VERNACULAR DESIGN

We’re Here to be Bad

Tibor Kalman and Karrie Jacobs

-       Bad as in taking the design brief the client gives and rewrite it

-       Marketing, the science of manufacturing desire

o   People express individuality through the products they buy – Scion

-       Global Mall

-       Selling Out

-       Package more important than product

-       Indigenous cultures move to the culture of bigness

-       Vernacular, a process that creates work which has an unfiltered, emotional quality

-       Appropriate design is design that pleases the largest number of people

-       Inappropriate design is a way of making people think about why they like what they like and how they learned to like those things

o   Design that ignores professional standards

Kalman and Jacobs discuss the idea of ‘bad’ design as a movement in which designers should “rewrite” what the client’s demands to improve design and business.  Today ‘good’ design is just a product of commercial interests that is concerned more with a company’s image (the packaging) than with the actual product and it’s functionality.  Marketing today focuses more on trying to create an image or idea through there products.  Companies are attempting to mold the consumer to with these false ‘ideas’ to create a cult following.  I recently came across an example of this when listening to the radio.  A commercial came on promoting Scion vehicles that are meant to be cool and for urban consumers.  At the very last few seconds of the commercial the spokesperson exclaims, “discover individuality with Scion,” which claims that the consumer is not already individual unless they drive a Scion.  This idea to me is appalling especially in such a subliminal format.  This idea of blurting out ideas or packaging symbols that promote individuality is a complete mockery to the consumer.  Every person already possesses some if not all the qualities big business is trying to sell to us.  It is necessary for the designer to take responsibility and make a change in the marketing of these qualities of human life and success.  The designer should become an “outsider” who should prevent the negative ideas projected by companies that create competition and start to think like the consumer.  Every designer has the ability to think like the consumer and assist the consumer with his or her essential needs.  Vernacular design is an important process because of the “unfiltered [and] emotional quality” that is associated with design.  If designers become somewhat emotionally invested with design and products then the products, promotion, marketing, etc…will be more true to the actual product and the consumer.

Professionalism, Amateurism and the Boundaries of Design

Gerry Beegan and Paul Atkinson

-       Modernism has lead to the constant changing relationship between amateur and professional

-       Profession, a public statement or vow

-       DIY (Design It Yourself)

o    Targets younger and more experimental designers

o    Bypass commercial uniformity and gaining a sense of self-satisfaction

-       Craft – self-reliance, earth-friendly, reuse and appropriation of objects

-       Technology

-       Universal relevance to daily life

-       Design to help people to understand the principles and complexity of visual communication

-       Arts and Crafts Movement

-       Dilettantes, individuals who dabble in a range of activities without dedicating or committing themselves to any one field – vast knowledge of art and media/consumer

§  Embraced a very wide field – the ability to dabble, combine and cross discipline’s, without attachment to an institution or a professional view point

Like Kalman and Jacobs, Beegan and Atkinson describe the relationship between professional and amateur.  Those who are deemed professionals are viewed as designers who do everything pristine and precise, while the title amateur has negative connotations of poor design, craft, and uneducated.  The amateur is viewed as someone who participates in vernacular design; the everyday, drab, crafts of art.  Although a professional title comes with prestige and recognition, today some consumers view most professional designers and advertisers as being untrue to the public.  The professional is suppose to be a status of someone who makes a “public statement and a vow” that benefits the community.  With all of the subliminal messages in advertisements claiming their product will propel you to a higher status in society or will help you find some sort of self identity nirvana; designers and advertisers should be staying to true to the value and functionality of products that are “relevant to [our] daily life”.  The answer seems to be that the amateur can help revolutionize the design industry to reconnect with the public.  The vernacular design associated with amateurs can be used in a positive way, because it’s the essence of the average person.  The average consumer participates in his or hers own way be attempting to become an individual, being creative, and trying to connect with his or hers environment.  Some of us seem to buy into consumerism while others practice in DIY work.  DIY to me is the very foundation of being an amateur and creates someone who has a very eclectic eye for design.  I have practiced DIY methods applying it to music and art.  I have always had a variety of interests in music, photography, print making, painting, drawing, sculpture, pretty much if you can make it with your hands I wanted to know how.  After reading and learning the term ‘dilettante’ I realized I was indeed a dilettante.  I basically started to teach myself all of my interests and when I entered Mason Gross having a solid foundation to learn from seemed to excel my abilities.  I believe having such a variety of interests and not really wanting to focus on just one area allows me to learn and adapt quickly to new ideas, situations, or problems.  I believe having a vast knowledge of all kinds of media, who is an outsider, and is directly connected, with the making of things it allows an individual to develop skills that can be up to par of a professional.  Although I know I am nowhere near a professional level yet, I believe that level can be achieved through the ideas and practices of the amateur who seems to be more connected and invested with public statements and vows.