt the binary attitude of a consumer is market madness, a forfeiture
of purpose. The critic respects the design as a work within a context,
created by an authority, disseminated to the public. The critic asks
not, "Is this for me?" but, instead, "Why was this made?"
identity crises
Design
critics tend to be self-appointed. If design can be consumed, and
everyone's a consumer, then we can all be design critics. This fact
tends to deflate the critic's ego.(3) In self-doubt, the critic
sabotages his or her own opinions with the plastique of qualifiers and
the tiger trap of habitual deference to other authorities.(4)
Hobbled by an identity in crisis, the critic limps to the sidelines
and, remote control in hand, becomes as passive a viewer as any
home-shopping enthusiast.(5)
ventriloquism
The
design critic does not let the businessperson, academic, journalist, or
even designer speak through her. The design critic resists the lingo of
the scrutinized subject and favors the language of criticism.
Put
another way, the design critic does not overidentify with her subject.
The critic must remain an intermediary between the design and the
audience who wants to appreciate it. A critic can't do this properly if
she adopts corporatespeak, designspeak, academic jargon, or the
third-person neutrality of journalistic recounting. Critical language
is nimble, flexible, ambivalent, theoretical, personal, rambling, and
occasionally contradictory. Design a brochure or corporate identity, a
first-aid kit or a stun gun, and you aren't, as a rule, encouraged to
contradict yourself, mix messages, be for smoking as well as against
it, be for your company as well as suspicious of it, hide the stun gun
beneath the antibacterial bandages. Designers make one choice and
communicate one message.(6) Critics don't paddle in this pond.
Critics can make three choices, explore tentative propositions, muddy
the waters. Critical writing is not catalog copy, or a mission
statement. Criticism adapts language to its revelatory purpose.
mindless authority
Design
has a problem with authority. The measure of a designer's creative
power varies widely among projects. Clients exert final control and
take full credit. Designers often prefer anonymity, especially when the
design sucks. Ignoring sticky questions of relative authority means
crafting slick fictions and upholding the pretense of a designer's
creative control. Calibrating relationships among members of a design
team and client representatives presents a troubling matter of
empirical inquiry, the findings of which are sure to be as lively as a
judicial ruling on a multi-party negligence suit. Rarely will we have
the patience for that degree of parsing.
Critics,
however, can't resort to simple appreciation of the object. Critics
need an authority in whom to invest the maker's intent. The art critic
has the artist; the literary critic, the novelist. The design critic
has maybe a roster of contributors, including multiple clients and
design teams. To avoid this difficulty, critics employ the passive
voice, imparting to the object its own intent to be whatever it is.
"The design is intended to be used," etc. Intent, however, is the main
character in the critic's story and, like any main character worth
following, invites scrutiny as it defies summary.
Good criticism is like good fiction: it makes you wish the characters were real.
David
Barringer is well aware that another hazard of being a design critic is
the temptation to write an essay on the hazards of being a design
critic.
1 In the August 2005 Esquire, the subtitle for the product survey 'The Esquire Ten' reads: "There is power in things. The right things."
2 Magazines allow consumables to roam through their pages, but they departmentalize design criticism, if they include it at all. Design criticism should not be confused with product showcases (which depend on editorial judgment) or with design journalism.
3 In 'What's My Motivation?',from Emigre 64, Shawn Wolfe defines his identity crisis as a designer in terms of conflict between the personal and the professional: "Actually I felt ashamed for thinking it [redesigning a gum wrapper] mattered at all in the first place," and, "It's silly, but I'm a designer and can't help but notice these things." His discomfort arises from a conflation of the consumer perspective (it's just a gum wrapper) with the designer perspective (I care about design), and it's an ambivalence all too easily shared by design critics. In the Jan/Feb 2005 Print, Grant Widmer cites as a virtue of a photo book that it never lets "savvier-than-thou design criticism interfere with their world of fun."
4 In the May 2005 I.D., book reviewer Nancy Levinson admits, after citing the defects of a Phaidon title, "I do hate to be a spoilsport." In the May/June 2005 Print, book reviewer Colin Berry quips, after citing the defects of Graffiti World, "But who cares?" And even the indefatigable Rick Poynor, in reviewing The Push Pin Graphic for Eye 54, confesses, "It feels churlish to complain about such an enjoyable book." These reflexive apologies reveal a charming paradox: The design critic doubts the legitimacy of criticism but stands in awe of its power to affect sales. To avoid the stigma of being a critic, design writers may defer to other design critics, namely by adhering to the journalistic convention of fielding quotes from experts. In the Jan/Feb 2005 Step Inside Design, Chantal Omodiagbe relies on Rick Poynor's observations, and in a critical essay in Dot Dot Dot 7, Rob Giampetro depends on Susan Sontag's arguments.
5 Voting from home, however, constitutes the essence of Mike Kippenhan's call for an online American Idol-inspired program entitled Design Idol. In Emigre 65, Kippenhan suggests that designs from around the country compete for the critical approval of judges and the votes of an online audience.
6 As a consumable, a design may express a designer's intent while still being subject to misuse by the consumer who, say, uses a screwdriver to puncture her neighbor's tires.
About this article
Reprinted with permission from the November 2005 issue of I.D.