Value of Design

Renowned French designer Philippe Starck says he is fed up with his job and plans to retire in two years, in an interview published in a German weekly. He said that he is ashamed of what he has done. “Everything I designed was unnecessary. I will definitely give up my design work in two years’ time.” I was kind of shocked with this article because he is one of the designers that led me to design field. It made me to question myself if design has incited the consumption-oriented trend and the answer was ‘Yes’. Then why do we design consumption-oriented products which are not really necessary? I think it is because now days’ design is deeply related with business. Company targets consumers who have purchasing power and those people already have what they need. To make an appeal to them, design tends to be trendy and incite consumption to sell more products. That is why most designers focus all their efforts on developing products and service exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers.

In this point of view, I partially agree on the Starck’s statement “Design is dead.” But as we saw in Dr. Bruce Becker’s lecture and Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum exhibition “Design for the Other 90%”, there are still huge amount of people who need design for their fundamental needs rather than fashion trend. There are people who are neglected simply because they don’t have purchasing power. There are people who do not have food to eat either shelter to stay. It is time to look around the rest of the world and use our talent for the people who really need it. The solar cooker we saw in the lecture is great example of what we can do as a designer to make the world better place. We need a motivation and circumstance to work for the other 90%. I think we need some sort of system that connects designers to the organizations such as UNHCR. We can’t really do anything just with idea and design. We need someone to produce it and deliver it to people who need it. If we keep trying to see the real unmet need out there and doing something for the other 90% of the world, it will bring real value into design and make you can be proud of being a designer.