Design for the Real World

Reviewed by Brian Anderson

This article is the second of a two part series, the first of which appeared in the last issue of 1974

Professor Papanek's credentials for embarking on this project cannot be disputed. He is a Unesco International Design Expert and Dean of the School of Design at the California Institute of the Arts'. For many years he has specialised in design for the handicapped, the Third World, the sick, the poor and people in need generally.

The message contained in the book is loud and clear: the designer must be conscious of his social and moral responsibility. Design is the conscious effort to impose meaningful order and as such, according to Papanek, it is the most powerful tool yet given man with which to shape his products, his environments, and, by extension, himself.

The book is divided into two sections. The first part, 'Like It Is', attempts to define and criticize design as it is taught and practised today. Papanek is concerned, as indeed we all should be, that the artist, the craftsman and the designer no longer operate with the good of the consumer in mind—there has been a "growth of the individual expressing himself egocentrically". The problem is seen as basically being an economic one in that the fact that every part of the designer's life has been conditioned by a market-oriented, profit-directed system makes it so much harder for him to analyse the past as well as the future consequences of his acts. The dominance of the market place has so far delayed the emergence of a rational design strategy and given rise to various misconceptions which have dictated what shall be produced, how it shall be produced and who it shall be produced for. For example, it is patently easier to sell objects that are thrown away (i.e. the myth of obsolescence) than objects that are permanent and industry has done little to decide what should be thrown away and what should not.

But the book does not begin and end with theory and ideology. The author has spent his life working in the field of design and the chapters are permeated with examples which, as well as being instructive, are an amusing reflection on the human existence Did you know that a bicycle has an approximate life span of 25 years; did you also know that in the US. the actual time that a bicycle is put to use is 2 years whereas in an under-developed country it is likely to be put to use for somewhere in the region of 75 years? How many of you out there in the big wide beautiful world are busy playing with your life-size plastic, moveable Lolita doll while Papanek and his colleagues are constructing a $U.S.9 T.V. set for use in under-developed countries (a similar set incidentally would retail for $U.S.119.95) to go with their 9c nonelectric, thermocoupled, cow-dung powered radio.

Papanek's answer is that in order to work more intelligently designers can no longer be the employees of corporations, but must rather work directly for the client group—that is, the people who are in need of a product.

The second part of the book is entitled 'How It Could Be'. Here Papanek asks the basic question: 'How can we make design better?' He sees no real difficulty apart from an inherent resistance to change—"designers and students have to familiarise themselves with many other fields and, by knowing them, redefine the relevance of the designer to our society. It is a fact that the designer often has greater control over his work than he believes he does, that quality, basic new concepts and mass production could mean designing for the majority of the world's people, rather than for a small domestic market. The key is to design for the people's needs rather than for their wants, or artificially created needs.

Having got thus far, Papanek then goes on to consider how the whole concept of design can be aided by an observation of the natural world around us: "here, in the totality of biological and chemical systems, the problems mankind faces have already been met and solved, and through analogues, met and solved optimally." The idea is to study the basic principles in nature and then apply the principles and processes found there to the needs of mankind (bionics). Here again the reader is engulfed in a wealth of explanation and illustration—the aerodynamics of a seed applied to aid in fire-fighting; lichen used to paint a house.

In the concluding chapters, Papanek looks at the present teaching methods used in the area of design and comes to the conclusion that most of it is vastly out-dated. The author advocates a more durable kind of design thinking which sees the product as a linear link between man and his environment—integrated design. The observations he makes on the present assessment system in design schools and his recommendations for reform make interesting reading and would probably be relevant to most courses at most universities.

Papanek obviously set out to cover a wide field in his analysis of the design world and he succeeds in his task admirably. His conclusions are, at the very least, provocative and in my view, substantially convincing if you are a design fanatic or if you have not got the faintest idea of what design is all about then read this book. As Papanek says in the very first line 'All men are designers" and certainly all of our lives are affected by design.

Design for the Real World is published by Paladin and retails for $2.75 at Whitcoulls.