UN-TRASHED

One of the most puzzling issues that plague the design community
as well as their clients in contemporary Croatia is the issue of
criteria. Criteria are the subject of heated discussions during
exhibition selections (leading on to further discussions on the
exhibitions being the idealized pictures of the profession without any
real pretensions to depict the reality of our visual environment (1),
during organization of competitions when the decisions by expert judges
are overturned by political and not design professionals, and, last but
not least, in the everyday dilemmas of our clients looking at a new
proposal. Of course, there are other issues in which criteria, or the
lack thereof, play a crucial role in the complex paths through lobbies,
ideologies and corporate manipulations, as we are being warned by First
Things First Manifesto, Adbusters, No Logo and other voices of
consciousness that barely, in a vague echo, seem to reach the ears of
our designers who are far from the prospect of being able to have much
choice in their assignments, satisfied by merely getting paid for the
job.
Last year, when we organized the
'Design&Morality' exhibition, we felt convinced that we were doing
the right thing by questioning the responsibility of a designer towards
society. Today, a year later, nothing has really changed, though design
is definitely talked about a great deal, and although some important
things have happened (such as lectures by Nigel Holmes and Peter Bilak
or the fact that some works by Croatian designers have been included in
some of the world s most prestigious design publications), yet the
education of the public remains neglected and the whole situation given
a lot of lip service but not much else. Still, one has to be fair and
admit that young Croatian designers today are more willing and prepared
to face issues older generations managed to neglect. The collaboration
of ULUPUH and HDD, our two graphic design associations, has finally
overcome the critical phase of rivalry and seem to understand the
importance of acting together to benefit the profession. On the other
hand, the real question is what the profession can actually do to help
itself.
In all the discussions and brainstorming sessions
that we have been conducting over the past few years, the same two
issues always came across as the origins of every problem we stirred -
client education and respect for the profession. The fact that these
are not our isolated local problems, as our colleagues from abroad
inform us, makes them seem just more overwhelming. Our clients cannot
respect the profession unless they have developed criteria for design
evaluation. Criteria that are mostly used in our society, apart from
the eternal nepotism, mostly come down to a low price and a general
likeability of a designer s work. New technologies nowadays allow
everyone to think of themselves as designers, skills such as the
ability to draw are long forgotten, whereas the necessary level of
visual culture is never even mentioned anymore. The direct result is
the market overwhelmed by amateurs without any clue about design but
with sufficient computer skills and low prices to recommend them to
clients who, mostly unable to see the difference between the work of a
professional designer and that of an amateur, happily embrace the
cheaper option. Therefore it often happens that good works end up in
trash whilst our visual environment gets progressively more and more
polluted by products of miserable quality. The problem, though, is not
in the amateurs themselves, as they can be forgiven their own oblivion
to their incapacity as designers, but the clients who should know how
to evaluate the works they purchase (or toss into trash). Most clients
firmly believe that they do, indeed, possess these criteria, whereby
they mostly rely on the like/dislike technique.
Namely,
the general truth at the beginning of the 21st century in Croatia is
that design is purely a matter of liking. Surely we cannot expect our
clients to display a detailed knowledge of design, but is having
confidence in designers who already possess this knowledge too much to
ask for?
Many designers have had first-hand experiences
with their best ideas being pushed away as the client decided they
would not be sufficiently understandable to the general public, whose
capacity to grasp ideas, according to most clients, expires with
anything different and more provocative than the most stereotypical
solutions, far away from any ironic or complex interpretations. These
rejected ideas are usually the products of the ingenious moments of
spontaneous inspiration that leave the clients with puzzled expression
of uneasiness about their lack of understanding or the lack of courage
to exploit them. On the other hand, there are clients who wish to
appear 'modern' at all costs, whereby they often fall victims to the
predominant trend and stick to mimicking formulas from abroad, instead
of striving to find a contemporary and authentic solution. In this
instance things do appear different in a formal way, but essentially
remain just the same.
If this is the reality that
surrounds us, is what we see in our daily walks through the streets, by
looking at the magazines and ad campaigns, the true picture of the
quality and authenticity of our designers imagination? Surely not. To
complete this crooked image, what we see at various exhibitions of
graphic design are just accepted works, selected according to the taste
and criteria of a few, without much reference to reality. Official
exhibitions usually limit entries to accepted and printed works,
consequently making rejected works unpresentable to the public. So what
should then happen to the works we keep hidden from others and
ourselves at the bottom of our drawers or dusty digital archives, works
we have never showcased as they failed to satisfy the taste of our
clients?
After the 'Design&Morality' exhibition, full
of enthusiasm and convinced that, if we cannot change the situation, we
can at least hint at the problems, we decided to continue the series of
problem-oriented exhibitions and make an exhibition of rejected works
as an antithesis to the typical graphic design manifestations in our
country.
The goal of this exhibition is precisely to show
the real situation on the graphic design scene through the relationship
between the clients and the works of professional designers. These are,
above all, works the designers were satisfied with, their first and
authentic solutions that were either rejected or subjected to so many
compromises by the client that they ceased to have any resemblance to
the original idea. We hope that this exhibition will give its small
contribution in provoking the public opinion and confronting our
clients with missed opportunities. To better illustrate the comparison
between designers authentic ideas and the works our clients consider to
be well designed, we decided to show rejected works in juxtaposition
with the works that were finally accepted and published, regardless of
them being works by the same designer or another author (or amateur).
After
we sent out the call for entries we received many responses from
designers both from Croatia and abroad. As the exhibition entry, due to
lack of means, was limited to Croatian designers, we decided to expand
the project on the Internet as a work in progress and thus give an
opportunity to authors outside our country to showcase their rejected
works. The UN-TRASHED web-site
will, therefore for the next year, be the space where all interested
designers will be able to present their new rejected works, comment on
existing choices and discuss the issue of criteria. Of course, this
process might give us an opportunity to summarize the situation after a
year s time and, hopefully, affirm the need for a regular manifestation
where rejected works from all around the world could be shown in a year
or two intervals, thus helping complete the global picture of graphic
design profession. See you on the 1st Untrashed Festival in Zagreb...
(1) Dejan Krsic, 'Fiasco follows form', 2001, Globus supplement on design for Design days 2001.
For more information, contact:
E: www.untrashed.com
W: