Designers are too often measured on the basis of their annual income, their technical expertise, or their ability to make a company profitable, celebrated or competitive. A more insightful, unconventional measure we could use is the amount of time needed for different designers to realise that there’s something amiss with the trajectory of this profession; for some not long, for others very and some never come to realise it. However, this measure only exposes a part of the problem; as taking the step from realisation towards action is contrasted by a measure of “success” formed along the lines of your ability not to.
As a group of young designers, our stories stretch over a variety of whens, wheres and hows, yet our determination to do something, to act, found a way to bring us together, of all times, during a global pandemic! It’s somehow fitting that during a crisis of global proportion that has united the nations of the world in their incompetence to respond and inability to cooperate, a group of “socially distant” designers found themselves immersed in collective action.
This pilot magazine, a product of our impatience, is only the first realisation of a broader movement incited during the summer of 2020, the crafting of which over the past months has been intertwined with a plurality of processes giving rise to our identity as a collective; projektado.
manifesto
projektado is an international and transdisciplinary design collective that responds to the ways design is perceived, taught, practiced and consumed today. Increasingly adopted as a mechanism of capitalism and neoliberalism, design is often devised and presented as apolitical, positioning the role of the designer as a facilitator of oppression and discrimination. In reaction to the social, political and environmental detriment that is following this trajectory, we question the responsibilities of design, through the critical lens of a well-informed praxis. From specific to systemic, across scales and sectors, we revindicate the designer as a political, constructive and critical force, a catalyst for social justice.
We affirm that all design processes bear a responsibility towards our common future, and that for this reason designing must be enacted as an intellectual and not only a physical act. With designers being increasingly educated to become passive technicians, tools for the largest companies in the world, it is crucial for us to bring together the diverging fragments of this profession, to claim the interdependence of its theory and practice, and to advocate for a institutional and professional design education that is conscious of its extensive leverage on society’s behaviours, values and attitudes. This process of responsibilisation is necessary to contribute to the ongoing elucidation of how design can shape and affect the future of global, collective, living environments.
We as projektado establish ourselves as a radical, critical and constructive force. Through our collective action we aim to establish an open conversation, challenging the past, present and future of our discipline. We intend to create a movement that carries design away from being a profit tool and instead directs it towards a more responsible and accountable path. We contribute to a more democratic conception of our profession, one that is more ecologically and socially sustainable. A design of everyone and for everyone.
Before envisioning alternative paths for the profession, probing the boundaries of designers’ responsibility, or even defining the spheres of discussions, it was critical, for us as well as our prospective audience, to enquire into the necessity of such discussion.
Among a variety of ways to pose the question, the issue’s inquiry was phrased to strike a balance between restraint and openness, to directly communicate the purpose of our endeavour yet remain impartial; why discuss design today? The aim of this issue was to explore how today’s young generation of designers perceives the discussion around their discipline, and also help the collective develop a better understanding of the challenge of discussion within design.
As projektado is formed by designers of different cultural, professional and educational backgrounds, we were able to draw from our diverse social circles of design practitioners, students and enthusiasts, and challenged them to answer the question in whatever way they saw fit. The striking variety of ways and mediums our contributors found to respond to the question was exciting and fun to receive.
As well as our own contributions to this magazine, the pieces we have selected reveal our small and young network’s capacity to discuss design from multiple branches of knowledge by using different tools, cutting across disciplines, contexts, languages, scales and experiences. More than a contribution, we perceived the interaction with the authors as a process of knowledge sharing during which we have been able to grow with those who generously collaborated with us.
To present this experimental issue as a cohesive collection, we have organised its contents on the basis of themes that respond to similar concerns, concepts, or approaches. Most of these debates permeate through each other, however, some of them bear clearer connections among them. To illustrate these strands of discussion, the following macro-answers have been selected to the question ‘why discuss design today?’:
… for its multiple meanings;
… for its diverse purposes;
… for its concerning results;
… for its boundaries;
… because it is continuous.
When posing the question, we were conscious that defining design assertively is a complex (if not impossible) task. For this reason, understanding its ramifications and interactions within its own and with other fields remains an alive and important debate. In this sense, the pieces ‘Homogenous Homonyms’ and ‘On the relationship between linguistics and design’ raise important discussions regarding the multiple meanings of design, triggering reflections on the fields of knowledge included in the discipline as well as deeply analysing the association between the use of language and modes of operation in design practice.
In every discussion we have entered, the ethics of design emerged as a latent subject. A persistent consideration ingrains the critical analysis: when understood as a mechanism or a tool, design can assume a huge variety of intentions, depending on who is managing it. ‘Small talk’, ‘This is not a designer’ and ‘Insurgent Designs’ are works that reveal intricacies of the diverse purposes design has been served to, sometimes alerting for its appropriation as a neoliberal development apparatus, some others as a potent engine to subvert repressive regimes.
On being appropriated by neo-colonial logics of capitalism, design contributes to the development of daunting futures that have already produced concerning results to the present time. There is a sense of urgency to analyse the effects of the modes of production and life our society has been designed, looking at our lifestyles in a critical manner in order to raise awareness on its possible outcomes regarding life existence. The pieces ‘Switching Channels’, ‘Discussing Presents, Re-thinking Futures’, ‘The Catch’ and ‘the city of the Others’ bring considerations developed on the observation of the world as it is today, contextualising design and giving indications to rethink strategies that subvert failed practices and to enhance life qualitatively on our planet.
Following the considerations about the present problems design faces, some works will discuss the boundaries of design, proposing diverse possibilities to link it with other disciplines and contexts. ‘Reflections on Design and Permaculture’ and ‘Including critics in our circles’ call attention to the necessity of breaking the internal boundaries of design discussions, to assume humility as a position of change because only that will allow the incorporation of other matters in design and of design in other subjects.
To set the conversations that led us to this very moment of identifying ourselves as a ‘critical design collective’, we have decided to test the ground for debate by questioning the reasons to discuss design today. The pieces we have chosen to finalise this issue – ‘My Answer’, ‘Étapes’ and ‘Community Notice’ – are good reminders that this is an ongoing conversation to be readapted and redesigned according to its time, space, environment and reason.
The format of projektado magazine stems from the adaptation of a co-creation process to the historical time of social distancing, but also from the endeavour to re-think the materiality of print within the space of a digital platform. We seeked to apply to the web visual and mechanical interactions that are familiar and easily associated to the consultation of a physical magazine, while also benefiting from digital tools.
We hope this experiment, the first of many, can contribute to the debates set today, and that our collective effort formed in the middle of this unprecedented moment in time can serve as a call for responsible action and reflection.
projektado collective
