What is the role of design in society? Mokena Makeka and Rory Williams asked Michael Wolf, chairman of the Cape Town Design Network, for his views.
You have said that design has an identity problem in Cape Town. What is the problem?
The biggest misconception about design is that it’s all about “making things pretty” or “styling”, a term coined by 1950s American design icon Raymond Loewy. Back then, styling of industrial products was used as a marketing tool to fuel sales of consumer goods.
Although aesthetics remains a part of it, design has an important role in optimising the built environment, functionally, organisationally and emotionally – it’s a broad problem-solving process.
The association of design with arts and crafts and other cultural activities creates a huge identity problem for design, and not only in Cape Town.
Designers do not express their personal views or interpretation of the world as artists do, but respond to the challenges of the people they are designing for. Design is a needs-driven, user-centred process. It is an entirely different approach from art.
Designers are a diverse bunch. What unites them?
My advice to all designers would be to try to align their personal goals with the bigger picture of design we are promoting, which is the potential of design as a key enabler for improving lives.
Look around you and address the real needs and challenges. Don’t insist on using your specific (craft) skill, tool or product, rather think what the best solution to the problem may be. All designers can do that. This is also what will make the best business sense long-term.
How can designers better communicate this understanding of design?
We need to convince all stakeholders of design’s transformative role and to agree on the right programmes and policies.
There is a vacuum of co-ordinated strategy to bring design to its full potential in Cape Town. The Cape Town Design Network offered their help to the mayor to create a policy framework for the economic cluster of design in Cape Town. Our vision is that design in Cape Town is recognised as a key enabler for positive change.
At the same time, we are looking at other ways of communicating our vision to the designers themselves, and the general public. One way is through campaigns, awards and exhibitions.
Another is through partnerships.
Two of our committee members are representing the Department of Informatics and Design (CPUT) and we are planning a number of activities to strengthen the relationship between industry and academia.
Generally speaking, designers must look out for new forums and platforms. Instead of presenting our work next to that of artists at cultural festivals or preaching to the converted, we need to get into the boardrooms of big corporates and government. We need to convince the local manufacturing industry that design can help to catapult their business out of its misery.
What would make Cape Town a true design capital?
Cape Town clearly has the potential to become the World Design Capital in 2014. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been shortlisted as one of three cities from 56 bidders. Many don’t know that the city, to become World Design Capital, is not going to be judged on the basis of its current design “culture”.
The bid is a promise by Cape Town’s people, the city, industry and learning institutions, that they will attempt to make Cape Town a city where design is harnessed to improve the lives of its citizens.
So it’s about transformation?
Absolutely. Design is a core process for development that constantly challenges the status quo, whether you are talking about an individual product, the organisation of a company or the spatial planning of an entire city.
But designers can’t make it happen on their own. The success of all design projects is bound to the close partnerships between designers and users. In the ideal design process, the client co-designs the product. That’s why it is so critical that users or clients understand that design is not an optional extra.
It’s an investment in the future.
Michael Wolf has plenty more to say, join the conversation on twitter.
The Men About Town column by Mokena Makeka and Rory Williams is published every Monday in the Cape Times newspaper.
