Idiolexicon

But I have diagnosed in myself as a designer moodiness and ill-temper and have roughly identified the causes as (a) a queasiness with the decorative, (b) a denial of disposability, and (c) a faith in The Cool. These are, obviously, interrelated, since the decorative is disposable, and appeals to The Cool seek to elide the finer aesthetic distinctions, short-circuit further thought, and deny the disposability of one's work. Putting faith in The Cool (as in, "Man, I don't know why I like it, it just looks cool") often accelerates productivity in an attempt to keep criticism at bay. To be prolific is to be saved by numbers, which should remind you of that old salesman's joke about what we lose on individual sales we make up in volume. Fear of accusations that one's work is merely decorative and therefore disposable is what drives the designer into having faith in The Cool. But neither the religion of The Cool nor any other aesthetic religion can rescue us from the facts of life. Our work as individuals is limited by our fate as a species. You and I will not overcome death, genetic engineering notwithstanding, and every species, dependent as it is on planetary habitability, will one day succumb to the expiration of its Use-By Date. -David Barringer

Even though (because?) I spent two and a half years at an arts school known for its design programs, I still have no idea what the word "design" actually means. But reading Barringer's book-length essay American Dog Barks in the Yard (issue #68 of Emigre) left me wanting much, much more of this stuff.

Barringer insists on talking about art simultaneously in aesthetic, moral, and commercial terms. Excluding one of the three, he says, is to deny what makes a designer a designer; and furthermore, that it's a designer's pesky sense of morality and indignation that keep the craft from going completely obsolete.

I found the quotation above especially convicting, both because I've long been a fan of Cool, and because it's so easy to imagine that one's sense of Cool is a calm acceptance of morality, rather than a pathetic denial of it.


On a vaguely related note, my free copy of The Feltron 2006 Annual Report arrived in the mail today. Eric Felton created a report of his year's activity, including his top tracks on iTunes, how many times he visited a museum, how many different types of meat he ate, etc., and will send them for free to anybody who requests one. The idea might seem a little pretentious, but the great design, humorous content, and deliberate noncommercialness make it just perfect.