The recent spate of “cross-cultural” activity in U.S. design circles would be a breath of fresh air under most circumstances. International seminars and conventions are not new to design organizations from other parts, but here in America the experience seems to be novel.
When it reformatted its online design forum, the AIGA saw fit to include a category for cross cultural design issues. The initiative’s first chair and website moderator, Christopher Liechty, and its current moderator, Carolyn McCarron, both have articles posted and, to judge from their comments, cross-cultural design has come into its own as a hot topic worthy of greater attention by American designers.
Liechty’s piece, an enthusiastic essay entitled “It’s Springtime for Cross-Cultural Design in the U.S.” also recently appeared on the ICOGRADA website’s weekly essay page. Liechty describes how designers from Seattle joined with their Canadian counterparts to sponsor an ICOGRADA regional meeting in Vancouver that led to the formation of the AIGA Cross-Cultural initiative. He goes on to say that the AIGA National Conference was held in Vancouver B.C. in October 2003 “…to emphasize the need to consider international issues in design.”
McCarron, who writes a regular column for Communication Art’s Design Issues page, multiply posts one of her CA articles at the AIGA site. Entitled “America The Greedy: Changing world perception through corporate branding,” the piece cites attempts by branding gurus Mark Gobé and Chris Riley to navigate the shoals of responsible branding, and documents the Landor project to resurrect BP’s image as an environmentally conscientious corporation (Beyond Petroleum).
In a rather tart response to her piece on the AIGA website, I criticized McCarron for saying “Terrorism is the dark side of globalization and our new world economy.” However, the more I reflect on it the more I think she is inadvertantly right. As allegations surface about Bush family connections to Osama bin Laden’s family, and we further scrutinize the ways in which the U.S. armed both Saddam Hussein and the Taliban in the ’80s, the terrible irony begins to seep in. Globalization begets terrorism.
The problem with these cross-cultural articles arises, in my mind, at the juncture of conflicted professional self-interest. Both of these authors are invested in the success of globalization, in spite of its obvious shortcomings. In fact, in another lengthy article at the CA site entitled “Expanding Our Field of Vision” McCarron quotes Liechty on how a return to relevancy equates with expanding world market share for clients. In a world of overwhelming shortages of basic human necessities, I fear design writing that focuses on such discussions reinforces a perception of professional insularity.
More appropriate to the task at hand is design historian Victor Margolin’s recently published essay, “Healing the World: A Challenge for Designers.”1 Delivered at Archeworks Chicago in October 2003, at about the same time AIGA members were waxing more international in one of North America’s most desirable vacation spots, Margolin brilliantly vindicates his earlier hesitations about socially-driven design initiatives. In lengthy descriptions of the concept of civil society, and citing exemplary organizations like the World Social Forum, he outlines an agenda for design without mincing words. He criticizes design as “…essentially a middle class profession that has delivered a comfortable life for middle class people, while also indulging the wealthy.” This echoes William Morris’ comments about catering to “the swinish luxury of the rich,” in the last century. And Margolin absolutely nails the complicity between designers and industry where he says: “Governments have been diverted instead by designers who push for federally funded design councils to enhance market performance rather than provide social services.”
Elsewhere I have written about economist David Korten’s characterization of the difference between shareholders and stakeholders. Shareholders are investors in for-profit corporations who expect and generally receive a return on their investment. Stakeholders are those of us who are dependent upon the commons for clean food, air and water, or security from danger, and believe in the efficacy of strong social institutions, like healthy farming methods, or universal healthcare. Traditionally, designers have worked for shareholders at the expense of the rest of society. Margolin says, “Historically, the public has not understood design to be a socially conscious practice. Design has been closely allied with the market and has developed in collaboration with organizations that offer products and services for sale.”
Of course, that is changing, or so we are led to believe by the moderators of the AIGA Cross-Cultural forum. I, for one, would like them to be correct in this observation. But I don’t believe that groups of middle class American designers traveling abroad to meet with groups of middle class foreign designers will accomplish much other than tame resolutions. For instance, few people in the world will be qualitatively affected by the strategic alliance of ICOGRADA and the AIGA, in spite of what this might mean for those organizations.
Now, there is nothing wrong with good intentions. Building bridges of cultural exchange is one small means of reducing tension in the world. And I agree with Liechty’s rallying cry that “…there is no way any one person from any country or culture can know everything about all the others.” This is self-evident. What goes unspoken here is that some people, like Victor Papanek was, will always be more effective than others at inducing change.
Margolin writes: “Should designers wish to direct their knowledge and skills to the satisfaction of human needs, they are faced with the fact that a system of support to achieve this end is necessary. They must therefore create situations of practice themselves or else find partners with whom they can work.” He refers to the example of architect Jaime Lerner, mayor of Curitiba, Brazil in the 70s and 80s, who became famous for his efforts in transportation and recycling. As with other innovators, Lerner created his own initiative, then found the means to implement it.
It will not be as apologists for international branding, or as participants at cross-cultural colloquia that designers will have a lasting impact on their world. As Margolin says, “Those who already live comfortably are easily lulled into complacency by a new Palm Pilot…” And complacency in the face of worldwide corporate expansion is not the thing designers need to be remembered for.
In an earlier era Victor Papanek wrote, “Design fails to satisfy people to the degree to which it is professionalized and it can satisfy people only to the extent to which it can again be made participatory.”2 Let us designers, in Margolin’s turn of phrase, “build social capital.” Let us travel abroad, not just read foreign papers. Let us live among our fellows not merely to work with foreign designers to “localize globalization”, but to know others better. Let us, in the words of diplomats, build capacitance, not by improving corporate market share, but by assisting our fellows at an interpersonal level. In so doing we build the only acceptable world of tomorrow, a society of stakeholders mutually interrelated by our common humanity, that great granddaddy of all brands.
1. The lecture was recently published in a small book entitled “Archeworks Papers 1” by Archeworks in Chicago. To order visit: www.archeworks.org/new/index.html
2. V. Papanek, “Edugraphology—The Myths of Design and the Design of Myths” in Looking Closer Three. New York: Allworth, 1999, pp. 251-255.
David Stairs is a designer and educator who believes that design for commerce is only one aspect of design. In 2000 Mr. Stairs founded Designers Without Borders (www.designerswithoutborders.org), the world’s first non-profit exclusively devoted to assisting developing nations through communication design.
His latest essay, “Altruism as Design Methodology”, is scheduled for fall publication in DesignIssues. Mr. Stairs teaches at Central Michigan University.
That's an impressive survey, David -- maybe now that Reagan has passed on, we can finally get along with the business of multiculturalism (in a manner of speaking).
More and more, I'm hearing about the "stakeholder" model, "Socially Responsible Investing", and a general acknowlegement that our system doesn't protect our cultural values as well as our economic ones. I wonder if in the next big boom, we designers will just grab the tail of the tiger and let it take us for a ride (again), or if we'll finally decide to start steering the market -- advertising and planned obsolecense -- that we helped raise up from a kitten to a beast.
Where else have you written about the stakeholder model and design? I'd love to read more, it seems like a topic that's really ripe for discussion.
On Jun.12.2004 at 02:37 AM