The Death of the Designer

Abstract

Introduction Industrial design is in crisis. Whether it recognizes it or not, it is in a crisis of identity, purpose, responsibility, and meaning that has largely gone uncommented upon by the practicing community, a fact that is, or should be, disturbing in itself. The viability of the profession as it is currently practiced needs to be seriously questioned, its boundaries examined, and its values reconsidered. After the fall of classical modernism and the supposed floundering of our current paradigm post-modernism, what follows? Where does design end and engineering and invention begin? Or are they a single continuum with artificially imposed categories? What are the impacts of design's products in societal and cultural contexts, and are these impacts important? These are not new issues, but emphatically these questions, and more, need to be answered before the industrial design profession becomes a ghostly parody of what it claims to be. The death of the designer is upon us and has been for some time. Papanek, and the Italian Counter-Design movement of the 1960s were all early warnings which have since been muted. In fact, there are two deaths: one promising reincarnation, the other damnation a seemingly paradoxical combination, but one that is inevitable in today's climate. Both deaths must be faced if we are to avert the crisis. This crisis of identity is simply that industrial designers do not do what they generally say they do. That is, they have much less control over the process of product development than one might be led to believe by the common rhetoric. In addition, how users and cultures respond to the products which designers help create is not well understood. Most conventional theories tend to exaggerate the designer's influence over these interactions, and exactly what the designer's responsibilities are toward the culture as a whole must be given closer attention. To begin, two fundamental roots of design form and function must be dug up and examined before being replanted in translated form. These roots are ancient and perhaps a bit worse for wear, having endured many inspections. Certainly much has been