Designer, Maker, User

Focusing on design’s inherent plurality, the catalogue to the permanent collection on display at the Design Museum’s new building is open-ended on topics related to the question of what design is today, selecting the answers of many actors of the discipline: creators, producers, curators and critics.

Designer Maker User
Design Museum, Designer, Maker, User, Phaidon, 2017, 240 pp

 

The catalogue accompanying the exposition of the permanent collection at the Design Museum's new building in London is expected to reflect the institution's programmatic approach. Hence in its perusal, the central question regards the direction that the entire museum has chosen to follow, and more generally what the function of a design museum might be today.

The variety of offer generated by the title Designer, Maker, User already emerges at the first browse. This triad of operational figures forms the basis of the catalogue, which immediately makes it clear that plurality is one of design's intrinsic prerogatives. Design involves many, is shared by many, and is the result of teamwork. Those of us who have studied the discipline in Italy will notice that Project, Production, Consumption (the actions corresponding to the qualifications mentioned in the title) are highly similar to three of the categories used by Renato De Fusco in 1984 in his repeatedly republished book Storia del Design. The only element lacking on the roll-call is Sales, after which his “cloverleaf theory” would be complete. The fact that this echo comes to mind is an indication of how much the catalogue comes across as more of an interesting updated version of a Design History manual than a classic register of pieces contained in the collection, or a programmatic manifesto of the museum's cultural policies. In another acceptance – and this is the point – perhaps the museum's strategy is contained in this obvious propensity for didactics.
Designer Maker User
Designer Maker User
The three main sections of the catalogue are portraits of the three main actors in the design process. On the designers’ front are featured a compendium of iconic projects (with an unfortunate inflation of chairs) and considerations on what can be defined good design and what operational methods are used. Although the examination of theoretical questions is historically accurate and efficiently summarises two centuries of design, the part dedicated to individual designers who talk about their way of working is less convincing, partly due to the journalistic format.
In its reflection on technology, the catalogue takes on the tone of a historical manual that would make it fit right in with the books for universities and schools. Even when it broaches the subject of contemporaneity and the role of marketing experts, the didactic style remains firmly in place. The last chapters are possibly the most effective on a level of critical writing. In Agents of Change and Design and Business, the link with politics and the theories of macroeconomics allow us to ponder what it means to conceive mass-consumption goods and what their effect is on society.
Designer Maker User
Designer Maker User
The end of the book keeps the concept phase segregated from the finished product. In this way, the world of ideas is represented by a true anthology of extraordinary merit. It features the reproduction of writings otherwise difficult to find. A selection of excerpts follows the logical thread of the development of design through variations in technology and communication over time, making this part worth the entire publication. The overview of pieces, on the other hand, goes no further than being a typological sequence – doubtlessly clear, but hardly inventive.

Upon reading, the catalogue leaves several of its discussion subjects open. The principle one, as mentioned, regards the museum’s general cultural strategy. What emerges is only an indirect answer to the question that opens the first chapter, “What is design?” The solution adopted here is that of selecting answers coming from many agents of the discipline: designers, manufacturers, curators and critics. And it is symptomatic that when Paola Antonelli, the senior curator of the New York MoMA (one of the Design Museum’s main competitors), is quoted, the catalogue underlines her bias for speculative or anonymous design. In effect, the Londoners’ choice seems to tend toward a more classical definition of design, the kind that traditionally is called Industrial Design. The mass-produced product, or the product conceived for the masses, remains an important design discriminant.

Which is not to say that the London Design Museum does not conduct research as one of its activities – on the contrary. Its programme “Designs of the Year”, one of the liveliest on an international level, involves experimentation and the promotion of young talent. However, it is only one element of the wide range of initiatives organised on a yearly basis. The range is wide, because the museum's ambitions regarding visitor numbers are big. In this sense, the slogans it uses on the website are eloquent: “Design is a way to understand the world and how you can change it” is one. This is an inclusive and extremely open way to create a dialogue with the public at large. Then again, historically seen, this is a typical, established way of behaving in the English design culture. Not by coincidence, one of the most quoted theoreticians in the catalogue is Henry Cole, a deus ex machina of design in the English-speaking world and a reference point for any historical dissertation on the subject.

Simultaneously, Cole created the first large international trade show of design (the 1851 Great Exhibition); ordained the United Kingdom's design schools; founded the first nucleus of the Victoria and Albert Museum; and headed the most important design magazine of his times. This meant uniting in a single professional figure the critic, the curator, the teacher, the design expert and the political consultant. In short, he represented everything taking place in design behind the scenes. This picture allows us to understand how a product is part of an integral process in which design has ties to the economy, politics, customs, philosophy and the culture of its times.

Hence the attitude of not keeping the parts separate and not favouring one above the others can be seen as a typically British trait of which the museum wants to be a mouthpiece. In this sense, even contemporaneity becomes part of a wider flux in which temporary exhibitions serve the purpose of being “informed and inspired,” according to the website. Here, the link to the social effects (both short-term and very long-term) of industrial production can never be lacking. This is why plurality, inclusiveness and democratism represent the most genuine critical line that can be gleaned from this volume and the museum it represents. To paraphrase a famous essay by Nikolaus Pevsner, we could call this “the Englishness of English design”.
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