Devaluing Design
Posted on December 8, 2011 | posted by:
The success of open software systems, such as the popular Linux OS or Mozilla’s web browser Firefox, make a strong case for rethinking the business and ideological context in which design exists. This movement, known as Open Design, is exploring ways the core principles of open source software can be integrated into various design professions. At an institutional level, our own program chair Jamer Hunt posed any interesting question – is the TransDesign program open source?
For several reasons, I am both skeptical and frightened by designers speaking of open source so nonchalantly as an ideology that is easily applicable to design. For one thing, the $60,000 bill that recently found its way into my inbox strongly suggests that the core principles of open source software are not found within our program. Had I been billed for an additional service on top of the core teachings of our program, an argument could be made that the TransDesign program is in fact open source. However, we’re paying for access to the code (the curriculum), the space, and everything TransDesign – a very closed concept.
Even if our program adopted an open source ideology, I’m not entirely sure open source is the patron saint some designers make it out to be. In fact, I feel quite the opposite – I neither see nor can conceive of open source as posing any type of good for design at large (not to say that specific projects within specific contexts could see some benefit from open source – such as using it as a tool to market your services to paying clients). An interesting opponent of open source, and an author of several readings we’ve had this semester, is Jaron Lanier and his thoughts on open source are summarized in “The Local-Global Flip”:
“If you’re adding to the network, do you expect anything back from it? And since we’ve been hypnotized in the last eleven or twelve years into thinking that we shouldn’t expect anything for what we do with our hearts or our minds online, we think that our own contributions aren’t worth money, very much like we think we shouldn’t be paid for parenting, or we shouldn’t be paid for raking our own yard … We have this idea that we put all this stuff out there and what we get back are intangible or abstract benefits of reputation, or ego-boosting. Since we’re used to that bargain, we’re impoverished compared to the world that could have been and should have been when the Internet was initially conceived. The world that would create a strengthened middle class through what people do, by monetizing more and more instead of less and less.”
The idea that within a capitalist context designers are praising enterprises that have no conceivable way of being profitable is self-destructive. While Lanier is speaking about web content such as clips on YouTube or Wikipedia entries, his point is easily translatable to design – why should designers, who are arguably underpaid at large to begin with, sacrifice their hard earned work for widespread adaptation when in most cases such an action would yield no way of being profitable?
Design is beautiful, and every design has the potential to change a life – let alone the world. The value of this should never be under appreciated. Yet embracing an ideology that disrespects the value of design is self-destruction by definition. So long as design exists within a capitalist context, why should we fully embrace an ideology that devalues our work and rejects the contextual foundations of Western societies?