The London Design Festival – celebrating 10 years of design, it says on its own website… Hmm, thought we’d been around longer than that. Aha, now I see… they mean 10 years of the London Design Festival – which is, of course, a different matter.
Declaration of interest: I’m working for London Design Festival, and a very nice job it is too. At the time I’m writing this (though not at the time you’re reading it, because it will all be over, and you may well have heard quite enough about the London Design Festival thank you very much, and indeed all the other design festivals and design weeks and design events the world over) I’m working on the programme of the Global Design Forum, the one-day ‘keynote conference’ that goes with the festival.
Yes, an entirely delightful gig; a chance to work directly with such luminaries as Thomas Heatherwick, Zaha Hadid, Richard Seymour of Seymourpowell and Morag Myerscough, arguably one of the most influential graphic designers of her generation. There are many more of course, and overall it’s deeply fab.
It also gives me a chance to get next to the thought leaders of the global industry and their thinking, and figure out how to present them with a platform on which they can debate the direction in which design is going, the changes that are coming at it from the inside, and the changing world to which it must demonstrate not only its relevance, but its absolutely pivotal, not to say crucial, role. Almost nothing, in my view and I hope in the view of the majority of the esteemed contributors to the programme, is more important to the creation and sustenance of the coming world than design.
Although I was lucky enough to talk to a couple of aforesaid esteemed contributors, this column was written before I’ve had a chance to quiz them all about their deepest hopes and fears for design, so most of it must come from my own thinking, which is one of the advantages of writing a column (personal opinion is the stock-in-trade of the magazine column – hooray).
Regular readers of my column will be familiar with my regular rants – the sense that design must apply itself to what have up until now been known as ‘worthy’, ‘charitable’ or ‘socially responsible’ issues, rather than persuading a consuming public that it needs four kinds of deodorant. The Big ‘S’ – sustainability – is also one of my favourite hobby horses, as you are no doubt aware.
I rant on about these things because a) I feel most passionately that they are far more important than a multiplicity of deodorants, and b) that not only are they far more important, but that it is design’s job firstly to solve these social and human issues, and secondly to persuade its audience that the era of deodorant, or indeed a billion other consumer goods that we don’t really need, is over.
Tough gig. Uprooting the first principle of capitalism, the idea of infinite growth, and along with it the raison d’etre of vast numbers of companies, jobs, livelihoods, beliefs, philosophies; of nations, even, and certainly ways of life…
Is it design’s job to do all that? Isn’t that revolution, red in tooth and claw? We didn’t sign up for this, did we? Aren’t we just supposed to come up with some ideas for more sexily shaped deodorant dispensers, suggest a few colours and maybe work with the technicians downstairs to develop a revolutionary new delivery method? That’s about where revolution stops and starts for design, isn’t it?
In the short term, of course, yes. Hey, it’ a job. But in the medium to long term, events such as the London Design Festival, and all the other festivals that have sprung up round the world (a few of them before but most of them in its wake) give us the perfect opportunity to engage in this debate.
John Thackara, distinguished thinker, writer and founder of the Doors of Perception conference, now known simply as Doors, talks about ‘the other green economy’ and gives the example of the Brazilian Business and Ecosystem Services Partnership (PESE) – a platform for companies to ‘manage business risks and opportunities arising from their companies’ dependence and impact on ecosystems’.
The PESE concept puts a price on the use of natural resources previously considered ‘free’. For its originator, the World Resources Institute, this is the only way to prevent future crises in ecosystem management. ‘By making the connection between healthy ecosystems and the bottom line’ states WRI, ‘PESE not only fosters more sustainable business practices, but also opens the door to new, profitable business opportunities.’
Some indication of how capitalism might change, given that its process of wealth creation remains essential to the livelihoods of billions and a straightforward elimination of capitalist projects would only result in widespread death and destruction. But does it go far enough?
Then there’s Mat Hunter, chief design officer at the Design Council, who talks enthusiastically about his work that concerns itself with emphatically unsexy issues such as dementia, and violence in hospital A&E departments. But his enthusiasm for the projects he is working on is infectious, not only because these are serious matters that need serious solutions, but also because the design approach is to some extent redefining what design itself means.
One of the dementia projects he mentions is bringing together a ‘consortium’ of industrial designers, fragrance developers, nutritionists and an Oxford University research team that is working on the relationship between scent and appetite, to jointly come up with the Scent Clock, a ‘home scent-device to stimulate appetite and enhance nutritional status in dementia’.
It isn’t only that design might well be at the heart of a new and humane solution to such problems, but also that design is the only professional discipline that has the flexibility and humanity – a word much favoured in Hunter’s conversation, as it is in mine – to bring together these disparate views of the world and concoct a meaningful, sustainable and, above all, delightful version that works for us all, now and into the future.
‘Delightful’ because that is the USP of design, in its most charismatic, most imponderable, most seductive, one might almost say ‘spiritual’ sense – the quality that makes you smile when you get something so well thought out and put together that it just seems perfect. Or as near as you can get in an imperfect world. It might be a way to make those with dementia eat, it might be a way to keep Brazilian farmers irrigating their land through an eight-month dry season – it might even be a deodorant dispenser, for God’s sake.
That, in my view, is why London Design Festival and all those others are important. Aside from the usual celebratory and self-congratulatory activities we would normally expect, we need to let the world at large know that help is at hand, and that its name is Design. Last word this month is from esteemed originator of the LDF, Sir John Sorrell: ‘If we’re going to try and make sure that design and creativity shape a better world, then we need to talk about it.’
