Design For The Real World - Victor Papanek
Victor Papanek's lively and instructive guide shows how design can reduce pollution, overcrowding, starvation, obsolescence and other contemporary dilemmas; Papanek leads us away from 'fetish objects for a wasteful society' towards a new age of morally and environmentally responsible design. A great deal of this books focus, tends to be upon developing, for third world nations; Papanek clearly shows that real design should be about improving the way our world, and our society functions. Victor Papanek examines the attempts by designers to combat the tawdry, the unsafe, the frivolous, the useless product, once again providing a blueprint for sensible, responsible design in this world which is deficient in resources and energy. Papanek shares his holistic view of design throughout the book, he argues that all people are designers. 'All that we do, almost all the time, is design and is basic to all human activity.'
Most of the design Papanek addresses in the book is industrial design. Some of the examples Papanek uses in the book are charmingly vintage. I chuckled a few times when he talked about computers and the technological advances he anticipated after 1984. However, principles of the book are timeless and many themes in the book are still in our discourse today. I appreciate some of the examples he shared that are no longer an issue in many parts of the world, such as auto safety; US auto safety regulations were not widespread until around the time the book was published.
By reading the book, I have learned that major automakers resisted the demands for safer cars up until the 1970’s. Automakers claimed that designing safer cars would be too costly and put them out of business. Thankfully, they’ve been proven wrong, and auto safety is now a priority.
Papanek writes extensively about design and the environment (what we now refer to as climate change). He argues that while design can have profound, negative consequences on the earth and humanity, instead, we can harness the power of design and use it to improve the world around us. 'Design can and must become a way in which young people can participate in changing society.' This book has inspired me to learn as much about the world around me as possible. Papanek was a true Polymath, connecting concepts from multiple disciplines to create new design solutions; he knew many things about earth science, history, and architecture, and he used that knowledge in his work.
I was expected to gain an understanding of design ethics from this book, however it reached me in many more ways. Most of the ideas are surprisingly prescient and jive well with humanist/humanitarian/life affirming design. The argument for designing for impoverished or under-advantages groups is repeatedly made in a wide range of examples and ways. What designers 'should' do as professionals can seem daunting and difficult to reconcile with our workaday lives, but as designers that is, perhaps, exactly what we should be tackling. Victor speaks with a great deal of insight as he looks to the future of design and the way forward and he offers a radical and alternative way of designing products.
Papanek concludes the book with this quote, which reflects his rather odd mix of cynical optimism: 'Design, if it is to be ecologically responsible and socially responsive, must be revolutionary and radical. That means consuming less, using things longer, recycling materials, and probably not wasting paper printing books such as this.'
The design book is very enlightening and covers the fundamentals of design, what design should do and what roads it could pave. You are reminded of the intensely wielding power that industrial design possesses; Papanek also covers topics from bionics and biomimetics. A call for ethics and pride of what you put out in the world. Something I've always admired about science (wrestling with responsibility), but had not seen in the landscape architecture field until now.
The 'Design For The Real World' is a terrifying read once you get through it and realise that, while some things have improved, many of the most toxic elements that Papanek rails against have gotten significantly worse. In the end, the utopian ideal of designers being able to refuse work they found morally objectionable is a good one, but like most utopian ideals lives much more easily in dreams than reality. Even though this book was first published in 1985, Papanek points out problems with design that are still relevant today. Designers are still used to create products that are obsolescent. Do we question if the product we are designing has true value? Does it solve a problem or is it another item on the pile of things we want but do not truly need?
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