Click for larger versions
Boy, I love me some good ‘bad’ design. I think it’s a lot more interesting than the stuff that wins awards. I found these outside my apartment this morning. I became mesmerized and just had to share them with you. I’m not even sure if I could ever design anything like this. I think I’d have to try really hard to get it ‘right.’ But, frankly, I’ve become bored with value judgments in regards to design. There are those that say that good design only needs to communicate a message effectively, while the other camp says that there is also a lot at stake with regards to aesthetics. That visual pollution and ‘bad’ design is just as harmful as misscommunication. Little headway has been made in establishing either of these vantage points beyond the anecdotal, because both sides are equally ‘good’ and ‘right.’ I’m beginning to see the designed world (which is what I call the totality of anything which has been made by or influenced by people through a decision making process) as the reflection of ourselves. It’s as difficult for me to call a design ‘bad’ as it is for me to call a person or culture ‘bad.’ Maybe this is the curse of seeing things in black and white, but I do believe that it’s time to quit arguing over this nickel and dime good-and-bad design bullshit and start seeing beyond the horizon of the printed page, the computer screen and the poster. It’s time to start seeing the larger picture. We need to see it all. Collectively. Everything that we produce, because in these things we can see the decisions we are making, showing us how we really think.
Typically we have to wait a few decades, and gain the asset of hindsight, before we can look collectively look at a period of time and relate it to how a group of people thought. I believe we can do that now for our period in time, and that we must. We must look at what it is that we are creating and influencing and see who it is that we are at this instant. The speed of our lives has increased dramatically, we can no longer afford to wait to look back and see who we were, but must see who we are now, and look at how we will create the future.
Filed under: Stuff I've Found , aesthetics, car wash, design, theory, thought
