Design theory Archives

Cradle to Cradle

July 8, 2009 by Roy Johnson

re-thinking the way we make things

Cradle to Cradle is the programme for a philosophy of ecological design principles based on a consciousness of the global environment. IT raises fundamental issues about sustainability, well-used resources, and sensitivity to eco-systems. The authors are an architect and a chemist who between them tackle issues from major construction projects, to the design of shampoo and re-cyclable running shoes. It’s a work whose primary purpose it to make you think about design issues. Don’t expect glamorous colour photographs or examples of slick kettles and toasters – but be prepared to have your notions of ‘waste’ and ‘re-usability’ challenged in a radical manner.

Their stated aim is to re-think the way in which everything is made. And though they posit a very radical philosophy of using design intelligently, they are not reactionary when it comes to modern industry. In fact the book starts with an account of the Industrial Revolution which focuses on many of its good intentions – before listing its contemporary weaknesses in terms of the world’s ecology. They make their case for eco-consciousness using the very book itself:

It is printed on a synthetic ‘paper’…made from plastic resins and inorganic fillers. This material is not only waterproof, entirely durable, and (in many localities) recyclable by conventional means; it is also a prototype for the book as a technical nutrient’, that is, as a product that can be broken down and circulated indefinitely in industrial cycles – made and remade as ‘paper’ or other products

Good you might think: but the book is surprisingly heavy, and (though most people don’t know this) the biggest part of the cost of getting printed books to the public is transportation costs, based on weight.

They are also critical of what they see as shortsighted attempts to solve ecological waste by recycling:

your [recycled] rug is made of things that were never designed with this further use in mind, and wrestling them into this form has required as much energy – and generated as much waste – as producing a new carpet

The solution often proposed for these problems is called eco-efficiency – ‘doing more with less’. But they suggest that this just gives the appearance of social concern without changing the basic systems of industrial production. As they put it, ‘Being ‘less bad’ is not good: it is to accept things as they are.’

Examining the relationship of human beings to the planet at a very fundamental level, they come up with an interesting concept – that there is really no such thing as ‘waste’. Because when we throw things away, they do not go away. Indeed there is and can be no ‘away’. These things stay with us even if they are dumped in landfills, and even if they are incinerated we are still left with the by-products of combustion (including the CO₂).

There is no need for shampoo bottles, toothpaste tubes, yogurt and ice-cream cartons, juice-containers, and other such packaging to last decades (or even centuries) longer than what came inside them

Some of the ideas they propose as alternatives seem rather fanciful. Recyclable televisions for instance: could their internal parts really be cost-effectively extracted and re-used? Running shoes with replaceable soles? But they do claim to have had a success with an upholstery fabric which is bio-degradable.

They are very much in favour of using local materials (think how wasteful it is transporting them from afar) and encouraging the use of local labour, which promotes the local economy.

It’s a book crying out for graphic illustration – particularly when they come to describing the ecologically positive buildings they have designed – with grass-carpeted roofs and tree-lined interiors. Nevertheless, I think this may well be one of those modern design classics which will find its way alongside Donald Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things and Viktor Papanek’s Design for the Real World as a standard text on every design curriculum.

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William McDonough and Michael Braumgart, Cradle to Cradle, New York: North Point Press, 2002, pp.193, ISBN: 0099535475

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Left to Right

June 13, 2009 by Roy Johnson

the cultural shift from words to pictures

This is a dream production in terms of graphic design – a lavishly illustrated and beautifully produced book which cuts no corners in delivering a luxury product. But it also has a serious argument explored in the text. The thesis is that the modern world has witnessed a shift away from the written word towards the visual image as a form of communication. In other words a shift from left to right of the cerebral cortex in our way of thinking.

The book takes a historical survey from the early years of the last century to the present to prove the point, and the theoretical claims are supported by quotes from cultural theorists such as Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, and Marshall McLuhan. It’s a very lavish production, with thick matte paper; huge page margins; full colour; acres of blank space; colour-coded chapter dividers; and well-selected graphics given all the breathing space they need.

However, I’m not sure that David Crow’s central argument is proven. We communicate a great deal these days with logos, symbols, and icons it’s true, but compared with the daily avalanche of words, the proportion is trivial.

He’s arguing that visual culture is replacing literary culture, but the examples he cites are of magazines which have merely increased the percentage of graphics they use. Commercial companies have to make their advertising act quickly – hence the use of pictures rather than words – but that is not the same as graphics replacing language as a cultural influence.

Lots of bold theoretical claims are made, in a way which somehow don’t need to be made. The examples shown are simply new and interesting visual images: they are not displacing words as an influence or introducing new cultural paradigms: they are simply fresh visual inventions.

The second part of the book deals with the history and development of writing systems – though his source for this is the rather self-confessedly lightweight Story of Writing, rather than the far more scholarly Henri-Jean Martin’s The History and Power of Writing or Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy. This leads into an encomium on the work of Otto Neurath, who proposed a ‘language’ of symbols, then the work of Charles K. Bliss doing a similar kind of thing.

Next he moves on to typographic experimentation on 1970s and 1980s UK. There are some interesting details on the way new effects were created technically, and we’re introduced to graphically innovative designers of the digital age such as Neville Brody, Peter Saville, and Malcolm Garrett. All the left-cortex right-cortex nonsense is left behind, and the study really comes to life. I would be happy to read a book-length study of this period alone if he chose to write one.

The latter part of the book is a celebration of digital possibilities – for as he rightly claims, the computer is

at once a typewriter, a retrieval device, a page layout engine, a photo retouching tool, an edit suite, a recording studio, a television and a radio.

The same is increasingly true of the mobile phone, with which he concludes. I was quite relieved to leave all the left-brain right-brain and language/visuals dichotomy argument behind and concentrate on graphic design and digital technology, which is where his heart obviously lies – and where he would be best employed concentrating his attention in future publications of this quality.

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David Crow, Left to Right: the cultural shift from words to pictures, Lausanne: AVA Publishing SA, 2006, pp.192, ISBN: 2940373361

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The Struggle for Utopia

July 5, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy 1917-1946

This is a series of essays tracing the development of three ground-breaking artists who deliberately harnessed their design skills during the highpoint of modernism to the service of revolutionary social change. The first chapter of The Struggle for Utopia offers an analysis of Alexander Rodchenko‘s designs for public information kiosks, comparing them with El Lissitzky‘s for new forms of paintings and books. This points to the essentially conservative ideology underlying some of Rodchenko’s work, in distinction to El Lissitzky’s attempts to break into new ground. The next deals with the work and theories of the German constructivists – Moholy-Nagy and Lissitzky who had moved to Berlin from the Soviet Union.

There were lots of theoretical wranglings amongst the artists and many bold claims made for the social and even revolutionary meanings in their works. Nevertheless, a simple connection between artist’s belief or intention and its manifestation on canvas or print remains as illusive as ever it will be. And if these abstract paintings dropped out of the sky unsigned, their meanings would be even more intractable.

This is followed by a chapter on Rodchenko’s work between 1922 and1927 when he gave all his creative energy to the cause of ‘production art’ – the design of socially useful objects such as furniture, books, magazines, exhibitions, and advertising posters. His furniture was never put into production [through no fault of his own] but his graphic design was a big success, was hugely influential, and is still fresh as paint today.

Next comes a comparison of the pioneering work in photography done by Rodchenko and Moholy-Nagy in the 1920s. Then Margolin tackles the difficult task of trying to find positive things to say about the work Rodchenko and Lissitzky produced as propagandists during the black years of the Stalin period. He does his best, but it’s difficult to take seriously the pictures of smiling ethnic minorites and the construction of the White Sea Canal when we now know the brutal truth of what was going on.

Rodchenko amazingly survived until 1956, though he produced nothing more worthy of note. Moholy-Nagy moved to Chicago where he influenced a whole generation of product desgners in his new Bauhaus Institute of Design.

This is a scholarly work with a full apparatus of citations, references and footnotes. It’s also beautifully designed, illustrated, and printed – as befits the subject matter. My only carp is that I wish a list of further reading had been extracted from the dense thicket of footnotes which cluster at the bottom of almost every page of the book. I want to read more: make it easy for me to follow up.

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Victor Margolin, The Struggle for Utopia: Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy 1917—1946, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, pp.259, ISBN: 0226505162

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re-thinking the way we make things

the cultural shift from words to pictures

Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy 1917-1946

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