Betty la Starck

Is the idea of designer/model a real trend among designers? I mean, I've heard some people actually say things like:

• "I mean, I start with some "sort" of idea"
• "I can take sort of a corner of an idea... and sort of transplant it into this other thing... now the other thing will grow... and I can kinda take that and mold it into something different... and before I know, I have something completely different than what I started out with"
• "I am not a designer, I am an artist"
• "Hotness is always the tiebreaker"
• "We are serious about making great work as we are about having great hair"
• "You have to be beautiful to create something beautiful"

As Prof. George Teodorescu from the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design in Germany points out: "(Even) the designer status is far from an established one. It oscillates between that of a superstar and that of a marginal beautifier." Just like any semantic system, the meaning will be imposed by general perception. If the perception (and promotion) of what it is a designer, is actually "kinda like" designer/model... then that's what the general public will understand as designer. Unfortunately, the design profession is not promoted as an actual problem solver, environmentally committed, socially responsible, and culturally enhancing profession... and that's because we are not any of those things! Design blogs are mainly about kitschig and superficial gadgets. Design magazines like wallpaper are very similar to Vogue , cosmopolitan or even Ugly Betty's Mode magazine! Reality TV series are presenting designers either as crazy dudes inside a garage trying to come out with an idea for a better mouse trap out of the blue, or as fancy shallow vedettes. They don't show design as a holistic process... and of course, the fashionable designer is more attractive than the crazy dewd!

I liked Prof. Teodorescu's strategy to improve the design practice:

• The regional identity and the local mentality, defining the design understanding
• The professional reorientation, requiring a new professional focus on life quality, instead of object aesthetics.
• The professional diversification in knowledge and skills, requiring a new design education focused on the all-round problem solving ability
• A bipolar task field (sub optic design and design for the rest of 5 billions of humans), challenging the sense of design focus on visuals
• The repositioning of design in innovation process, away from the formal variations, which demands a new design competence.
• A repositioning of design responsibility, relevance and of his social status
• A need for a full design certification and professional status protection

Last week I downloaded Philippe Starck's video talk on TED.



If you can't understand... here's a transcript... and some excerpts for meditation (no comments):

• there is the narcissistic design; it's a fantastic designer who designs only for other fantastic designers
• I try, to not make the object for the object but for the result, for the profit for the human being
• God is a trap. God is the answer when we don't know the answer
• I know that even [if] I do it the best possible (that's why I'm the best!), it's nothing
• ...this idea we have invented, this concept of God. We are God now. We are.
• I say that nothing exist if it's not in the good reason, the reason of our beautiful dream, of this civilization

("Philippe Starck designs deluxe objects and posh condos and hotels around the world") 167 EUR!!!!!!!!!!!! (sorry, I couldn't help it!)

ciao