Corporate Identity, recognition value, self-similarity, Branding and Labelling, Viral Marketing, privatization of public space, gentrification of the cities, extrusion processes – continuously faster, continuously cheaper: now new made after a vintage recipe.
Unification on the one hand, planed individualization on the other hand.
For the sake of profit not because of needs, people make plans, design and built. Thereby we get exchangeable buildings. Because a building, that could be placed everywhere, is placed wrong everywhere.
But not only the buildings, much more: streetlamps, traffic lights, furniture, mail boxes, toothbrushes, cameras, the streets themselves – often characterless and inappropriate.
Far away from that there is an uncensored and vital kind of design, by which everybody can cooperate. It is functional, need-orientated and timeless. Sometimes because of pure pleasure, sometimes because of pure necessity. It often develops unconsciously and stays equally long unrecognised. It is a designing of our environment, that happens anonymously. Without claim to awareness and secondary impact like personality cult, success and fortune. It is about the quality of living, about determining and changing your own environment by yourself.
By the initiative of one’s own ramps are moulded to pedestrian crossings, handles are screwed to traffic lights, flower discounts are planted into tree grates, trails, which weren’t planed and built, emerge in parks – they emerged, because at exactly that place they are right and therefore important.
Those changes are what makes our apart from that thoroughly planed environment. In spite of the proceeding globalisation these “conquests of environment” look different from land to land. These changes are expression of identity! – your identity; may it be that you created them, may it be that you’re the one who recognized them. If you considered the modification to be convincing, you probably make use of it soon (- no problem, because it is an anonymous design, you have nothing to fear -). Tomorrow you will perhaps make something totally new caused by your observation and you will be happy to see, that somebody else is doing the same. Design your environment, only then you are a part of it.
What are the sources of our design? The last Plug-Ins of the programs we work with? The trend magazine for our design job, no matter if they call themselves “Page” or “I-D”? Not the trend is the basis of our inspiration but the use, the function, the need and the intention are.
The anonymous designers want to give those things a stage, want to seek them, find them and put them in the spotlight. To show how easy and multifaceted good design can be.
Notes / Permalink
