Design is a political act, always!

Michel Foucault stated that politics is the negotiation or absence of negotiation in the distribution of power. Since humans are the ones that participate in these negotiations, the outcome is the struggle between humans to enforce their position. He also stated that in these negotiations, power gains an intention of its own beyond the individuals that exercise it. Ideas transcend those who created them and become entities of its own. People are shaped into who they are as a result of these negotiations, of these power relations.

All changes in design respond to the urgencies and the voices that are being dictated by the current political agenda. Just remember the design history that academia teaches us: all “great” movements have been consequences to political actions relevant to the power groups interests. Bauhaus, the epiphany in design history, is a clear example of this. Born after World War I to reconstruct Germany, survived as long as it maintained a symbiotic relation with its environment. The moment these preferential relations where lost, funding ceased, its members were harassed, and finally it was closed, limiting its future evolution. Yes, many of the members continued in other latitudes, but they did under different political conditions and adapted to them. The American Bauhaus as an example, became an ally with the economical neoliberal ideal that was surging at the moment in the USA. Design for the people, was mutated into design for the market.

Probably you have heard the version where politics is the art of governing people. Design in the new world became a tool not only for the economy, but it also became a political instrument. If not, what else is the American dream? It′s not about freedom, democracy, happiness… It’s about having a job that can make you rich as fast as possible, so you can buy as much stuff as possible. And through programed obsolescence, we as a designer’s collective have contributed to this. We helped companies to sell us the same product again and again. We helped the creation of those “sexed-up” objects as Victor Papanek called them. All this with the purpose of pleasing our corporate clients, the group in power. The most incredible thing of all is that we convinced ourselves that we were solving problems.

It’s very convenient to keep you calm, let others take decisions for you. If you dress different, if you mobilize different, if you think different, you are out of the norm. You are catalogued as an anti-systemic, anarchist, wierdo… All the decisions about who we are and how we should behave and conform have been taken by others: the group in power. The old idea of the Greek democracy that was played only by the people of Athens is still in practice. At that time a small percentage of its population decided for all: slaves, free non-citizens and women, had no participation in this “democracy”. Something that sounds very contemporary in today’s civilizations.

But there are other kinds of civilizations like the Mapuches, who were the original people in Chile for instance, who don’t have a hierarchic structure. They have leaders, but not a central power. Power is distributed amongst the whole Mapuche nation. For the Incas it was impossible to conquer the Mapuches, and the same fate was suffered by the Spaniards in the XVI century. In Mexico, Cortez killed Moctezuma in 1520 and Pizzaro decapitated Atahualpa in Peru thirteen years later. Both empires collapsed instantly. Mapuches didn’t have a unique leader to kill and their culture is more alive than ever. To this day they are in a state of insurrection against the state of Chile, fighting for their ancestral lands.

And what is the relation of this story with Design? Power and decisions, when they are distributed within the members of a group is a guarantee of the groups stability and permanence. When all the power is centralized, the possibilities of collapsing the system are much greater. In Design, this is what has been happening for the last century. The belief that there is a correct way of doing design and that there is a unique origin for design, are two of the main reasons why our discipline is confronting its most important challenges. We must understand that Design in order to evolve and survive, has to be created harmoniously by the whole community. All voices must be heard.

Pre-columbian design (yes! there was a pre-columbian design), the Bauhaus, Stijl, Constructivism, Memphis and other movements around the world, where all connected with the political ideal of the place and time they were developed in. Problems arose when these models or ways of understanding design, are implanted in other cultures regardless of the characteristics of the receiving society. Trans-culturalization without an adequate reorganization of their relationships, is doomed to failure. Most of the models and methodologies used in design today, where developed under very specific conditions and conceived for very specific purposes. We as designers have this strange idea that design methodologies can be applied anywhere, any time and they should work. Just remember the duo of Design Thinking and Post it, they have been applied to every imaginable situation inside and outside of design.

We have been globalizing the way we do things, overriding local traditions. Nowadays when cultures deny or adopt different models than the prevailing ones, they are marginalized. for decades power groups have tried to homogenize us and we as designers have contributed to it. Mass production and the replication of ways of doing, living, thinking, consuming have led us to erase the barriers that made us unique. We have put all our decision-making power in corporations. Remember that Pantone will define the color we are going to love next year.

Globalization has also imposed that everything we consume must be centrally fabricated somewhere. In the past our goods where exchanged with our neighbors or made in local factories. Now they are made abroad, usually in places where hand labor is at a lower price. But since they have the necessary natural resources, their labor legislation is poor and their economic power is massive, we have learned to ignore their semi or openly nondemocratic regimes. We can also forget their lack of respect for human and environmental rights. Also if in this nations there are privileged citizens and families that hold to power for generations due to a “divine designation”, but since they either fabricate or finance our new toys, who cares.

And we as designers, design those toys.

We as a race have become cynical, we turn our gaze on a different direction. And design as a discipline has become an expert in doing so. When we are designing, we know we have dark areas in our processes and we choose to ignore them. Annie Leonard told us about this decades ago in her book “The story of stuff”, but we consensually decided to turn our backs to such a disturbing reality.

Every time you accept a project as a designer, you are making a political decision. Remember politics is the negotiation or absence of negotiation in the distribution of power. When you decide to work with a company whose interest is to maximize its profits, with no concern of the environmental impact or the social impact of its actions, you are making the political decision to support those political ideas. If you don’t question the commission and just accept it, you are making a political decision.

Ok, so it's simple. Stop working for the dark side. Stop working for the corrupted, neoliberal, classist, racist, environmental assassin corporations. From now on you will be a role model to follow. Mmm… not really

That is the big picture, but political decision are also made in a smaller scale. For example, when you decide in which sub discipline or area of design you are going to work or specialize. Are you going for a commercial approach, or a social one? Who is going to be the human group you are going to devote your practice? Are you going to implement a real eco perspective, or are you just going to adopt a green wash cleanup? Deciding if you become a communications expert or a product designer, involves a political decision. If you are going to become a car designer, have you thought of the environmental impact of your future work? Wouldn’t it be better to become a transport designer? And if you are in charge of a Design School, what are you going to teach your students?

But let’s go even deeper, inside the projects. Every time you make a decision in material, color, textures, relations with the user, life cycle of the product, images you use… you are making political decisions. Yes, every small decision you are doing, implies a political decision. If you realize that design is the creation of future possibilities, in every singular decision you are defining in which direction the project is going to move. And with it, the life of your final user.?

Yes, thinking this way, can paralyze you! Make you go nuts! But ignorance won’t help you either. Having the ability to view the variables involved in a project, will help you make informed decisions. Probably you can’t change everything, but small changes at great scales are huge.

Symbiotic Design Framework is aimed to help you visualize the dark areas that we have been avoiding consciously or by ignorance. Once you become aware of their existence, you will be able to address them and transform your design outcomes into environmentally connected ones. Into truly sustainable design.?

The above text describes briefly some of the reasons we have been producing non sustainable products, due of the absence of negotiation in the distribution of power, delegating it to others. Are you planning to keep on repeating the model? What relations are you going to build, teach and use?

Please make the correct decisions, subscribe and share this newsletter.

And remember that design is a political act, always!

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