DESIGN REDUX

The Land returns, and in the white it wears
The marks of penitence and sorrow bears.
Astraea Redux, John Dryden, 1660

Changes are occurring in design. The grip of Modernism is finally and reluctantly loosening and we are witnessing a flourishing of diversity, complexity, playfulness, energy and freshness. These developments are happening for a variety of reasons – economic, environmental, moral and ideological. And within an information-rich global milieu new directions are informed and influenced by many sources, and individual designers can make their work known to a very wide audience. The reasons, the influences, the approaches and the outcomes are numerous and varied but, collectively, many of these new directions indicate a restoration of creativity coupled with a heightened sense of responsibility.

However, these changes are not happening within mainstream industrial design, which seems largely out-of-touch with these developments. It may be that industrial design has been part of the corporate leviathan for so long that it is no longer able to flex its creative muscles and, unused, they have atrophied. Even where the contribution of industrial design has been most successful, in companies such as Apple and Dyson, the design contribution remains distinctly Modernist in character. In contrast, many contemporary directions outside the mainstream are indicative of a quite different sensibility. The most notable work challenges the pre-packaged homogeneity that mass-manufacturing presents to us as a fait accompli, but which relegates us to passive consumers with little opportunity for deeper understanding or involvement.  New design is often more enabling, more approachable, more understandable and, consequently, much more engaging. Tellingly, it can often be characterized by words prefixed by ‘re’ - responding, restoring, recovering, remixing, recycling, reusing, reducing. It may even be about redemption.

This new design emerges from, and requires, a quite different process than has been taught in design schools since the Bauhaus. The standard ex nihilo, ‘representational’ approaches, whether paper-based or computer-based, are secondary – the new directions in design require a much more intuitive, hands-on, tactile, physical and reciprocal approach that responds to the world as it is. It involves collage, assemblage, and using what is available in ways that are often responsible, stimulating and aesthetically exciting.

This paper includes an overview of these new directions in design and discusses the meaning of this work as a response to important contemporary issues. Design examples, including several by the author, demonstrate the conceptual and aesthetic differences between these new directions, and products produced by conventional industrial design and mass-production. These examples provide the basis for a radically revised notion of design. One that is, in process and product, revived, restored, refreshed and renewed. One that is, in fact, ‘design redux’.