#2 Good Design
Credit: Photo by Guy Reece. Protestors illuminate the luxury apartment cruise ship ‘The World’ in Falmouth Harbour, 2020.
What is good design?
There’s certainly a lot of opinions on what good design is, normally based around what it isn’t and often biased towards style.
And most opinions on good design manifest as manifestos – offering a virtuous list of aspirational values with no practical route to achieve them. Theory can be well meaning but surely the point of designing anything is to offer practical solutions?
This collection brings together designers from different design disciplines and approaches who are commonly answering or asking the same question – what does good design mean in the world we live in and what value system should it use? In a world beset with problems; the climate crisis, polarisation and massive inequality, these questions are crucial to our survival.
There is no single answer to ‘what is good design’ but the articles collected here contain common threads illustrating how we can, and must, design differently.
SUMMARY OF ARTICLES
Pattie Moore, one of the founders of the universal design philosophy, uses her life ‘Living Design’ to show how good design makes a real difference.
In ‘Design with a good social purpose’ designers This Ain’t Rock’n’Roll use their personal experience as an example of why designers need a new brief.
‘Good Design in Architecture’ explains how exploitation has pushed architecture away from a focus on communities and social space and into an extractive model focussed on famous names and the capitalisation of land.
Jason Grant explains why branding isn’t apolitical, likening it to a visual apocalypse and a disease, and explains its roots before offering an alternative approach.
In ‘Beyond Goodness’ Dori Tunstall questions the concept of ‘design for good’ by evidencing indigenous ideas of ‘liberatory joy’ and dismantling the colonial European design story.
‘Designing in Dialogue’ tells the story of three decades of book innovation by the feminist collective Tara Books. Collaborating with international artists, local artisans and children, their books are individual productions made by many hands.
The ‘Arka Kinari’ is both an ’emergency exit from the climate crisis’ and a performance space. By combining powerful waterfront performances and workshops with tall ship wind travel, performers Filastine & Nova have designed a unique way of representing an alternative vision of the future.
In four articles divided into separate subjects Prof. Becky Earley and Clare Farrell discuss the state of the textile and fashion industry. Interview #1 reveals how they first met and their experiences in education. Interview #2 examines the destructive nature of fast fashion. In Interview #3 Becky and Clare call for a more radical approach in art schools. And in the final Interview #4 the pair discuss activism and trends.
And finally please visit our resources at the bottom of the page.
GET INVOLVED
We are keen to expand this collection and learn about other organisations and initiatives seeking to promote social and environmental justice in the cultural field. We hope to gradually expand all the collections housed in the Museum of Unrest and invite you to connect with us, share details about similar projects, propose new collections for the Museum of Unrest, or simply reach out to say hello. We look forward to hearing from you at info@museum-of-unrest.org
