Design consciousness (sort of) explained. Issue #104.
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Welcome back to Gornisht, where I try to cover the state of design, the nature of mind, and their occasional and occasioned intersections. This newsletter is a labor of love. If you like it, please consider sharing it with others. If you don’t like, I suppose you could consider sharing it with others. If you really like it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber and then bask in my eternal gratitude. Truly, that must count for something.
Design Consciousness explained, part 1
As some of you know, I’m working on a book (it’s been cranking for almost 2 years) that attempts to create a framework — or at the very least, a set of connected ideas — about design, where it is headed, how designers might reflect upon the urgency and importance of their work, and what to do in the face of the acceleration of work and the rise of systemic crises.
The working title of the book is Design Consciousness. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time working to nail down a definition that is both expansive and useful. Here is where I am at currently.
Design consciousness is a means of threading the proverbial needle between the examination of design and the practice of design. It is a concept that helps us understand the historical trajectory of the profession in the context of social and cultural shifts, especially as we enter an age of artificial general intelligence, an accelerating pace of economic change, and impending climate-related disasters. It is a mode of thinking about design that is not purely commercial, academic, nor personal and it is tightly focused on what design needs to do — not what design is asked to do. Design consciousness is not prescriptive nor preparatory. It merely asks the designer: Why are you here and what are you doing?
Designers belong to one of the few professions that are even allowed to ask this question. Do accountants ask “Why am I here”? Do lawyers? No, they do not. Mostly, those that ask questions around the need for their professional existence are those either at the greatest risk of losing their profession or are those that are experiencing dramatic shifts in their work. Design is encountering both. The design profession is on the verge of either being fully recuperated by commerce such that designers lose their independence and artistry and/or their work will shift to accommodate automation and speed.
I believe that this transition won’t happen overnight. More likely, it will be over the course of a few decades. But if we are to right the ship that is climate, my hunch is that designers will need to be extra vigilant and hyper exploratory in asking the question of why. We designers can’t just keep building things in order for them to be dismantled overnight.
Design Consciousness explained, part 2
I’ve come to understand design consciousness as not so much a riddle but a wrapping. Broadly, it covers two specific ideas that go hand-in-glove — or perhaps glove-in-hand.
Design consciousness is the personal process of understanding that design is more than the sum of its parts. It’s the coming-of-age, the bildungsroman, the educational journey of a designer (at least experienced by this designer) towards a recognition that the practice of design is only partially a commercial one and is only sometimes a social one. Design is also a contemplative practice. Design consciousness is a process of understanding that design is not made to convince, cajole or coddle — or conjure or contain. Design has a genesis in and is an expression of social and cultural change that is also reflective and even transcendental in nature. Design consciousness, like any awareness process, is a form of individually coming to terms with a more expansive notion of design: a practice that is socially transformational and personally liberating.
Design consciousness also represents a larger cultural recognition that design can help us address some of our most important challenges such as climate. Design’s historical approaches to the work — aesthetic, functional and material — have served humanity well but also poorly. We have created objects of beauty, usefulness and perfection but at the cost of our planet’s health. For us to flourish, design will be seen as a more fundamentally transformative practice. This definition makes a hypothetical leap that, if we are to address climate change and tackle and mitigate the catastrophes that are to come, we will also need to see the world as a fully conscious place in which design anticipates and understands our interdependence. Design consciousness, in this way, is a cultural encouragement meant to understand conscious connections among all beings.
Interested in writing for Gornisht?
I know that there are many designers who are thinking about design, accessibility, mindfulness and sustainability. I also know that there are very few aggregated channels for this kind of work. The beauty of democratized publishing in the forms of Substack, Medium, Ghost and Patreon is that we each get to carve out a space on those platforms. The challenging underside is that we are siloed, as well.
One goal of this newsletter is to try to bring in other voices to the table under the rubric of design and consciousness. I would love to see a community of designers within Gornisht that are connected and connecting to this unfolding world of design, meditation and awareness practices.
If you are interested in contributing to this project — even 200 words, a photo or another visual object — please let me know by replying here or via direct message on Twitter. I would be so happy to hear from you.
Reading: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971). This small book has been in publication for over 50 years. Suzuki provides the basics of Zazen and offers insights about non-duality and the practice of meditation.
Tweet: Absolutely loving Amanda’s water-colour work.
Next week I’ll have more information about that little memoriam book called “The End of Winter” that I mentioned last week. Thank you to those who ordered a copy! They are on their way to you soon.
Wishing you a good week ahead.