There are many voices at the moment talking about design and social change. This is a positive and exciting advent, especially in area of design education. When I started teaching, the students who cared about social issues were few in numbers and considered as design outsiders (there was still a hangover from the 1980s lingering in the air), now a significantly large number of my students care about these issues. What is more interesting, is that they do so with a modesty, and a rejection of the heroic and manifesto driven declaration. This point was largely missed by the co-signatories of the second “First things First” manifesto in 2000 (01), who were subsequently surprised at the lack of response by the younger generation of designers.
If you Google these terms, there is an array of design sites which address social issues and using a number of different terms. However, there is a need for clarification of terms and what they mean.
In most debate about social responsibility in design (SR), Victor Papanek’s concept of volunteer work is quoted. In Design for the Real World (02), he floated the idea that designers should be encouraged to offer their skills in the service of social issues:
“I have tried to demonstrate that by freely giving 10 percent of his time, talents, and skills the designer can help.” In other words, a willingness to volunteer design skills in order help make the world a better place.
Social responsibility was paralleled by businesses and corporations in the form of corporate social responsibility (CSR), which in essence was a self-regulated form of ethical behavior in order to follow national and international codes and regulations. This initiative was driven by marketing departments, and was seen by some designers as a possible touch point between social activists and corporations. However, there is some degree of cynicism about CSR and documentaries such as Super Size Me, or and Inconvenient Truth have proved that guerilla techniques, can go a long a way to motivate large corporations to change their behavior. Most designers of the 1960s generation, often mistake this form of social responsibility with Social Responsivity.
The term Socially Responsive Design (SRVD) determines a different approach; “design which takes as its primary driver social issues, its main consideration social impact, and its main objective social change”. This definition was devised initially by Dr. Lorraine Gamman and Adam Thorpe of the Design Against Crime Research Center, at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design (03) in order to emphasis a tactical shift in design strategies. The idea was pick up by and, further debated and developed by Maziar Raein and Halldor Gislason, in a series of workshops entitled: Design in the Age of Anxiety, 2006, held at the Oslo National Academy Of The Arts with.
In essence, this term describes designers’ social interventionism with markets and consumer behavior. The main principal motivation for the design activity is to work with, and develop on behalf of stake-holders who have been identified as individuals or groups within society. Their products catalyse social change and market acceptance, by harnessing consumerism, in order to initiate social change. SRVD design extends Papernak’s social responsibility of ‘informs, reforms, and gives form’ (04) but also extends it to ‘perform’ – in this sense SRV-Designer’s are active agents for strategic change, with-in defined social boundaries.
So far so good, however, a number of question have been bothering me. Much of socially responsive design needs to address the subject of scale, be they in terms of ‘scale of actions’, or a ‘social scale’ or defining a cycle of scaled action (beginning to completion).
How can socially responsive design define a sense of scale?
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Otherwise put, the role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realties, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by the artist.
Nicolas Bourriaud (05)
Design for Micro-Utopias does not advocate a single, monolithic Utopia. Rather, it invites readers to embrace a more pluralized and mercurial version of Thomas More’s famous 1516 novel of the same name. It therefore encourages the proliferation of many ‘micro-utopias’ rather than one ‘Utopia’. This requires a less negative, critical and rational approach… asks whether a metadesign approach might bring about a new mode of governance.
John Wood (06)
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For References See
(01) First Things First 2000 a design manifesto published jointly by 33 signatories in:
Adbusters, the AIGA journal, Blueprint, Emigre, Eye, Form, Items
Autumn 1999 / Spring 2000
(02) Design for the Real World, Victor Papanek, 1971
(03) For the Design Against Crime Research Center’s view of SRVD see:
http://www.designagainstcrime.com/index.php?q=sociallyresponsivedesign
(04) Green Imperative, Victor Papanek, 1971
(05) Relational Aesthetics, Nicolas Bourriaud, 1998
(06) Design for Micro-Utopias, Making the Unthinkable Possible, John Wood, 2007
