Young
Danish Designers'
Programme

David Berman brought his cat 'Spice' from Canada; Dorthe brought her computer

Summer slowly arrived in Saunte, North Zealand

Concentrated designers in the Sauntehus lounge

Terry Irwin on the big change in her life and design career

Midsummer Eve Louisiana

Photographs and course notes:
Karen Blincoe & Henning Wettendorff

Module 2

Session 1

Prof. Tim O’Riordan

The situation re sustainability at the present
In UK we have the Sustainable Development Commission. Prime Minister Blair does genuinely worry about climate change.
We are playing with a planet that has no exit door. Changing the tools for survival. Even Thatcher understood it. She started the Global Change research which deals with science innovation. She championed centres of interdisciplinary studies about people and science.

We need to change the way we use knowledge.
You know because you feel because you know.
We should look to our hearts to inform us, not to science.
We have a feel for things. A gut instinct. If something frightens you or excites you, you feel it in your stomach. It is the bit in you that reacts when you feel if something is right or wrong.
We feel according to the media we are exposed to, our tradition, upbringing etc.
It is the way people know about things. Science and feeling are important. Bringing intuition into the picture.

Science is increasingly moving into and mixing with areas of humanity. Changing the way we relate to science. A future where we co-design. The future that we can design.

Climate change touches the world. 2100 is not imagination. Will the climate warm by 6 degrees or 2 degrees? Both are possible. 6 degrees means a change which the earth has not been exposed to in 500 mio years.
The earth would convulse. It would take 20,000 years to sort it out.

6 degrees increase in heat are feasible. It would create a system of change the planet has never experienced. What will the planet do? The planet will scream. It does not care about human beings.
60 % to 90 % of the population might get destroyed. Now and then the earth removes the species. The planet changes over a few 100 years.

The design profession is taking an interest in these matters.
Designers are important and creative. They design products specify materials, use energy, develop creativity.
Designing could be like pruning shears. Cut back. Removing excessive unnecessary growth.

The planet recreates new species in every revolution and we could be part of an epochal distinction.
Sustainability is not just purely for the benefit for the human species. Also for the planet.
The planet is selfregulating – selfadjusting.
The earth has oxygen – a deeply dangerous stuff. It’s flammable and could burn the earthe. However, without it we wouldn’t be here. The earth is creating oxygen.
There is something in this planet which holds life together constantly adjusts to changes.

When the planet was born the sun was cool. During the first 1,000 mio years of the planet’s existence it was heating up. The sun got hot. The methane disappeared. The planet had to readjust. And so the planet rusted. The sandstone rusted. The great red rocks of the world. The world adjusted itself over 300 mio years.

The sea surface is a massive interchange of the sea and the air. The cloud mass is a vital part of climate regulation. Plancton is dying out because of the warming of the sea. This will have the effect of losing the clouds, birds, animals insects etc.

The most important thing to remember is that the earth is a selfregulating organism and that we need to understand the organism.
We can help recreate stability. To innovate around the idea. The planet is giving us the message.

Group ideas/solutions to selfregulation:
1. Sustainability, balance
2. Genetically modified green carpets. Use waste areas for these areas
is this an act of sustainable development. We need to speed up the natural process as the world cannot do it in its own time.
3. High profile on water availability. Make people more aware of water, water stewartship. Water currency.
4. Human rights
5. Plant rights
6. Holistic clemency.
7. Love and empathy. Increasing amounts of love.
8. Instead of learning about Christianity you could learn about sustainability
As an integrated part of all subjects.
10. Perhaps we have the problem to fit in with the earth. The people need to
find a way to visualize this. The astronaut saw the world from afar.
11. Education could teach people to think differently
About how to find avenues to steward the planet.
Changing our awareness. Think and breed differently.
12. We want to save the earth. The earth will survive. The earth will still be there.
We can just keep on doing what we are doing. We will die. Gladiatorial attitude.
It’s a way to go. We are carpetbaggers, live here for half a mio years and then disappear.

Do you not care about 50 generations from now?
Are we a transitory humanity?
Maybe this would leave space.
The goals of sustainability are in fact egoistic. We want things to remain as they are.
The concept of sustainability is the concept of keeping people in one place.
Live today and die tomorrow. We are just a small brick in the wall.
We trust in science and innovation. Genetic engineering, biotechnology or nanotechnology. Let the scientists fix it.
We have seen it in Biospere 1 and the Eden project. A technical globe.
You can redesign the planet.
13. Grasp the problem. Enact or produce commercial global campaigns ongoingly to make humans understand the issues. Get the biggest global advertising agencies. Get to everybody and use rolemodels to make people understand and make people want to understand.
14. We only hear horror visions not positive visions.
How could we create comfort zone visions?
How do we get the sustainability visions across? Most messages are unhelpful.
Grasping the problem and making it relevant.
What about creating labs in school to see how we could shift the perception.
As you cannot change the common view you have to change the role models.
The economy is about ‘doing’. ‘Being’ is a threat to politicians and economists.
Buying/consumerism is about lack of selfworth.

Sustainaility is a great challenge, not the end point.
It is not about ignorance – it is about responsibility.
We could have long-term political structure so that politicians stay in power longer than just 4 years to enable wiser decisions. We could have a Peoples Court or Peoples Platform. We need interaction. Deliberative democracy. Thinking through decisions before you make them.

Politicians think short-term. For them creating to be seen to be active and they need to be seen to be active – not tomorrow but right now, That's why their decisicions are short term. Politicians are delivering for the media and the electorate.
Politicians are ill designed to make long-term decisions.
We need more active democracy. A new political and economical system re taxes. Non-ecological food should be more expensive. We could change the emphasis of whats valuable. Change the money system. We could put tax on food. The real prize of things should be put into place.
We could design with different materials. And give it true value.

We interact much more globally now than before. The fact that we can see the world in a global perspective is positive.

We play funny mind games. Therefore gut feeling is an amplifier. Sometimes we tend forget the little voice inside of us.
What’s the designer response? How do you use intuitive methodology. Mobilize the
ability and courage to have the gut feeling come up.
The development of the gut feeling.

Sustainability is a transition process. We have a responsibility of trusteeship. Our job is to allow the next few generations to live – give ourselves a pause to give ourselves a change. A pause to generate a comfort zone.
Self-actualization is the basic need for humanity and only then does basic needs become enjoyable.
The richer we get the less happy we are.
We need to keep earning an income to comsume and consuming becomes a therapy to give a feeling of primeordeal happiness.

Designers can create flow-through. Design things that can go back into the system. Replacement furniture trail. Make the products replicable, changeable and ones which can be made use of again.
Make something that people want to keep.
The act of consumption should be an act of joy not therapy.
The job of the designer is to create a replicable scenario. Creating new opportunity.

Look up the Aarhus Principles: They mention: transparency, accountability, social justice principles, participatory democracy.

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Session 2

Dillon Kombumerri
Merrima Design Group, Sydney, Australia

A unique design group with a methodology for consultation and approach to culturally sensitive design. Tapping into the culture and the elders.

Indigenous Australia/Protocols

They ask: who are your ancestors, where are you from, and what’s your name?

There are approx. 300,000 aboriginals – 1-2% of the population.
Their features disappear after 3-4 generations when mixed with other races.

The Yidaki ( colloquially called digeridoo) is played by men in spirit. Women do not play this instrument as it is just for men.

The architecture for the educational centre of the jail has to take into account their complex society with extended families, etc., working with the local customs and local totems.
You have to respect the place re the totem which is your identity.
You cannot just pass from one country to another in aboriginal country. You have to wait until you get permission.

“People in prison are not crooks but are people who haven’t been able to cope or make the most of their lives”.

We worked with the sacred places and sacred symbols.

We work with the question: how do you culturally interpret the cultural values of an indigenous people?

The Darling River
Healthcenter in aboriginal country
First we visit the community to do research and talk to the elders. The building says something to us as people. The white people nearly starved to death when they came. The whites couldn’t grow crops, didn’t know how to find water.

So as the building was part of their history they wanted to keep it. They had different totems and so the designers had to address the fish, the water.

With the traditional peoples you have to respect their spaces.
Respect the rituals of death, funerals, etc.
As the building is being developed the local people are involved in the process. The women are very important – there are womens issues to take into account. And sometimes it is about men’s issues.
The people want reassurance, safety, employment.

Our design process is a journey. Telling stories about the place. You cannot sit around the table and discuss. You have to go to the pub or out to hunt.

Environmental design project: an art centre
The project dealt with rural architecture. The Australian rural architecture.In places of very extreme climates. Therefore we had to create a micro climate.
Often the westeners think about the end product not the process. We want to live the process.

The reconciliation place
The stars sent the whites to Australia. And they are guides for the aboriginals. We created a ring. The ring had lights on the inside. To activate the light using sound saying: “sorry”.

‘Rabbit Proof Fence’, the film. See it.

Materials
We use locally sourced materials. Corrugated iron and wood.
Using materials which fit the environment whether it is local rural sites or cityscapes.
Also recycled materials.
The ancient aboriginees sheltered in treebark, grass, mauri huts, stone huts like igloos.
Complexities were in the layout of the community and not in the individual huts as such.

Designing/working
Be who you are. Work with that which interests you.
I can only be who I am.
We like to work with communities especially with the spiritual aspect of these peoples lives. We build relationships with people, the land. We bring the story too. The projects are stories. The communities want us to tell their stories.

The design profession is seduced by the image of the end project. It is not about the building. It is about the journey. It is about telling the story.
The end result will be what it will be. The community walks with us. I believe in the ancestry.

You do your formal stuff when you work with them. However, the real consultation happens in the pub. Relax with them, sit with them, open up.

The client consultations usually lasts from 2 days to 2 weeks and can include a trip into the bush etc.

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Session 3

Terry Irwin

‘As homo sapiens’ entry into any intergalactic design competition, Industrial Civilization would be thrown out in qualifying round’.

David Orr
‘Earth in Mind’

Before I was paid to provide answers now I pay to ask questions.
I took a look at where I am now and what I want to spend the rest of my life on.

I am now a student!

I set up a company, Metadesign, in California and worked with very prestigious clients creating branding and campaigns etc.: Steven Spielberg, Apple, Nissan in Tokyo, Ocean Conservancy, Nike – worldwide branding system for them packaging, store graphics, signing, The Ghetty Museum with Richard Meyer. We created timeline wall with video, models etc. We were very successful.

Whats wrong with a 60 hour working week and earning a sixfigure salary – nothing, until 2001! Why wasn’t I happy. I had many clients, much work, a lot of money. Perhaps a midlife crisis happened. I did a biographical chart using information graphics and had 4 roles: Student, designer, business person, teacher.
Doing this graph I saw something that I otherwise would not have seen. How many times I had moved, how many cars I had had, how many people I had known, my brushes with death.

The older I got the less I moved around and the more balls I was keeping in the air. London, Zurich, Berlin, SF, billions of money. 50 million dollars. Was there something wrong with that? I had 70 – 80 hour weeks at the end. I did not understand how life worked, I had forgotten. So we hired and hired and hired.

People depended on the job with their families. So we had to keep going. In America you can have a job one day and the next day it is gone. And then the crash came and my office went from 70 to 80 to 30 staff and I had to fire them.

My role? Well, I was the creative director, I was not the business person.

We thought we could keep the boat afloat. Roll up your sleeves and back to square one. San Francisco was the epicenter for the crash. My partner said: Let’s build it back up!
I said: I cannot do this again. Maybe I am tired. I can’t do it. That was in 2001, at end of August.

In September I left my company. Business was as close to family as any as I did not have a family. I didn’t know what to do. Suddenly I had no work and I didn’t know what to do with myself. 9/11 what was going on in the world. My country was going to react. The world was first with us - and now the world is against us.

Fritjof Capra changed my life with the book: The Web of Life.
It is about death or destruction or the web of life. How systems of life works.
As I am a systems designer I could see a parallel, I thought. But I only saw contrasts.
And I realized that I had been designing in opposition to the way nature works and not in harmony.

“Design is the primary underlying matrix of life”

“The planning and patterning of any act toward a desired and foreseeable end constitutes the design process”

- Victor Papanek

So my question then became: What can I do that makes a difference? Can I find a way to design that isn’t only about selling products and services? I questioned whether I wanted to do that for the rest of my life.

I could not think of a single design solution at Meta Design which didn’t get changed. Why? We did not ask the right questions only trying to keep the ship afloat. We did not ask the meaningful questions.
We did not design for the unity of things. We designed with the intellectual construct which is design as we see it now.
Obsessed with the idea of connectedness and the web.

If everything is connected then we work with the planet. I was not an ecology person. But I kept being pulled back.
If design is the underlying matrix of life then what do we do and what are we doing?
I wanted to go back and study to better understand how the world worked.

If you stop and ask, something will bubble up and resonate and if you are open to it you will be led down a path. Which I was. And so in 2002 I was studying at home. About sharing a world view and holistic science.
Can it change the way we think about design?
Read Dick Buchanan: “The Idea of Design” (essays).

So now I am beginning to understand the relationship in the natural and articificial worlds
That nature is a form giver and so are designers. However, Nature brings forth sustainable forms. Designers brings forth unsustainable designs!

John Todd was one of my teachers at Schumacher. An ecological Designer. He works with the following concepts:
Producers - Consumers - Decomposers: beautiful examples.
We are very good at producing and consuming but we cannot decompose. Waste, have we forgotten? Is it psychological or what?

Messages, things, activities, environments in contrast not in resonance with nature. Is there some way that if we have a shift in perspective that things might change? I sense there is a relevant question in this.
Testing ideas of nested hierarchies as applied to design: Sign – Object – Actions – Complex environments.
With the possible addition of an over all organizing idea, the idea of environmental awareness.
Natural and manmade forms can resonate. Why are the forms from the past more organic than the man-made forms of today?
Victor Margaulin and Buchanan: A book?? ….. and design.
Origins of design and its motivating principles.

I am now studying at the Schumacher College.
At Schumacher you live and work together, vacuum cleaning, lawn moving, bathroom cleaning, etc.
I am looking at the following:
- the current paradigm where design intimately connected to the consumer-led marketplace

- We changed from looking to religion, to looking to science – to create a framework of growth.
- Victor Margaulin protests, asks design to “disengage itself from consumer culture as the primary shaper of identity”

- We design for desire, not needs

- Negative vs. Positive Feedback processes:
- dynamics in humanity and nature

- “Terrorism as a facet of a larger positive feedback loop”

- Homogeneity vs. diversity (weakness/strength)

- “Places to Intervene in a System”, deals with leverage points for change, e.g. the concept of “Growth” (including Club of Rome discussion)

- Victor Papanek: The Green Imperative (quotes)

Participants questions
Q: Could you (and how would you then) do the work for Nike today?

- If you judge your clients too rigidly, there’s a danger of setting yourself up as judge. We probably should have turned Nike down – but we also have to step in and try to shape things rather than turning away.

Q: How does your personal life fit in with all this..?

- I was raised very traditionally, and my family was poor. I got married early on; got divorced and moved to California.

Q: Didn’t we take the wrong education, to take on these big tasks of changing the world? Should we be politicians instead? Or can we put our design skills at the service of people who do work to change things?

- It can be overwhelming. I never do anything on a big scale either.. but even a tiny action can have the effect of a butterfly wing stroke in the Amazon jungle (the catastrophe theory).

Or don’t we deal with big issues when we don’t deal with big customers?

Q: Can we afford these views and strategies? We lack self-esteem; we don’t think we can solve these problems as designers. How can it happen?

- We have to change the design profession first, and you have to start with individuals. The way we practice it; the way we move ourselves.

Q: Do you think these changes would have happened for you without 9/11?

- My life and work was under change anyway. But there are many ways to find some of the meaning that we’ve lost, which is lacking in our western culture.

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Session 4


Ken Garland
Designer, professor, UK

He was educated in the mid-fifties and got a job straight away.
He wrote “First Things First” Manifesto.

He says he was a little self-righteous.

The Future Challenges for Designers

Must detect social future
Know what is happening with people re age and money: 60, 70 +
Must want to make things better
Must know new aspects of information technology
How to transfer connectivity to the older
generation.

Our core values are flexibility!
The Designer and Author
‘When we are fed up with designing ads then what do we do?
I don’t want to design forms for old people – however there are many other things to design’, he says.

Ken has always worked commercially. Without that he wouldn’t have
been here today. He has had a wonderful life – and is now in the year of his 50’th anniversary marriage to Wanda.

Ken’s work
Ken showed a vast range of posters which he had brought to show the participants
Ken has been working with resistance movements throughout his working life.
He has designed antinuclear posters and stamps and especially likes the
antinuclear poster with a photo of his daughter and text about the sun.
Has created banner designs for protest marches.
The posters at one particular march reminded him of nazi banners and gave him an opportunity to reflect whether he was on the right track:

Doing good, selfless, unrewarded work is OK.
Can paid work be good?
Sometimes design is not about revolting but about finding your way around. And that is also good design.

Ken showed work by many other artists and designers as well:
- Posters from the Perestroika period, the Gorbachev period.
“Drunkenness is voluntary madness”.
Perestroika was a marvelous opportunity missed.
A final effort to rid itself from Stalinism but didn’t succeed.
- Posters from Auswitz!
- Ken’s book of metaphors. We are makers of metaphors and hopefully designers are better at creating metaphors.

Groupwork
Ken gives the task for groupwork to create metaphors.


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Session 5

David Berman
Designer, Consultant
Canada

Ethics & Responsibility
By Design

Ethics is at the core of what we do. The core of being human.
A journey with me but it is a journey with yourself.

David comes from Ottawa. Works with government or national organizations.
Works for clients who help prepare the world. 4-5 days of seminars a month.
“I teach what I know”, he says. “I am the ethics chair for the professional association of design in Canada”.

My girlfriend one day asked me: ‘what is this work you do? How can you portray women that way in the media’. I reflected on it and started to see things differently.
So now he is making sure that ethics are implemented in the association charter.

Why do ethics matter? ‘With great power, there must also come great responsibility’
(Spiderman).

David showed work which illustrated his point:

Travels and problems
Growing up in a globalised world what images will children associate with Camels (cigarettes) Advertising in the developing world – advertising tobacco!

‘Climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious than the threat of terrorism’, said by Sir David King, chief scientist to Tony Blair

‘The frog does not drink up the pond in which she lives’
Buddhist proverb

‘There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth: we are all crew.’
Marshall Mcluhan (Canadian)

Waste
The largest export form New York is waste

The Brands
- The largest export that North America sends to the world is the idea:
The idea of consumption
- The most frequently used words are the word OK and the word Coke
- The consistent use and the repetition of the Coca Cola brand is what matters – not the design.
- Benches along highways in impossible places carry billboards and cannot be used.
-Coca Cola examples from around the world showing roadsigns with Coca Cola logos, drinks machines in schools etc.

Logos have become an international language. Logos are abstract pictures.

Whether we will acquire the ability to come to grips with scientific and technological invention will be one of the most important tasks in our modern day world.
We need to create associations, metaphors etc. to communicate what we want to communicate. We need to use our visual abilities to get images and messages across. (The flags, red cross etc).
Now a brand goes from being used on its own brand and use the value of another product design to enhance its name. Glasses (spectacles) are good examples of people wanting to wear a brand.
The persistance of a symbol. The nazi symbol is an example of this. Symbols still carry so much weight, the apartheid symbol. Sacred symbols are being picked up to sell products.
There is something wrong with a style of life, which is presented to be better
(on an ad), when it is directed at ‘having’ rather than ‘being’.

People are beginning to turn around. Change their behaviour.
Tibor Calman says: ‘Stay away from corporations who want us to lie for them’.

Tobacco companies are successfully sued. Philip Morris was recently sued for 196 billion US dollars.
It is only a matter of time before we, the designers, get sued for producing something which is damaging.

Ethics is good business. Responsible behaviour is good business.
Ethical design is good business.

We have to stop creating new ways to lie to people. Stop creating products which are unsustainable. Cigarette packs have a card which shows you how to quit.
In UK pictures of sick people will be on packs soon.
The awareness in the business of design is on the up and up.
Big business in North America recognizes that design is an asset.

Does design matter? Design matters big time.
The design of the ballot in the US was the cause of the election of Bush.
The awareness of typography is getting more and more known.
Public awareness of design is raising dramatically.
Now is the right time to create design ethics. In Canada we are redesigning the law.
We are rewriting it for the people so that they can read the law.
We want to include all of design in our rules of professional conduct.

Explore the words:
Ethics
Responsibility
Respose Ability
Responsibility to whom?

What is the difference between human and animal?
Imagining the future
Think in abstraction
Selfawareness/consciousness/mammals
Reflect
Conscience
Record information for future generations
Learn
Record knowledge
The ability to choose

What are professional ethics?
Ethics is the sum of personal principles and values.
Publicly agreed on code of professional conduct.
What can I expect from a designer, when I hire one?

In Denmark there is a written code of conduct for architects.

To do nothing is unethical. There is a stewardship role in all professions.

Personal belief and code of conduct get to the professional code of practice.

At least reflect on your code of practice! That when you conduct yourself professionally you don’t do something that you would’t do in your private life.


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KB/Notes/module 2/June 2004