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Steve Heller
Posts:366
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| 12/14/2007 4:34 AM |
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Designism : 2.0 - What might have ended as another
self-congratulatory display of designers talking to designers about
social action (or lack thereof) turned into a duel of critical rigor
when Michael Wolf, media critic for Vaniety Fair, called everything he
saw and heard "banal."
Although he offered no alternatives, he did acknowledge the 5000 pound
elephant (or monkey) in the room in his wholesale trashing of Milton
Glaser's Darfur and Iraq projects, Dove's Self Esteem viral films, and
Selections from the Graphic Imperative: International Posters for Peace, Social Justice, and the Environment 1965-2005.
Wolf argued that every strategy had been seen before and therefore
ineffectual. If one cannot change paradigms, he noted, then don't do
anything.
In his eloquent rebuttal, Glaser admitted he didn't have any idea how
effective his work has been, but it was important for him to do it
anyway.
There was also a very poignant note from an audience member who stated,
in counterpoint to Wolf's wholesale critique, a poster in Graphic
Imperative depicting
racism (snakes violently emerging from the mouth of a man) made him
feel the designer truly understood how he felt as the object of
racist invective.
The fact that unfiltered criticism of this kind could be heard at a typically
self-congratulatory design event was in itself the paradigm shift that
made Designism : 2.0 worth attending (and in my case moderating).
Here is some early blogementary:
http://uncivilsociety.org/2007/12/can-dogooder-design-withstand.html
http://adcdesignism.ihaveanidea.org/
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