meta-design or design for multitudes
ruig...@gmail.com
to some of you.
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This Friday we have a meeting concerning the web-design of INTK (and
the future of design in general if I may say so). I thought I could
write an email as a warm up for Friday.
- INTK is a multitude.
Central to INTK is the concept of multitude as exposed my Michael
Hardt and Antonio Negri. See note [1].
In short, I see a multitude as a group of people that do not
necessarily share the same ideas, aesthetics, believes, etc but
nevertheless might want to work under a common umbrella. In the book
"Multitude", Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri give several examples of
existing multitudes.
- Identities do not apply to multitudes
Let's assume that a multitude could benefit from having one or more
online and onsite platforms where they could net/work. Let's also
assume that an identity could help this multitude to thrive. Now the
question is how do you create an identity to a group of people that
refuse a single identity?
About one year ago, we were struggling with the simple task of coming
up with a name. We knew that the name should not be descriptive.
Several names come up on the table and the most common reactions was
something on the lines of "neeee its not that kind of multitude" You
already can imagine the end of the story.
The same goes for its logo. Obviously we did not put much of a thought
on it. The last idea was that instead of one logo we would have
several and for each project a new different logo could be used.
Instead people just found it way more comfortable to reuse the
existing logo. Interesting ha!
I admit that the subject deserves further careful consideration but to
avoid the risk of a born-dead multitude, the discussion was postponed.
- How to design for multitudes?
Similar to the identity issue is the web-design aspect. The roadmap
here is to first define what does web-design entitles and later to
apply that to a multitude. The result is most likely a multitude of
designs. In fact each entry might follow a different design. This is
what naturally happened with the current website of INTK. Different
people having access to a diversity of possibilities created a
diversity of designs.
However, the limitations are evident. Almost all modern CMS have a
separation between structure, design and content. The first two are
often decided 'a priori' and set for the rest of the existence of the
website. The content is left to the end user. Why shouldn't the user
have access to the design and structure in the same way they have
access to the design?
Currently, most CMS already offer some options in special with regard
the presentation of text. Is it possible to go beyond a mere choice of
font, size, color and backgrounda?
In my view a modern designer should be busy with empowering others to
make their own design. Isn't this the web 2.0 revolution? Major
brands have already notice this and put it into practice. Think of
IKEA (everybody is a designer campaign) or Nike or even apple with its
non-design design.
- What is left to professional designers?
Established designers that use a pre-defined set of tools and
basically reinvent the same designs over and over again will perish.
The modern designer will be busy defining new protocols of design,
creating new design possibilities, new design potentials. It is no
longer up to the designers to realize those potentials. Instead
designers should let the end user do that work. To be more explicit
the work of the modern designer is to guarantee that certain fields of
design like for example web-design goes beyond choosing fonts, colors,
backgrounds, etc.
The work of a modern designer becomes closer to the work of a fine
artists. Their aim is to continuously redefine not only their tools
but their entire field.
Looking forward to a fruitful discussion,
Rui
Notes:
[1] "The multitude, conversely, is not a monolithic and exclusionary
essence but an inclusive multiplicity, an open set of heterogeneous
and irreducible singularities that operates not through fixed national
institutions but through the protean processes of constituent power.
The multitude's intermittent but ongoing political project is the
constitution of a global, denationalise, non-representational radical
democracy, and one of the crucial subjective positions in this project
is the socialised worker of immaterial labour." (page 409) Protevi,
John. 2006. A dictionary of Continental Philosophy. Yale University
Press.