Over the past few years, attention within the disciplines of design has shifted away from “product” towards thinking, strategies and how design relates to people. What has prompted this shift in your view?
The crisis of 2008 made everybody think. Whether you were a salesman, butcher, banker or designer, everybody suddenly saw that this system, this society we are living in, could go down. I think that many people then began to ask themselves: “What can I do to make this world we live in more liveable, fair and clean?” When you ask yourself this question as a designer, you immediately have to step out of your comfort zone, and many designers now look further than their own discipline.
What led you, as a graphic designer, to co-initiate the WDCD conference five years ago?
The name of the event says it all. We wanted to share our vision that design can make a difference in society and show that it is not just about aesthetics.
»Yes, it is changing. A lot still has to happen though. The danger is that many organisations still see design as something they can use, but at the end of the process instead of the beginning. That is a pity.«
A lot of people outside the design world still believe that design is there just to make things prettier. Do you think that view is changing?
Seriously, can designers really make a difference? Are they not too much under the thumb of industry and marketing mechanisms?
Look at the Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde, with his Smart Highway project, or innovator Bas van Abel who created a clean and fair cellphone called the Fairphone. They are good examples of how designers can act as initators. That is a big new role for designers: not waiting for an enlightened client to turn up, but doing it themselves.
How much of this kind of conference is about designers just presenting their ideas to other designers – preaching to the converted – and how much about actual implementation of those ideas? Do you not need to be reaching out more to people in industry, business, banking, government and administration – challenging how they think?
It is something we’re always struggling with. As a designer you should be able to answer the question: “What can design do?” (Although many designers still don’t know...) For us it is important to be a platform for that call to action for designers, saying: You have certain skills, please use them in the right way.
On the other hand we need industry and governmental organisations too. As a designer you are part of a big chain.
The Dutch designer Richard van der Laken co-founded De Designpolitie with Pepijn Zurburg in 1995. The design practice consists today of a small international team of talented and ambitious designers and producers. They produce communication and identity design for clients in the non-profit and commercial sectors with an emphasis on cultural and social organisations.
They are also are the initiators, curators and organisers of What Design Can Do, an international event and movement about the impact of design on society. The next What Design Can Do conference is in Amsterdam on the 21 and 22 May 2015. uncube are media partners of the event.
Getting those parties inside and engaged is a difficult task. To stimulate this, we want to redeem the promise of WDCD by starting the What Design Can Do Challenge. It will include a call for proposals on the very pressing issue of refugees. Or to give it a slogan: What Design Can Do For The Refugee. We want international design teams to work on solutions – and make a difference.
One of the 2015 conference themes is politics. Where would you like to take WDCD in the future? What would you like to see it achieve beyond talking – or is talking enough?
Talking, and sharing thoughts, ideas, visions, and practices is important. We should not be blasé about this. But yes, we want to translate them into action. The WDCD Challenge will help deliver that. Hopefully it will be a success, then we will make it an annual event – with the goal, of course, of making a real impact. I
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