Print magazine-response to Rick Poynor

Ed note: In our October issue, Rick Poynor discussed the burgeoning "critical design" movement in light of the recent exhibition and publication Forms of Inquiry. Mark Owens and Zak Kyes, the organizers of Forms of Inquiry, sent us this response:

Rickrolled!

In "Critical Omissions," Rick Poynor takes us to task for a perceived failure to acknowledge certain precedents in our editorial framing of the work in the exhibition "Forms of Inquiry: The Architecture of Critical Graphic Design" (Observer, October 2008). While we appreciate his response, we were surprised to find the exhibition catalog discussed as if it were the mouthpiece for a discrete group of designers operating under a single formal and ideological banner. In fact, the show was presented as an exploration of the multiple productive intersections of contemporary graphic design and architecture, made possible through the generous support of the AA, a school with a long tradition of critical, speculative, and experimental work and an ongoing mandate to foster dialogue between architecture and contemporary visual culture. Forms of Inquiry brought together an array of critical approaches and encompassed a number of distinct spaces for exchange and production, including a travelling exhibition, lecture series, reading room, and accompanying publication.

Contrary to Poynor's claims, the work in the exhibition and the essays in the catalog acknowledge their predecessors; they just aren't the ones he endorses. Like many practitioners, the designers in the exhibition have spent the past several years not only attending to the exigencies of day-to-day practice but also engaged with recent developments in architecture, art history, fine art, music, fashion, and cultural and literary studies, not pouring over back issues of Emigre. If anything, this work--as varied as it is--sees no need to revisit the exhausted, insular polemics that characterized so much graphic design discourse of the previous decade. It looks instead to the creative and critical reserves to be found in earlier historical moments and allied disciplines, as well as in mobilizing the possibilities of operating in the porous space between the studio and the outside world. Forging such connections is precisely a sign of graphic design's strength, not evidence of a lack of faith or feelings of inadequacy, and for working designers for whom "the designer as author" has become at best an empty signifier and at worst a marketing buzzword, few things could be more relevant, outward-looking, or timely.

Rather than acknowledge this enabling liminality or address the specifics of the exhibition itself, Poynor seems quick to want to assimilate Forms of Inquiry to the rubric of critical design as outlined by industrial designers Dunne and Raby. While theirs is clearly a contemporaneous, parallel practice with a certain shared vocabulary, simply lumping the two fields together risks ignoring important distinctions and foreclosing possibilities. As the title "Forms of Inquiry" is meant to suggest, the modes of critically engaged graphic design are multiple, and as we stated in the catalog, the exhibition meant to serve, "not as a summary statement but as a provocation to further debate and creative exchange." It has thus been a great pleasure to see enthusiastic, thoughtful responses in London, Utrecht, Valence, and Stockholm as the exhibition has traveled over the past year. That said, as the mastermind of First Things First 2000 Poynor can surely be forgiven for expecting a manifesto from us, but in failing to mention more than a single project in the exhibition he inexcusably overlooks both the specific context in which Forms of Inquiry was organized and, more importantly, the rich variety of work it showcased.

Rick Poynor responds:

Mark Owens and Zak Kyes appear to think my column was a review of their exhibition. I appreciate their response, but it wasn’t. It was a discussion of issues of wider relevance that had arisen in connection with their project. That is not to take anything away from the exhibition and book’s considerable fascination for anyone who is committed to the development of critical design. It goes without saying that there are many ways of being a critically engaged designer. These issues interest me greatly and I have been writing about the subject for years. I don’t want to foreclose anything. I want to open things up.

Much of what Mark and Zak say in their second paragraph only underlines the unhelpful dismissal of recent graphic design history that I drew attention to in the column. Their image of “exhausted, insular polemics” entirely overlooks the many penetrating discussions that occurred in Emigre, Eye, Design Issues, Zed, the AIGA Journal, and elsewhere, not to mention the emergence alongside this of new kinds of design practice attuned to developments in art, architecture, music, fashion, and literary studies. Can it really be that none of this played any part in contributing to their own formation as critical designers? They are naturally free to see things any way they like, but it doesn’t mean their design colleagues have to perceive what they are doing in the same decontextualised terms.

For the record, I wasn’t the “mastermind” of First Things First 2000, though I did help to organise it. But FTF has nothing to do with this column, and nowhere do I ask Mark and Zak or any of the designers in their show to produce a manifesto. What I do think would be useful is a little less ponderous artspeak and some clearly communicated statements of intention: what is the work about, what is at issue, why does it matter? I mentioned the British industrial designers Dunne & Raby because they have been key figures in recent discussions of critical design, because they probably won’t have been familiar to most American readers of my column, and because they have proved to be unusually effective proponents of critical design, who keep its public possibilities firmly in mind. This is the very opposite of the insularity that Mark and Zak imagine I favor.

Want to join the discussion? Send us an e-mail at info@printmag.com and we'll be posting the best responses in the coming days.

We got this in our e-mail inbox Wednesday, October 1:

Dear Editor,

In "Critical Omissions" (Print, October 2008), Rick Poynor shared his insights on graphic designers' relationships to the critical design movement. I appreciate that he quoted me from my comments on the Design Observer blog, but would like to add these thoughts.

This past July, I expounded on those concepts by presenting "From Graphics to Products: Critical Design as Design Authorship" at the New Views 2: Conversations and Dialogs in Graphic Design conference held at the London College of Communication. An abstract can be found at the conference web site (see Cluster 2, Graphic Design and Interdisciplinarity).

Poynor mentioned three exhibitions of critical design in 2007; but there was one more--"Products of our Time." Curated by graphic design professor Daniel Jasper, and exhibited at the Goldstein Museum of Design at the University of Minnesota, it featured the work of Dunne & Raby, Noam Toran, Tobias Wong and others more commonly associated with critical design. It also displayed the work of several graphic designers: Paul Elliman, Charles S. Anderson, Kate Bingaman-Burt and myself.

Steven McCarthy, Professor
College of Design
University of Minnesota