It’s hard to define design. It’s hard to define what’s not design. And after reading the countless definitions that already exist, one could even argue that after a point, the act of definition itself becomes counterproductive. Rather than leaning on hyper-specific arrangements of words, let’s first consider our own local (mis)understanding.
Chances are, in T&T, the word ‘design’ suggests something aesthetic, decorative, creative, and probably visual. Here, we primarily think of design as a creative exercise in the aesthetic ‘treatment’ of some other thing, generally physical or visual in nature. We think of graphic design (often misnamed “graphics design”), interior design, and most of all, the world of fashion.
These are of course all valid examples, but they’re subspecies of design, not the entire family tree. They don’t tell the whole truth; they don’t tell us what design is at its core. Generally I think of it as the creative process of planning something in order to achieve some goal, or solve some problem. It’s creative problem solving.
This applies to the world of tangible products, and intangible systems alike. Cars, shoes, phones, guns, furniture, kitchen utensils, spaceships, computers, websites, software, healthcare, the economy, transportation, telecommunications, agriculture, and everything else; they are all the substrate of design. So why are we so much more familiar with the design of products or aesthetics, than the design of services and infrastructures? For this, we turn to history.
Following the industrial revolution (which was by no means the ‘beginning of design’), there was a transformation in the way that things were made. Craftspeople were no longer the sole authors of objects. Instead, machines now made everything from wares to weapons, systematically, uniformly, and at a radically greater scale and faster rate of production. But this ‘uniformity’ seemed empty. The character and detail of the craftsman’s touch had been lost, replaced by the cold simplicity of factory assembly. As people yearned for a return to what had been lost, design offered the means for a new generation of creators to figure out how aesthetics could be reclaimed, in the new age of machine manufacturing.
Over the next 300 years, this became formalised, and designers and theorists developed the discipline, the discourse, that came to be known as industrial design - the design of manufactured objects. It also marked the development of design’s close relationship with business and consumerism. This was a natural evolution. Having recaptured the lost art of aesthetics, objects (and their brands) could once more differentiate themselves from one another. For the manufacturer, differentiation meant competitiveness, and for the buyer, it meant more things to buy. And so it was that the buyer became the consumer. Design has been consumerism’s right hand man ever since. This is the spirit of design with which we are all familiar; iPads, smart-phones, sexy cars, Nike shoes, and bad pop music. And while we don’t have a culture of product design in T&T, you can hardly find a designer who hasn’t worked in advertising (or who isn’t still stuck in advertising).
But for a while, globally, design has been doing different things. Today we’re seeing a total 180ยบ turn, both in terms of our attitudes towards consumer culture, and design’s roles and responsibilities. The economy of infinite growth has proven to be illusory, and as a result, a new design culture of sustainability, social responsibility, and indeed, general altruism has emerged. Somewhere along the lines, designers and design scholars acknowledged their ability to affect consumer choice, and felt guilt at the power they had exercised in the promotion of an ecologically destructive consumerist utopia. The good news though, they realised, was that by rethinking materials, packaging, and even distribution, the environmental footprint of human civilisation could be reduced. Indeed, at every stage of the design process, there is room for intervention; room for responsible, ethical choice. According to London’s Design Council, 80 percent of a product's environmental impact is determined at the design stage (Design Industry Highlights 2010, pg 19). Designers, we now know, have tremendous power.
This is the mantra of an exciting new era, one in which new fields such as ‘behavioural design” have begun incorporating the lessons of cognitive science, so that more informed design decisions, based on real psychological research can be made. Meanwhile, the design tree has also branched out in all directions, producing sustainable design, interaction design, medical design, design for social change, design for social entrepreneurship, and many more.
Unfortunately though, while in recent years the words ‘entrepreneurship’ and ‘innovation’ have flooded T&T’s institutional spaces, their close relation to design seems to have been ignored. Worse, with the increased popularity of ‘doing good’, said terms are already in the process of being diluted, in the same way that “green” and “sustainable” were consumed and corrupted by corporations and governments just a few years ago. A watered down version of design for social good is already percolating through the local design-scene.
This is especially tragic when we consider that ‘developing countries’ (a label under which most of us would still nest T&T) need ‘design for good’ more than anyone. In such places, many people do not have sufficient access to necessary systems and services. Unsurprisingly, such cultures are also often politically disillusioned, as the government has almost always failed to provide what is necessary - positive change. Action in the public sector is slow or nonexistent, and corruption runs rampant both in parliament and the boardroom. It’s precisely in places like these that design for social good can flourish, and is poised to truly make a difference.
When there are real issues like the urban heat island effect, habitat loss, medical literacy, or literally transforming education and healthcare by working alongside educators and doctors to rethink school and hospital architecture, selling KFC and branding fetes seem like truly underwhelming endeavours. This is a land where Trevor Sayers threatens to hold the cure for ebola, and people throw parties in the otherwise fairly-undisturbed jungles of Chaguaramas. With such almost comical problems facing us on a daily basis, we are definitely in need of creative solutions.
But because Trinidad and Tobago has no shortage of problems, it also holds no shortage of potential. It’s here that a new generation of design thinkers will work with a diverse array of other professionals, to solve or address social and environmental problems. Without getting too technical, we can call this ‘design for social change’. Ultimately, this new breed of design is not a branch or a field, but an ethos.
It’s simple. It is about society’s needs, not just its wants.
