Victor Margolin, Design for the 21st Century
Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 19.05.2009
discussion panel moderated by Steve Diskin
oraganisation by Petra Cerna Oven
«Design 21st Century, this is a very trendy title, but I did it on purpose. [...] Often you meet designers, and they want to talk about heavy theory, etc., and what the designers really want to talk about is what’s next, what is the future? So I thought if I say “Design for the 21st Century”, this is actually the 21st Century, so I am not necessarily going to talk about the future, in fact I am really going to talk about today. [...] I am going to make the argument that we need to rethink the practice of design, and not to throw out what we have had, but to amplify and broaden the field in which designers, in my opinion, ought to be working. In one sense some of this is already happening just because of the pressures in the world. [...] Five or six years ago I used to say friends that the best thing to do to stimulate the American economy would really be to re-invent it as a green economy, and you know, anyone who has been following anything to do with sustainability for years would know that one could have done what we are doing now over 10 years ago, maybe not quite as easily [...] Anywhere you look now, and everywhere you read now, people are talking about carbon footprint and so on. [...]
Re-think the practice of design and not just industrial and product design but graphic design as well. Because the issue is not just about making new things or new services but one of the big issues is trying to help the large public understand how the world needs to change. [...] For example, take the issue of climate change: there was a panel of 25 hundred esteemed scientists who say the world is in great danger because of the changing climate etc. And yet there are large numbers of people who: a. who do not believe it; b. who believe some of it but do not think it is a big problem; c. some who do not really give a damn about it at all. So one of the huge problems – and this is an issue where graphic designers could play a big role – is trying to inform the public about the situation. [...]
I was just reading an article this morning about the new electricity grids and the fact that what these grids make possible is that people, if they have the right equipment at home, can monitor the changes that electricity uses during the day and night, so they can use the dishwasher at a time when electricity is cheaper and keep it off when it is more expensive. The point of all this is that is that what would make that possible is communication. Now I do not have all day to monitor electricity [...] but the point is that until now who would have thought that [...] but now we are communicating much more with objects as well, and so this is where communication is important.»
On a similar topic see an interesting case study, by Alvise Mattozzi and Simone Marian, The case of the Italian smart meter: an attempt to remediate its non-responsibility, recently presented at the 8th NordCode Seminar & Workshop Program
