Why We Write (About Design)

By Kristina Ketola Bore

In 2009, the first class of MA Design Writing Criticism asked: Why I Write? in the guise of an event at the Design Council. On the 4th of July, 2012, as the last graduating class of the course were nearing their final hand-in, Teal Triggs, Anna Gerber, the MADWC alumni and associated staff joined together and asked: Why We Write.

It was the launch of the book Telling Tales, a project initiated from a collaboration between the MA DWC course and BT Archives, but it was also a celebration and enquiry into the future of design writing. Four speakers took to the stage and engagingly spoke about writing as a way of combining voices, design writing as a necessity, the platforms for design writing and how publications and collaborations are often intricately connected.

Why must we write about design? “We have no excuse not to do so”, said Alice Rawsthorn of the International Herald Tribune. She spoke about how design surrounds us at any given time, about its potential to both be about pleasure, compassion, camaraderie, but also about its potential to be wasteful, frightening. She concluded, we have to understand it.  And subsequently as writers that is our job, introducing design and its potentials to be what Rawsthorn in her distinguished and reflected voice called an “agent of change”.

Alumni Sarah Handelman led us through a presentation about voices. “I don’t think about the future of design, but design as a lense to see the future”. She eloquently talked about how we are constantly surrounded by voices, frequencies of influence, and how through design writing we can mash-up those influences and expand on them. “What is the point in using air time on what already happened?” Handelman had us all thinking that we need to be looking forward and listening to the influences that will take us there.

It was a sad day for design writing when Grafik magazine in December 2011 had to close. Anna Lisa Reynolds, a  2010 graduate, was working as a full time staff writer at the time. Her question this evening looked at WHERE we write about design. “There has never been quite as many possibilities for design writing”, she said. Looking at the recent publications of Strelka Press and website That New Design Smell, it was a bright note that sung through. “We are in a turning point, the teething face of digital publishing is over, and now”, she declared, “there is a freedom to deconstruct what we can do”.

“I was thinking of calling this presentation ‘Why I DON’T Write”, said Zak Kyes. However he expanded: “Writing is complicit for a graphic designer”. Kyes presented his work as a triangle. Practice, Institutions and Others… It is perhaps the ‘Others…’, which demands most space. Through his practice the coming together of writers, artists, architects and the graphic designer is instrumental. Kyes spoke of the graphic designer as someone who can move through different fields, while still retaining his own practice. “Will you ever put your critical voice into writing?”: A question from the room. “Maybe”, Kyes answered. But it seems that Kyes voice is already part of writings, even if the words aren’t his own, the idea is ringing through. It served as a useful endnote to consider how we define design writing.

Photography by Ana Escobar.

Telling Tales: Revealing Histories in the BT Archives

By Lu Smith

This book is a culmination of two years worth of MA Design Writing Criticism students’ collaboration with the BT Archives, based at High Holborn. It showcases both essays and shorter pieces based around themes and objects that students discovered whilst exploring the archives.

The 500 word pieces at the beginning of the book were short exercises, given to students in class weekly. Students were given prompts to aid them in writing about the research process.These exercises enabled them to view the material within the archive, and facilitated a greater understanding of the objects they found.

The featured essays were a subjective evolution of the 500 word pieces. Each student took a particular object and built a narrative around it. Digging deeper within the archives and bringing in outside influences, to contextualise their findings.

As the MA Design Writing Criticism course is due for closure next academic year, it was decided that the students, tutors and BT needed a way to showcase and celebrate the brilliant work that was being produced as a result of the fantastic opportunity. Telling Tales is an archive in itself, a tribute to both the Design Writing Criticism course and the objects held by BT archives. It enables others to experience the archives, from the awe of their very first visit, to the breakthroughs and revelations the students experienced along the way.

With thanks to Pony Ltd, for designing Telling Tales.

Why We Write Event: More on our speakers

We are gearing up and getting ready for our Why We Write event tomorrow night and thought we’d tell you a little more about who each of the speakers are. The night is sure to be fuelled by a lively discussion as we listen to and engage with a breadth of both emerging and acclaimed critical design voices.

Alice Rawsthorn is the distinguished design voice of the International Herald Tribune. With a degree in Art and Architectural History, Rawsthorn’s weekly column explores the design climate and its impact on our lives. As a contributor to several books on design and the author of Yves Saint Laurent: a Biography and the forthcoming Hello World: Where Design Meets Life, Rawsthorn is a prolific member of the design community.

MA DWC graduate Sarah Handelman is an American editor, writer and designer based in London. She is the online editor for The New Inquiry, where she has also contributed essays on popular culture and design. Sarah is a regular contributor to Design Bureau and the British Council’s  Frame and Reference. Her writing has been featured in Fire & Knives, The London Design Festival and the St. Louis Riverfront Times.

After completing a BA in Illustration in 2009, Anna Lisa Reynolds was keen to to further explore and interrogate visual culture through her writing, and enrolled onto the MA DWC course. After graduating, she went on to join the editorial team at Grafik Magazine. Currently working as studio and communications manager at A Practice For Everyday Life, Anna Lisa sees criticism as an invaluable tool with which to navigate the cultural landscape, and sees writing to be as much of a craft as design itself.

As art director of the Architectural Association, Zak Kyes organised the exhibition Forms of Inquiry in 2007 and subsequently published a book of the same name, exploring the critical realms of graphic design through architecture. The Swiss-American graphic designer also co-founded Bedford Press, which “seeks to develop contemporary models of publication practice”. In 2005, Kyes set up his own design studio, Zak Group, in London. It has twice been awarded the price of Most Beautiful Swiss Book and worked with clients such as Tate Modern, London, Domus in Milan and the California Institute of the Arts.In March this year, Kyes finished a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig entitled, befittingly: Zak Kyes Working With…

Telling Tales: Our book hot off the press

Copies of our book, Telling Tales: Revealing Histories in BT Archives, just in. We’ll be giving out copies at our Why We Write event on 4th July at LCC.

Why We Write: An Event on the Future of Design Writing

A Festival of Royal Design

By Sarah Snaith

One of the best designs floating down London’s Thames River for the Diamond Jubilee Pageant is not surprisingly Her Majesty’s Royal Barge, The Spirit of Chartwell. The golden stern features two bearded faces met with dragon-like sea creatures that are lead by a triton-wielding female figure atop a bounding horse. The two sides some together in a red coat of arms marked with the Queen’s logo. The newly extended canopy obscures the royal family from forecasted showers yet to take over the skies and rain down on the barge and it’s accompanying thousand-string floatilla.

Designed by John Bennett, acclaimed television and film designer, the barge’s golden canopy was inspired by the idea of a diamond sitting on a red velvet cushion and places the Queen as it’s centrepiece.[1] Complimenting the red, gold and cream palette are potted long-stem fuschia roses and luscious boxed lavender. Along the length of the barge are further swathes of fuschia and crimson roses paired with dark green foliage arranged by Rachel de Thame and Mark Fane. Only the Queen could outshine it’s considered design.

Perched atop a head of short silver curls sits Her Majesty’s asymmetric white hat, with gathered textile details on the brim complimented with precious sequin and beaded decorative clusters. She sits next to her husband Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, on a pair of red and gold embroidered chairs. Beneath a shawl worn to protect her from the worsening conditions, is a single-breasted jacket with a ruffled edge. Her Majesty’s eight-point diamond brooch shimmers as she continues her shaky semi-circular wave at the packed crowds that line the Thames. She smiles occasionally.

Some of the faces that meet her gaze are munching on Marks and Spencer’s sandwiches and kettle crisps, sipping rose-tinted sparkling wine from plastic glassware. To further celebrate her reign, British public and the world at large have been encouraged to join friends and family in having a Big Lunch. Riverside, they are realised in the form of picnics and pack-lunches. Commemorative tins of shortbread smear the painted faces and soil union-jack themed outfits. Rain begins to pour but cannot dampen the festive mood.

That is the power of royalty. For all the details you’ve just read, apart from those atmospheric ones, are second hand, viewed through an iPad screen over a man’s shoulder, seen just barely through the gaps in people’s legs, watched on big screens placed incrementally along the Thames and relived through press photographs after the fact.

The writer doesn’t always get to see the finest details but they always get to feel it.

---

[1] Chris Hastings, ‘Not long to rain over us…if you trust the forecasters: Met Office talks up ‘dry-spell’ but Royal Barge designer is taking no chances’ Mail Online June 3^rd, 2012.

British Design from 1948: Innovation in the Modern Age at The V&A, London

By Jocelyn Jeffrey

Stained glass windows pave the way into British Design from 1948: Innovation in the Modern Age; The new exposition that opened at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London this weekend. Continue further and the space is littered with furniture, like Stephen Richards’ Storm Chair, a conglomeration of sticks exploding like a firework miraculously molded into the form a comfortable-looking seat. Meticulously detailed sketches of the city of Londons’ architecture as well as bold, beautiful interiors designed by the likes of David Hicks line the walls.

A refreshing amount of the exhibit is devoted to fashion; McQueen, Galliano and Chalayan, with Chalayans’ human-heart shaped dress of tightly bunched up tulle stealing the show. But it’s not just the usual suspects, the designers of haute couture, who are commonly lauded in museums that are acknowledged. A hat is also tilted towards those who helped pave the way for everyday British style including Laura Ashley, with her frumpy, floral granny prints and Mary Quant, with her minimalist color-block mod style.

Music too becomes a reoccurring theme through film, photography and album covers designed by the likes of Peter Sayville. The iconic punk movement that reached it’s peak in London around 1978 comes in to usher forth the subsequent punk-inspired design that followed in fashion, graphic design, and, more surprisingly, by way of interior design, through rock influenced innovators like Tom Dixon and Mark Brazier-Jones. Stage costumes designed for performances by rock icons were another way that music is embodied, one of the most fabulous of which is Carol McNicoll’s suit for Brian Eno with shiny flared satin trousers paired with a black rayon blazer with giant feathers erupting from the tops of its’ shoulder pads.

Performance-wise, beautiful stage sets include Ralph Koltai’s creation for As You Like It by William Shakespeare designed for the National Theatre Company in 1967, which is displayed in photographs and the breathtaking original model of burnt, hole-punched Perspex sheets and rods, creating a dreamlike fantasy of beams of light piecing through a cloud-cluttered sky. Beyond theatre, there is an even larger component of the quintessentially British; from jewels and gowns from The Queens’ Coronation to the latest model of a London bus. The industrial design element is encompassed in other objects ranging from a Dyson vacuum cleaner to Jonathan Ive’s iMacG3.

Nostalgic design plays a role too – There is video footage and a large model of The Concorde, which took its last ever flight in 2003, harking back to a more affluent time. Old copies of iconic publications from Queen to The Faceprovide a glimpse into times past as well as insight into how we developed to where we are today.

Fine art appears in its most British of ramifications; a Henry Moore public sculpture and a colorful painting by David Hockney entitled We Two Boys Together Clinging. There is also art bordering on design, like Damien Hirst’s Pharmacy restaurant from Notting Hill.

Influential advertisements, the most poignant of which was designed by Cramer Saatchi for The Family Planning Information Service seamlessly melds multiple design elements including art direction, copywriting and photography. The black and white poster depicts a pregnant man. The caption reads,  “Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?” Dating back to 1969, the question is still relevant today. All in all, it was a truly contemporary, post-post modernist British experience, in a country that contains some of the worlds’ richest design.

IMAGE: Paul Cockswdges’ Styrene Polyestryene Cup Lamp at British Design from 1948: Innovation in the Modern Age at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Photo Jocelyn Jeffery