Terry
I find this a cynical rather than critical perspective.
'Guess' work and 'chance' are some aspects of designing in those
'Design' subjects influenced by 'Art', but not all aspects. Quite
often this is what the 'people' you describe as 'paying money' wish to
purchase (rather than 'unprofessional guessers and chancers' getting
people to pay them money), often because they themselves recognise in
their own professional practice (lawyers, bankers, retailers,
manufacturers, to name some I have 'designed' for) the value of
experimentation and exploration, when they themselves wish to develop
new products and services. This often involves 'guess' work and
'chance'. Sometimes these succeed, sometimes not. Often this is
because of a wide range of factors.
One might take the view that 'Art' plays a valuable role in making
available its ideas and approaches to 'Designers', and 'Art School'
training makes this possible, to some extent. For example, we might
ask if the road signage system in the UK (recognised by some as an
exemplary piece of graphic design) by Jock Kinneir and Margaret
Calvert (both 'Art School' trained) could have been achieved without
the influence of modern art (amongst other non-art related activities)
in the early twentieth century? I believe this went through some
research and testing in the late 1950s. And we have seen recently in
the US that when poor (or no) aesthetic judgement (whatever this
judgement is informed by) is applied by highways engineers to road
signage, and typeface 'design', it may have had a detrimental effect
on the number of fatalities over the years. It took a graphic designer
to reveal this.
I'm also struggling to reconcile the views you express with those of
researchers such as Bruce Archer. My reading of some of his work
(cited below) is that he initially preferred the term 'Art' to
'Design' as a useful way to define 'modeling', when arguing for a
culture of Design alongside the Sciences and Humanities.
Perhaps we should think about this in terms of when 'Art'
appropriately informs certain 'Design' activities, and when it does
not. To problematise it in the way you attempt to do so, makes me
wonder who this is a problem for, and if you reject the ideas proposed
by Archer that what he chose to called 'Design' (closely associated
with 'Art') has its own culture that is distinguished from Science and
Humanities.
In my view, answers to your questions are worth exploring, but depend
on which 'designers and design researchers' you refer to and what Art
influences you are talking about. Yes, we should critically review the
unhelpful (or perhaps challenging!) influences of Art, but balance
this also with the helpful influences. As someone with a training in
'Art and Design' (so it said on the 'label'), I suspect in some cases
some will want to see these as inseparable, in other cases as far away
as possible.
Regards, Robert.
B. Archer, K. Baynes & P. Roberts (Eds.), A framework for Design and
Design Education: A reader containing key papers from the 1970s and
1980s. Wellesbourne: The Design and Technology Association.
On 9 Jun 2010, at 03:09, Terence Love wrote:
> From a critical perspective, this gives
> a picture of designers as unprofessional guessers and 'chancers'
> hoping to
> get people to pay them money for their guesses and with the hope
> that no
> claim will be made against them when things go wrong
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