The Myth of the Noble Slob

Yesterday I picked up a copy of Design For The Real World by the late Victor Papanek. It's just been republished in the UK and it only took me a couple of minutes in the book shop to realise I needed a copy. Papanek, writing in 1971 (this second edition from the early 1980s includes new material and a response to early critics) says many of the things I and others have been saying here and elsewhere.

I don't know whether the fact that my arguments are old or not fills me with cheer or depression. But read this from chapter 3, The Myth of the Noble Slob:

The cancerous growth of the creative individual expressing himself egocentrically at the expense of spectator and/or consumer has spread from the arts, overrun most of the crafts, and finally reached into design. No longer does the artist, craftsman, or in some cases the designer operate with the good of the consumer in mind; rather, many creative staements have become highly individualistic, autotherapeutic little comments by the artist to himself

Wonderful.

In a later chapter on design education he writes that:

Education for designers ... is based on learning skills, nourishing talents, understanding the concepts and theories that inform the field, and, finally, acquiring a philosophy. It is unfortunate that our design schools proceed from wrong assumptions. The skills we teach are too often related to processes and working methods of an age that has ended. The philosophy is an equal mixture of self-indulgent and self-expressive bohemian individualism and a materialsim both profit oriented and brutal. The method of teaching and transmitting this biased information is more than half a century out of date.

He then goes on to describe how design curricula tend to be modelled on Moholy-Nagy's concept of experimental learning derived from a 1919 Bauhaus treatise.

Experiment turned into tradition marches stultefyingly into the last decased of the century. Can we wonder that students are bored? Surely a student entering a design school or university in September of 1984 must be educated to operate effectively in a professional world starting in 1989, and forseeably he will reach the height of his professional competence sometime around the year 2009.

That last comment, relating to our expectations of design education, is important. Too often I hear people lamenting the lack of professionalism of undergraduates' work saying it's not up to "industry standard". Of course it's not - they're undergraduates for pity's sake! It's not justifiable for someone with years of industrial experience to come in and expect 21-year olds to have reached the same level of competence as them. Sadly, many external examiners in design schools display this expectation, as do employers, that graduates should be "finished". Many employers take on no responsibility for continuing the education of the graduates they employ.

I think I'm going to enjoy reading Papanek's book - I certainly recommend it if you haven't come across it before. Despite being over thirty years old, it is still full of fresh insights and challenges.