Design Feast Series: Quotes

“Good design must become an essential value. Good design permeates society spontaneously, often anonymously and without paraphernalia. It becomes vital, essential for the society that uses it, whether in the form of a typeface or a chair.

When we refer to design as an added value, we are focussing solely on the aspect of profitability, ignoring its social value.

It is clear to see that we designers, and the institutions that represent us, have fallen into the trap of an unconscious use of the term ‘added value.’

What happens with design, with good design, is that it becomes what in medicine is the ‘autonomic nervous system’: in a nutshell, it operates without having any apparent consciousness, automatically, like the heart or the kidneys. And we only become aware of its existence when it suddenly goes missing. In the same way as we only realise how vital a kidney is when it fails, we only appreciate the importance of design when it doesn’t work, when, for instance, an airport has no direction signs, a chair is impossible to sit on or a book is illegible. If we take it for granted that a signposting system has to be infallible, a chair comfortable or a publication intelligible, then we cannot talk about design as an added value: we have to talk about it as a value in itself.

It may now be time for all of us to search for other ways of asserting our presence in a society that is already complex enough without having to assimilate still more ‘added values.’ Design will be essential, or it will not be.”

Pere Alvaro, Co-Founder of Bis