The Eazy Eez

[eazyeez]

Summary, Reading III (The New Materiality of Design) by Mihkali, 6 Oct 2020

These readings, like the previous ones as well, arouse thoughts on our society and the rest of nature as well. I like to emphasize the human race being a part of nature, including all our non-human artifacts. The reason to this is that we certainly are a part of nature and thus dependent on it. Separating humans from nature on a thought level distances us from the fact that when altering our habitat we will make changes to the complex puzzle that the biosphere is. The complex system, as it has more or less been for hundreds of millennia, is the ideal habitat for us and changing it will make it less ideal for us and partly other species. The altered ecosystem will as a result be more suitable for some species. For instance altering the ecosystem of the Baltic-sea by pumping masses of nutrients into it during decades has led to it being a more suitable environment for cyanobacterium. We all know how lovely cyanobacteria are in the water we drink, swim in or gather food from. This is a good example of what effects our actions can have on ecosystems on a slightly bigger scale.

As another example of how our actions can affect the biosphere is taking out apex predators (which are sensitive to environmental changes) from a marine ecosystem. The absence of the apex predators leads to the booming of the next level of the food chain, smaller predators. These predators will prey on the next level of the food chain too effectively, the plankton feeders, and their populations will collapse. The absence of the plankton feeders will cause a boom in macro-plankton/ animal plankton which feed on phytoplankton, the smaller plankton, mainly different algae, and the phytoplankton biomass will collapse. The absence of phytoplankton affects the physical and chemical balance of the water. Do we want to see a change in our oceans, which contribute in major ways to the balance of our biosphere and the composition of the air we breathe?

The point of this is that I often get the feeling that when separating humans from nature on speech level distances us from the fact that we are a part of nature and vulnerable to changes in it. This attitude might lead to the illusion that protecting nature is because we only want to be nice to poor little nature. This seems to me often to be the attitude of people who have an economy-first attitude to life and human society. I think it would be important in the discourses on ecology to emphasize the point that we are an inseparable part of rest of nature.

How all this in my view connects to the readings is the point that our society as it is today is the reason to our habitat being altered. The contradictory role of a designer in our society is connected to how the rest of the machinery works. The machinery which leads to alteration of the biosphere. Standardization is another element in the big machinery of our society. The machinery aims to become more effective on an endless time perspective. The non-human agents are an element of this machinery as well, aiming to a more effective production and consumption society. We constantly innovate new non-human artefacts to make human life easier and the living standard higher, which can be seen as one main driver of our society.

So the dilemmas in the texts we have read on this course are in my view not the real problem. The real problem is the structure of the society in which these dilemmas occur. This in my view is quite a justified simplification since the nature of our society will lead to problems in human existence that make problems within the functions of the contemporary society irrelevant. What difference does it make if artefacts like cellular phones create social or political problems, or the role of a designer in a mega corporation creates a feeling of having no purpose in life for the designer, or how much we should standardize the society to reach an ideal level of mundane tasks vs. more complicated tasks in everyday life of people, if the society to start with is flawed and will lead to problems of much bigger magnitude regarding the existence of humans.

But since very little change has occurred in what the human species seems to value and prioritize, and how we act accordingly, even as knowledge on the bad state of the planet has increased and become more accurate, humanity will probably see what this fooling around leads to regarding the biosphere and human society. What will the next generations´ societies look like? What roles will designers have in these societies?

UTOPIAN ALTERNATIVE:

Since I have concentrated so much on doomsday visioning and diagnosing our current society as flawed, I thought I could think about what options we could have for the structure/ nature of our contemporary society and how the alternative society structure would affect the topics of our readings.

I suppose firstly there should be an evaluation done on how we can live in order for our lives to be sustainable regarding the balance of our biosphere? Hopefully on probably evaluations already exist in heaps, but I have not stumbled upon one, not that I have actively searched for them.

How much energy and resources can every individual use in their lives? Are we forced to stop using fossil energy sources completely immediately? Are we forced to ban any form of single use commodities immediately? Are we forced to change our diet drastically, maybe allowing eating of animal based foods 95% less than we do now? Are we forced to ban recreational flight traffic or flying all in all? How about cars? Are we forced to abandon the clothing industry as it is now and maybe create an alternative where individuals have a ration of some kind on how many pairs of socks or trousers they can have each year? Are we forced to reserve huge areas of land and sea for wild nature, in order to save species and mechanics in the biosphere that make it stable? Are we forced to abandon use of any kind of plastic which is not biodegradable to eliminate the unclear threats of micro-plastics? Can we forget about space travel? Do we have to ban war XD, is it possible? That would be a huge step forward considering how wasteful wars are and what purpose they serve, which can in a way be seen as no purpose. Are we forced to regulate child birth in order to reach a population size which is sustainable? What is that population size? Of course this depends on the previous question on individual consumption. Are we forced to recycle ALL our wastes? How about wealth and money in general in the green society? If there is no market economy, is there a need for money?

What kind of a government would be the authority in the green society? A vast board of scientists from all imaginable fields? Can AI eventually help us in the task or ultimately replace a human based government? Judging by how things have gone so far and how adult humans from garbage men to (in increasing amounts) superpower leaders behave, it seems as we desperately need some sort of a parent kind of authority to tell us what is nice and what not. And what harm have Big Brothers ever caused?

Can we build a green version of this society, or is the sustainable life style just so far from our life style that it is impossible?

If it is, what is then the option? No market economy? No industry? No system XD? Sounds like a plan.

If a green version of the society is possible, how many designers will this green society employ? With industry reduced to a fraction of what it is now, as well as clothing fashion and the market of other commodities and advertising becoming partly or fully useless, will there be a need for the kind of designers we have now? Maybe not the commercial kind at least. But yes for the sectors not connected to commerciality. Design of signs of the infrastructure? Designs of communications still needed in the new world? Designers making the machinery behind this new system effective and functional?

The theories of graphic design that have developed during the existence of our contemporary society could naturally be taken advantage of in the visual communication of the green society. The same goes for theories of standardization, at a healthy level. Could the AI or the board please assess what that level is? And while at it, also hint if we should ditch the dish washer.

Connecting the green society visions with the read “Intercept from the Academy”, should peoples roles in the green society be reformed also in a way that peoples work lives would be different from what they are now, if the current system is seen as unhealthy for the individual, which leads to problems in the society? Should citizens of the green society be informed to use 4 hours of the day for work and more hours for time with family and friends? The families consisting of three or more generations, which could possibly be a cure for problems of social exclusion.

What place would authors and artists have in the green society? Based on Andrew Bennetts text, authors and the appreciation for true, pure and independent authorship are not going anywhere. Would the green society have space for art? Why not. Maybe if we weren´t busy working for 8 hours a day to afford commodities, some of us could be artists that do what they do without the pressure of turning it into money, but only to channel gods voice in order to create food for the soul for the not divinely chosen ones.

[eazyeez]

Reading III (The New Materiality of Design) Summary by Iiris

We all agreed that Bruno Latours text ”Where are the Missing Masses?” was pretty heavy to read and to understand the core point. The examples about door and seat belt felt hard to start a conversation with. We focused more on the other texts.

It was interesting to see how we had understood the texts about ”What is Object-Oriented Ontology?” In different ways, while Saara had focused more about the subject and definition of OOO and I about the discussion around the definition and Mihkali something between that. We thought about the importance of clear visual forms and design in widely understandable way and discussed how our backgrounds always affects how we see and understand for example visual forms and images.

We all felt the Naders ”Workers of the World, Conform!” explanation how standards have been created was interesting and we have all kept the A4-format as self-evident, without really thinking about the defining work behind it. We discussed about how we are so used to standards that we don’t even think about their existence. And whether or not standards limit our creativity and being. 

We discussed about how we have ended up to the situation where it is very difficult as an individual to affect on the big picture for example commercialism. Through our readings we have come aware of the problematics and possible action points as designers in our field. Ecological values and equality should be the biggest focus points to fix in the society where we are working in. We ended up talking about our final installation, how to sum all the important points to one influential piece. To be seen… ;)

[eazyeez]

Summary, Reading I (Reading I: Discourse and Authorship in Design Practice) by Mihkali, 5 Oct 2020

Designer as Author, MICHAEL ROCK / 1996

Again highly challenging texts, teeming with complicated sentences, unfamiliar English expressions and references to unfamiliar topics.

I read this text after reading the texts of the courses readings 2 and 3. I believe all the texts have been chosen to form some sort of a continuum, the latter texts connecting to the previous ones. But it worked well in this order too. I saw connections to the other texts here as well. Designer as Author was a further element to the topic on the designer´s role as faceless facilitators in society.

The text viewed the designer´s role as author and compared designer authors to authors from other fields, like film and literature. In literature the concept of author is moderately easily defined, at least because the work of the author might need only one person, unlike in film projects, that usually have big work teams and it might be difficult to nominate one single author when the director, writer and cinematographer all have big roles in the projects. The same difficulty of appointing the author often applies to designers as well.

In the film industry there has been an attempt to set criteria that have to be met in order for a director to be entitled to authorship. These criteria can be technical expertise, stylistic signature and consistent vision through the works. The text suggests that a similar approach could be used for designers as well.

In the text it is asked what difference it makes who is the author? In my view this is something that shouldn’t be ignored. Humans are social beings and want reflection to things we do. I don’t much believe in the thought of doing things only for yourself. It is natural to want to get credit for a job well done. Maybe this is also at the core of designer´s frustration of being faceless facilitators.

The text concludes with thoughts that the designer´s role is difficult to demarcate within the role of author, because the designer´s role encompasses such a wide variety of different activities. The text suggests that designers could be seen as translators, performers, directors or simply just as designers.

 Chapter 2: Authority, ownership, originality , Andrew Bennett

This was a partly too overwhelming and partly highly interesting read. The text explained how authorship in literature has come to be what it is today.

In the analysis, Bennett goes all the way back to ancient Greece to lay a basis to how authorship has started to develop. The writer explains the concept of author in the ancient oral epic traditions, where an author is very difficult to pinpoint. The stories in oral epic traditions evolve as different singers add to the story each time they tell it. The original poem has started from something and first evolved to a certain point by being told by a number of singers and at some point found a more established form which then has continued to be told, but without as much variation as in the beginning of its forming. Bennett draws a connection between authors of ancient Greece and the romantic author of the 1700´s as well as the modern author in the way the true author is a figure separate from society and having divine qualities or a connection to god, who speaks through the author.

Next Bennett continues to explain how authorship has developed through medieval times. In the start of medieval centuries the role of the author was in a way insignificant. The book making authors were seen as someone who reproduces a text on a continuum, starting from simply copying the text and ending to the book maker who “writes both his own words and others, but others only for purpose of confirmation”. But at the same time the medieval author had a highly specialized, highly privileged identity. The medieval author´s or “auctor´s” role was to augment the knowledge and wisdom of humanity.

By later medieval ages, authorship started to develop more to the direction of authors being recognized as individuals.

The introduction of print publications came with new conceptions of authorship and originality. The ability to effectively make large amounts of copies of a text had a stabilizing effect on their nature. Printing lead to new kinds of property rights that came to be known as copyrights that further lead to an increase in prestige for authors. The uniformity of the book also lead to an increased need of unique, individual representation of one self as an author.

In the 1600´s print publication was seen as degrading to the art of poetry. Publication made a writer “common and vulgar” and was a degradation of one´s aristocratic status or aspirations to such a status. Printed texts associated with merchandising had less social authority.

Late in the 1600´s and 1700´s when the stigma of printed text being degraded started to fade and when writers started to be able to make a living from writing the modern sense of authorship occurred. After the English civil war demand for printed writing grew, as well as did literacy. Buying books could distance one from people who could not afford them and bring them closer to people who had been able to afford them for centuries. With newspapers and periodicals came a mass market of literature.

In the 1700´s laws on copyright brought a legal status to writers but at the same time as authorship became financially and legally viable a new aesthetic ideology of a transcendent and autonomous artistic author arose. This ideology valued a distance to commercial writing. The paradox in the ideology is that the mystificatory sense of the author as above commercial considerations was exactly what made the writings commercially viable.

This text was for me very challenging to get full grasp of, but what I found interesting was how a similar tone regarding authorship was detectable through all the observations on authorship in different times. It seems like authorship is wanted to be seen as something transcendent. An author should be an outsider of society, to whom financial matters don’t apply to. Some sort of source of original and independent knowledge or creations, possibly channeling wisdoms straight from god.

This is something I recognize in our time easily, which is not surprising considering it seems to be some sort of background ethos through in the different times Bennet inspects in his writing. As modern examples of authors meeting the previously mentioned criteria of a true author to my mind comes suffering artists like Curt Cobain, Kalervo Palsa and maybe also Lady Gaga (Kanye West is also doing his best to achieve this divine status). In the case of Lady Gaga, since she appears to me to have a massive marketing apparatus behind her, to my mind comes a thought if the music industry (and other industries as well) sometimes consciously uses the phenomenon to create appealing star figures.

Where does the appreciation for this sort of “pure” authorship or artistry well up from?

I also come to think of a well known and in my opinion very good comedian/ speaker, whos name I cant remember unfortunately. I remember him ranting on stage about musicians playing lame mainstream songs with superficial and meaningless lyrics and this comedian screaming “PLAY FROM YOUR HEART!!!! PLAY FROM YOUR HEART!!!!!!!”. It was funny, but also cool, because you could easily relate to his frustration with musicians making music from a somehow false base or false motivators. This somehow comes back to the conflict in being an author in some field and also making money from it. It seems like a base vibe the human masses have is that a true artist or author should not be interested in making money with his/her creations. The money aspect somehow pollutes the art, like the artist/ author is really doing what he/she does calculatingly.

But once again I come back to the thoughts that have emerged in my mind while reading most of the texts in this course, that our society is an unhealthy environment for humans. In our society everyone needs money to survive, including authors and artist. At the same time authors/ artists should create what they create only for the sake of creating without considering how it effects their ability to pay the rent. It is difficult to fit authorship/ artistry with the mechanisms of our society, especially if we really want truly pure independent creations. I wonder how the hunter gatherers solved this puzzle, if they did.

[eazyeez]

Summary by Saara: Reading 3

Even though we all agreed that this was by far the most difficult reading, we came up with a very good conversation, especially about environmental values.

All of us were frustrated with “Missing the masses”-text, and Iris said that it made one think “Are we supposed to understand this?”

We decided to start by going through the OOO instead - Iiris said that she understood that it was about making the information available and understandable to as many as possible. She said she understood the text via the comments whereas I was watching a youtube video about the OOO theory.

Then we went to the text “Workers of the World..” and Mihkali said that he found some connections there to the Mill’s text when describing how making everything more effective, the corporations and entire nations can reduce the value of an individual human being.

We were talking about when there is a big company looking after financial gain, often times it is seen as a bad thing to be different from the others. How for example, in design field, more commercial style is preferred and other styles (“artsy”) might be overlooked.

Mihkali made a notion that Oswald was actually dreaming of internet: World brain = world wide web?

We were also discussing how singular engineers might just look for a resolution for one small dilemma without seeing a big picture and how this shows for example in “greenwashing”: Let’s say recycled plastic from the sea > micro plastic which ends up back in the sea.

Mihkali said we live in a “single-use-world” and that its hard to change the direction anymore. (Then we started babbling about the current political issues etc) We ended up with the question. If the situation where we live in is so unhealthy for us the humans and the environment, what options do we have?

[eazyeez]

Reading III (The New Materiality of Design) Introduction by Iiris

Being able to explain and talk about our academic knowledge and know-how in a way that ordinary people understands it, keeps the connection between everyday world and academic world. We need to be woke which terms we are using when talking about our field. But how can we find a common language that is separated from all of our cultural and social background knowledge. In it’s most simplified form while including all explaining facts and giving easy to approach examples. In the webpage where Ian Bogost text was posted I saw the discussion of people arguing of the explanation about OOO and that made me think if there can be some topics that are too difficult to be explained to everybody or even to the people on the same field. I thought about how the making information understandable and simple enough relates to graphic design. How can we design in an understandable way so the designs / infographics / layouts and illustrations are understood in the same way where ever they are looked at.

Explanation about how standards were created first to paper sizes and later to brick blocks, furniture and sidewalks was interesting. Standards created guidelines for control and extracted value from workers, while extolling the morality of productivity, conformity, and efficiency.

Creating standards were a necessary act to be able to develop individual products and the working process around it. They were also used to make selling products easier because then the buyer knew surely what they were getting. It’s easier to recognize defective pieces and replace specific broken ones with the exact same new pieces. 

But wildly known and decided standards creates a situation where states and corporations can have a huge control of markets. That makes it hard to form new businesses or entry into the market. And that made me think about people. When you belong to the masses it’s easy to live but when you stand out in your own way people start to weigh you physically and emotionally in many ways. If you stand out in a bad way you are somehow weird and less worthy but when you stand out in a good way you are interesting and unique. When talking about products we trust on the standards and are doubtful of new creations. Do standards kill our creativity and control our being?

“Where are the missing masses?” by Bruno Latour was a difficult text for me to understand the main point. I’m happy to hear our discussion around it in our upcoming reading group and bigger class meetings. I somehow understood the examples of seatbelts and doors but after Latour threw in his jokes I dropped out from the text and lost track. It was interesting to start thinking about the differences between people and machines. How can you ever fully trust people to do a certain job, when machines are more consistent in performing continuous high level actions. We are surrounded by machines and infrastructure that affects and limits our behavior in daily life.

At this point after three pretty intense weeks with new readings and constantly raising points of views it started to feel harder and harder to keep my mind focused and find the connection between the texts and our field. It has been very interesting how clearly all the texts have followed each other and supported the ideas that have come up on the way. 

[eazyeez]

Reading III (The New Materiality of Design) Introduction by Mihkali, 3 Oct 2020

What is Object-Oriented Ontology?

An attempt to explain a complicated topic so that anyone can understand it. To my mind spring our discussions on exclusion of uneducated people from certain discourses. OOO might still be a topic too high flying for many to be able to grasp. The ontology of everything, the relations between things of any scale.

 Workers of the world, conform!

This text and its connection to previous texts was interesting. It was interesting to read about how standardization has developed and about the visions of the advocates of standardization (like Ostwalds visions of the “world brain”, which now could be seen as a prophecy of internet). And also the darker side of it.

While reading, I thought about Mills text on the designer´s role in the society of 1958, Drucker´s writing “Visual forms of knowledge production” as well as the article “Intercept from the academy”.

Standardization makes things in our society more effective, but it also impoverishes life. A society where everything would be standardized would resemble an ant´s hill, which works effectively, because all the members have very clear and simple tasks and no individual needs that would differ from the colony´s goals, kind of like how big corporates function. But humans are not ants. We want variation in life and have individual needs. We need to use our imagination and we need to experience having purpose.

Standardization, just like the narrowed down role of the designer in Mills text and the description in “Visual forms of knowledge production” of how graphic design has developed to be a more effective asset in industry all seem to have a role in what our society has become and where it is heading. The dark side of the these phenomena is the exploitation of workers to the benefit of the top of the food chain as well as the impoverishment of the human life quality and as a result of the capitalist and consumption values and life styles being intensified, the changing and damaging of the ecosystem.

 ‘‘Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts’’

The text is an attempt to explain the role of artifacts´ in sociology or a socity´s sociological structures and cultural values. It states that sociotechnical systems are formed not only by negotiations between humans, but that artifacts are also a part of these negotiations and that you cannot understand a society´s sociological structures if you don’t understand what kinds of artifacts that have an effect on people´s lives and actions exist in a society. As an example a person from the 1800´s could have a hard time understanding our behavior in the 2020`s, because the person would be unfamiliar with all sorts of innovations and artifacts that have become a strong part of our everyday lives since that.

The smartphone and internet have a strong effect on our lives today. For instance, arranging a meeting with friends is much more flexible now than before smart phones. We can just agree on calling each other in an hour to see where we are and where and when we could meet. Before smart phones a meeting had to be planned well, so that both parts were in the same place at the same time. If something happened that led to one of the people to be inhibited from coming to the meeting, the other one was not able to get information about it in the same way as now and would probably be forced to wait for the friend at the randevouz until getting tired of the friend not showing up and just going back home.

The reverse side of the coin is that we might not be very punctual with our meetings, because it is so easy to call our friend and just tell them we are 15 minutes late.

So our new technologies have an effect on our lives and how we behave.

Someone from 1980 might wonder why we have no encyclopedias in our book shelves, because they would be unfamiliar with internet.

The text argues that all the artifacts in a society play a part in what the society´s sociological structures and cultural values are like. Imagine bringing a person from any society 3000 years ago to this day. That person would have a hard time understanding what is going on in our everyday life. Partly this would be because of all the artifacts that surround us.

The text also argues that people can act on distance through artifacts. As an example the seatbelt scenario in the text. Some people are unwilling to use a seatbelt, even if they know it protects them. For some reason car industry engineers have decided to play the part of a nagging parent through the seatbelt artifact and the beeping sound that comes if you havn´t buckled up. They have innovated a system that subtly forces the driver to put on the seatbelt when driving. A harmless, but annoying enough beep that makes you use the seatbelt, which might save your life.

Tasks of humans can be delegated to machines. The machines can be developed to ultimately replace a human doing the same job in an ideal way. The hydraulic groom always closes the door in the ideal way, not too quickly, which might cause accidents. Unlike a human as a door closer, it will also never be late from work or unwilling to work.

So we can delegate work tasks to machines. How far can this go? Human beings, like all other organisms, arguably have an inherent tendency of trying to get by in life with the least amount of energy needed. The purpose of this tendency is to save energy, which in nature is always scarce. Any organism has to work in order to obtain energy (food). Running out of energy will lead to the death of the organism. Since obtaining energy is never granted, saving energy is good.

Humans (at least a part of us) are not threatened of running out of energy. As conscious beings we also understand that some work might be worth doing even if it doesn’t have an effect on our survival. We might think it is a good idea to write a book, even if it doesn’t directly affect our survival. But we are still not free from the inherent tendency of saving energy, hence all the procrastination etc. Is it a good thing to be free from the constant pressure of running out of energy? We have evolved for as long as life has existed to have to work in order to survive. Working is thus a natural way of living for us. Sitting on the sofa watching tv and developing our reserve energy storage is not natural life for humans. Arguably humans living like this are not happy or satisfied with their lives, but the inherent need of saving energy has taken a dominating role in their life style and they find it hard to change the way they live.

To me this text boiled down to the question how far we can go regarding delegating tasks to non-humans? Also, which tasks should be delegated to machines and which not? What if we delegated all the work to machines? What would we do then? Or does the horizon of tasks move further to new tasks when we are freed from others? Can we all become scientists, artists or practitioners of other fields that don’t directly have to do with us getting by in everyday life if those tasks are delegated to machines?

Is that a good thing to strive for?

Here I again see a connection to the text about the Academy sauna and my previous thinking on hunter gatherers vs. narrow niche workers in big corporates.

Is it a good thing to delegate tasks to machines? Is it good to some extent? Maybe the hydraulic groom is ok, but how about for instance automatic lawnmowers or fish fileting machines? And what if we delegate all other tasks to machines so, that we can use all our time concentrating on art or science? Would it be better for us to filet our own perches after a day at work where we for example have been working on trying to figure out how to prevent our employers newest space rocket model from becoming fire work when entering Mars´ atmosphere? Should we reflect on the Mars project only for 4 hours per day instead of 13 and spend the rest mowing the lawn, fileting the perch and playing a board game with our family?

What is a healthy degree of non-human figures in our everyday life and sociological structures?

[eazyeez]

Introduction by Saara

Reading 3:

Reading III: The New Materiality of Design

1 Latour, Bruno (2008). ‘‘Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts’’ In Fiona Hackne, Jonathn Glynne and Viv Minto (editors) Proceedings of the 2008 Annual International Conference of the Design History Society – Falmouth, 3-6 September 2009. Universal Publishers. (30 pages)

2 Vossoughian,  Nader  (2017). Workers of the World, Conform! (6 pages)

3 Bogost, Ian (2009). What is Object-Oriented Ontology? A definition for ordinary folk.

These were by far the most difficult and the least interesting pieces reading for me. The text “Where are the missing masses?” by Latour for me was really annoying and frustrating even. I didn’t get his style of writing, or the “jokes”, or the talk about seatbelts and door groomers, it was all just just a confusing fuzz for me. I even googled the article and tried to find a good review or summary to find if someone got something out of it.

I think that for me the whole issue is problematic. If I kind of start thinking about artefacts and their effect on human beings or artefacts and non human-human - experience, my brain just somehow gets triggered. I don’t know if I want to think about this issue at all, or if I would, what kind of an example I would find interesting enough. At least not the seat belts, doors or street bumps, that’s for sure.

In the test Bruno Latour “explores how artefacts can be deliberately designed to both replace human action and constrain and shape the actions of other humans” yet also finding similarities between human and non-human behaviour.

If I think about my attitude towards artefacts, I find that some, to which Ive become very fond of, feel like they do share some characteristic attributes: I don’t own a car but I do do feel something towards my bike or my SUP board or my snowboard. My husband’s boat which is from the 70’s does feel like a person. It definitely has some “mood swings”, or at least it’s engine does, since it sometimes co-operates, and sometimes not.

When I think about solutions for textile business and its problems, I find that it would be good if a piece of clothing would have emotional value to it. That way we would wear our favourite clothes and repair them until they are not repairable anymore. That goes for some devices, mobile phones, computers etc too.

I don’t know if I got too carried away here but this was actually a thought that rose after this text.

Next, I read “Workers of the World, conform!” which was a bit more interesting than previous one. I found particularly the system of paper sizes and the book “Bauentwurfslehre” published in 1936. In some form there would be still need for this kind of a book still in today, even though I didn’t like the idea of building small chicken coops or other types of “cages” for farm animals, I think it would be interesting to encourage people of today building things for their home and garden.

But does these types of systems really encourage individual thinking and creativity? Maybe not so much, and if I understood right, it was kind of the point in this text. Modern person would actually go to youtube tutorials when looking for guidance. If they find any interesting or useful tips that actually work is another issue.

The third text was about the “OOO” as in object-oriented ontology and its definition. The text was very short, yet informative. Still I had to google this one as well and, as a modern person myself, found several definitions of the word in Youtube as well. The definition is that instead of thinking that objects exist only depending of human experience, they do exists even without it. That way, the existence of human beings and objects are equal.

I’m not so sure if I have an opinion of OOO. For me, the simple concept or idea “existence” is not so interesting. Instead, I find consciousness more interesting. Even if I may characterise my SUP board or my bike, they never reach a level of my dog or even my home plants in my heart. I do not care for the objects thrown into the trash as much as I care for the consequences of the action of throwing things away. I understand that the artefacts do exist, but do they have a consciousness or a soul? No they don’t, so why bother?

All in all, as you can see, I really don’t have much to add to this subject and this is not really my passion issue. It will be interesting to discuss this with other people who might just understand this topic a bit better.

[eazyeez]

Summary: Reading 2 (Design & Knowledge) by Mihkali 29.9.2020

We were quite unanimous on that Mills view on craftsmanship seems somewhat utopic for the contemporary designer. We have to make a living and to get paid we have to co-operate with our employer. The employer has to make his living by playing by the rules that society dictates.

 But this matter is not black and white. As designers, we can to some degree choose our employers. We can accept a job offer to design a compelling frankfurter package to Lidl or instead apply for jobs that don´t contribute in strengthening the consumerism apparatus. We can work for causes like protecting the environment, developing sustainable solutions etc.

 But sustainable alternatives play a very small role next to the super dominating unsustainable consumerist apparatus. Just compare Prismas and Ruohonjuuri shops, to simplify the matter. How many people buy the sustainable toothbrush from Ruohonjuuri versus this year´s posh version of a solar powered electric toothbrush with blue tooth and disco lights from Prisma?

 Mills might be correct with his utopia, but it is difficult to combine with modern society.

 In my view the designer´s struggle with purpose is not the problem. The problem is the society that has developed to be an unhealthy environment for humans.

 With today´s awareness of our ecological problems it is clear that the mass consumption culture is a path to destruction or at least a home planet that provides a less well functioning environment for our species.

 The question Mills asks is how can a society be built, where the designers role is more that of a craftsman? The updated question could be how can a society be built where maximum sales are not first priority? In a society like this the need and role of designers would be different and maybe not that big.

 Of course disregarding the problems designers have in the contemporary society by saying we need a different society doesn’t help in this moment. Building a society that would be based on different values than the ones our present one has does not happen overnight. I personally believe we will continue on the path we are on and the conditions for the human species on this planet will become tougher. What could these conditions be like? Famine, war and disease? Can that lead to a collapse of the reign of large-scale enterprises? If yes, will we be forced to go back to some sort of hunter gatherer life style? The life style which we supposedly happily led for hundreds of millennia in balance with nature and ourselves until someone planted a row of wheat.

  Till that I suppose we can choose which job task we accept or if we want to set up a sauna where we serve our bathing customers and have design conferences on the side. Or just enjoy the ride to apocalypse in our Lidl sneakers munching on the triple steak happy cow burger we designed a hilarious and witty instargam ping pong game add for.

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About perception -Saara

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Summary By Saara (Reading 2)

Talvikki started the conversation with the term epistemology and how us the human beings are so trusting towards visual information we receive, even though all of it is probably a copy of something. Then again, the information can not be trusted unless we have experienced it.

In the text ”Man in the middle” they actually mention the same thing as what we explored previously, a quote by Plato:

We started talking about the cultural apparatus mentioned in the same text and how it is built upon different components. How the culture in the US, as commercialised as it is, affects designers and their role.

We also talked about the glorified role of a craftsman. The notable and positive thing about craftsman is that it actually combines the profession and the free time. But is it positive after all? There is a quote:

Then again, Ive seen quote somewhere saying something like: ”Be an entrepreneur and you'll work everyday for the rest of your life”

We also discussed how an artist and someone working in a ”regular job” say, logistics or warehouse have very different stress levels.

We also got into a discussion about perception: how kids draw funny animals based of what they remember they've seen somewhere or how ancient Finns used to draw a lion (could not find the picture reference)

Perception got us to social media and the images, fake news and conspiracy theories and how people really don't fact-check images / memes they share. That way the ”knowledge” stays very simple and superficial.

We also discussed how our brains as illustrators/designers/artists has changed, how we have to evaluate everything, whether it's worth publishing or not.

We concluded the discussion with the data visualisation and how important it is for us to make information available for as many as possible. That is actually our responsibility, as visual communicators.

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Introduction, Reading II: (Design and Knowledge) by Mihkali, 28 Sep 2020

The Man in the Middle

For me this writing boiled down to the questioning of our life style today. This is something I think of regularly. The mass production and consumerist cultures are clearly not a sustainable strategy for the human being. Mills writes about the impoverishment of the cultural scene and compromising of human development. Since 1958 ecological worries have become a further and arguably the most critical argument against our contemporary life style. What the society has become is creating an abundance of problems for the human wellbeing as well as radically changing and destroying habitats for other life forms.

Another sector is social life. We have heaps of problems with mental issues and social exclusion. Elderly people have become something of a burden for the modern societies. They don’t have a role to play in the production machinery and their fate therefor is to be confined to solitude in their homes or institution-like nursing homes.

So the question arises, what alternative could we have for the structure of our society? How should the society be built in order to solve our ecological and social problems?

I often think of and in a way idealize the hunter gatherer societies. These societies led a life in balance with the rest of nature. The hunter gatherers everyday life consisted of fewer hours of work and more time spent in social activities. Everyone had an important part to play in the society. For instance the person with the wildest visions was not medicated or locked up in a cell, but considered a shaman, the connection between our world and others. Elderly people were the wise ones. Highly respected and consulted when an experienced view to a matter was needed.

Should the society be shaped to resemble the hunter gatherer societies?

Linking these thoughts to Mills writing, would the new societies have a similar need for designers, if a great production machinery of commodities wasn’t a part of it?

Another question about the contemporary life style is why we have come to where we are? Is it result of a minority taking the reins and steering society in a direction favorable to their egoistic needs of wealth and power or are the masses to blame? Is this actually what we want, on some level at least? Is our desire for new gadgets, interesting foods and a new wardrobe every now and then something inborn or as Mills argues a result of the consumerist culture?  

Or maybe there is a deeper meaning to this all. Our society has enabled the development of very advanced technologies and for instance the spread of the society (and life) outside our planet.

Could this all be just another form of life doing anything it can to spread to new environments, previously uninhabitable for it? Could the development of our species be seen as life trying to find a strategy to spread into space? Life supposedly started in the oceans. The environment outside the oceans was too hostile for life, until organisms developed attributes that protected them from the conditions on land. With modern technology we are able to do the same regarding space. A wildish thought, but life/ evolution might give us a thumb for this mayhem (if it gives thumbs for anything).

 Visual Forms of Knowledge Production p. 16-48

This was an interesting read after reading The Man in the Middle because beside from assessing the development of a language of graphics/ images it explained how the practice of people working in the visual field has come to what it is today.

Where The Man in the Middle criticized the contemporary role of the designer as a member of the advertising team, this text viewed the development of design becoming an accurate tool for industries to utilize as progressive. Of course things are never black and white, except the fact that our current society is destroying our habitat, but disregarding that detail a developed understanding of the visual practice is something the field deserves.

The way the image as a source of knowledge has been belittled, reminds me of the attitude that people who are not in the visual communication field sometimes have regarding it. Many if not all visual communication designers have experiences of being asked to work for free. It may have been an employer or friend asking, but the bottom line is the attitude towards the work, that it is not as serious work as say going to the dentist.

 Into the meme pool

I find it a little funny how memes in this writing are presented as something separate from the human being, like an organism of its own, possibly an enemy trying to enslave us. In my view memes could be seen simply as a part of what we are. The part of us which extends outside our physical bodies.

As an analogy to our organs, we are not our organs, but they are a part of us and we can´t exist without them. An organ might become dysfunctional or sick which can lead to our death. Could the suicide bomber meme in a similar way be a dysfunctional or sick meme?

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Summary: Reading 2 (Design & Knowledge) by Iiris

We had an interesting discussion about how nowadays social media is filled with infographics and texts that are based on false information and which many people take as the truth. There is a certain limitation in SoMe how much text you can add to your post and that’s why the information stays pretty superficial. People don’t take the next step to dive deeper to the subject the post is made and double check the facts. Many of the posts are made visually very well and the if the person who posts it is somehow trustworthy, that creates the feeling that the information must be correct. Then as we have seen those misleading posts spread out very fast over the internet and stay there whether or not they are false or correct. It was a good idea if some day we could have  ”filters” coming over that kind of posts that are somehow suspicious or written based on someones personal view, not the facts. In the same way that for example Instagram warns about possibly disturbing content. 

Then we wondered if the craftsmanship is something we are able to aim for or if it is just an utopian idea. We have grown in such a capitalistic world that it feels like a distant idea of working just because of the process not the end result. I still think that we can move towards being something more similar to craftsman because that can raise important values to our working and works. It emphasizes that we are the specialists of our own work and we should be able to decide how we do our work so we don’t end up just doing what customers asks from us. We should be able to decide how much time our process takes, as I’m quite often in the middle of too tight schedules because people haven’t asked me how much time does the design process take. And we have been in situations where the clients want something and our art director wants something else based on their view. Why can’t we say what we think is the best option to do because we are the ones who create the design and we should be the craftsmen who have the skills. How can we get the confidence to lead our own work?

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Intro: Reading 2 (Design & Knowledge) by Iiris

The text ”The Man in the Middle” by C.W. Mills opened designers role in our capitalistic world, where selling and buying stuff has become ”The Fetish” of human life. No wonder that all of our artistic skills are taken to use to make advertising effective and the products look desirable. We take advantage of developing countries and our nature by using them as tools to keep our sales machine running faster and faster. We want to sell more and more to ensure continuing sales and in the same time we forget the idea of serving a variety of publics. We plan and design the products so that they break prematurely and become outdated quickly. 

At this point the fact that we are creating designs only to last a short time period with the knowledge that our design is going to be outdated soon becoming embarrassing to it’s owner hit me hard and I felt terrible. It was a pretty good wakeup call to be woke in how and to whom to design. I realized that is maybe one reason why I tend to buy clear and simple shaped, only black, grey and white clothes. They never get outdated… And I should in some way keep that idea with me when designing. 

After our previous readings we had discussion about star designers and whether we like the idea of becoming one or not. This text supported my guess/thought of how the star for example an illustrator might get stuck in one style and one way of doing things and whether they end up getting fed up with it. Their unique style becomes recognizable which is a great success for the designer but in the same time the evil sales persons want’s to take advantage of it and use it in their marketing to earn money, not to enjoy the design. The designer gets possibly good amount of money from the collaboration and selling the work but no one supports them to develop on their field. The designer becomes a marketeer by itself too. Are the star designers also selling themselves not just their work and giving part of their personal identity in the same deal with their works. Is it okay and appreciated to be the quiet designer that focuses in trying different approaches and styles that inspires themself. And also making customers, that they have chosen by themselves, satisfied. When we are able to choose our customers we are able to avoid that ”We only give them what they want” but we can affect on what we create and give forward to the end-customers. We have the responsibility of trying to affect the markets in a sustainable way, although sometimes that way of doing is not money wise the easiest. 

The text made me think could we start to design in a same way we make crafts to come up with something more personal and spontaneous. In our impersonal, scheduled and machined world that would create such a different meaning and value to our products. While we are sweating with the idea that we are only facilitators we could move to be craftsman with the possibility to follow our own plan, be free to modify our design during the working process  and  be able to learn and become better in our field. That way of doing releases us from the pressure of separating woking life and other life around it, those can also walk hand in hand. But we need our society to wake up to the ideology of not just keeping up in the fashion but respecting the well made products that are actually needed.

Gleick describes that memes ”live a life of their own, independent of any physical reality”. We take them as truth without knowing the original shape. ”A product is not a meme by it selves but the craving for it is, so the product acts as an meme vehicle”. Richard Dawkins wrote about how replications have skills to band together and create systems that carry around and work to favour their continued replication. We get ideas constantly from everywhere. The invisible actors, algorithms, directs us to be surrounded with ideas that are interesting for us and increase our commitment. Those ideas wait in our brains and develop and some day we release them as copies of themselves back to the world. It’s easy for us to develop them and change it to look like our own idea. Are we able to come up with an idea that anyone else hasn’t figured out yet?

I’m at the same time having a course about Data Visualization so Johanna Drucker text Grarphesis, Visual Forms of Knowledge Production (2014) felt very interesting. Graphic design (Data visualization) has longer history than we understand and it usually gets lost under fine arts. These days we have better knowledge about how humans see and understand what they see. So we are able to create information design that is based on facts how people observe and understand certain learned visual codes and standards. We use visualizations to represent invisible things that are hard and complicated to understand as words. Visualization plays very important role in sharing knowledge in more understandable and approachable way. 

When visualizing information we need to be very careful that we don’t affect on the information itself. Drucker explains well ”Graphic methods are crucial to scientific work, either for recording observation, expressing results, testing hypotheses, or formulating projects within the terms of epistemological debate or at its edges”. Question is can we teach computers to create data visualizations so that people are able to understand?

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Summary: Reading 2 (Design & Knowledge) by Talvikki 27.9.2020

Our discussion evolved around the topics of visual imagery and its strengths and weaknesses, around work-life balance as well as our role as designers and creators in our society.

What I discovered in this discussion was my interest in further understanding our role as designers or craftspeople. Referring to Mills’ text, the ‘pure’ craftmanship only emerges when not having to think of for whom it is done or how it might be perceived, or if it makes sense. It took my thoughts back to this past summer when I spent a month at our summer cottage. The time there was as far away from the commercialized ‘cultural apparatus’, that Mills explained in his text. Apart from occasional media and a few documentary films, I spent my days more social and laid back than in a long while. And having had that time and distance to consumption, I felt that I was closer to craftmanship than in my school projects or work. The summer cottage is a place, where, if something breaks, I will fix it myself or if something doesn’t work, I’ll try to find a solution for it. This way I am naturally innovating things out of necessity. In other words, I am innovating in an informal setting. Finding or trying to find solutions in these sorts of settings, seems natural as it is necessary. Contrary to these informal settings, in my past school projects problem solving has felt rather like problem identification. Although there is nothing wrong with trying to identify underlying issues and only then aiming to find solutions, more often, it seems, that problems were made up in order to be relevant as a designer. Instead, the need to dig deeper to identify problems, might be a signal for the problem to not have matured enough, for it to be solved just yet. As a designer, rather than trying to identify, understand and solve problems, I am convinced that the choice of which problems to identify, understand and solve is of more importance in order to maintain and develop an ethical and sustainable lifestyle.

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Introduction by Saara

Readings:

1. Pages 16–48 from: Drucker, Johanna (2014). Graphesis. Visual Forms of Knowledge Production. Harvard University Press. (32 pages)

2.Chapter ”Into the Meme Pool (you parasite my brain)” in Gleick, James (2011) The Information. Fourth Estate. (13 pages)

3.Mills, C.W. (2008/1958)) The Man in the Middle. In Summers, John H. (ed.) (2008). The Politics of Truth. Selected Writings of C. Wright Mills. Oxford University Press.  (10 pages)

Wow, this was heavy set of readings and thoughts. I try to summon my thoughts, but have to say, had some hard time concentrating at times with so much information.

I start byu the first text by Drucker, of which I read through the pages 1 to 48.

This was an interesting read but also a bit tiring at times, going into so much detail. I am glad I read the beginning though, to get a clear definition for the word epistemology, which pops up quite often later on: “Visual epistemology refers to ways of knowing that are presented and prosessed visually”

Text is bringing up the problematics with transferring knowledge through visual ways, images and the graphic connotations. Rene Thom has stated that knowledge can only be communicated by using either mathematical notation or written language. He said graphical means are unreliable.

Drucker says Thom is overlooking the ways graphical representation has encoded and communicated knowledge for centuries. Then Drucker goes on with the “encoding” and graphical cannotations with language of form, dynamics of universal principles of design etc.

This was an interesting read and it links well with dativisualisations of today. It’s requires skill, knowledge, and consciousness to make non-subjective data visualisations in this day.

The text also got me thinking about the social media, and especially Facebook today, with covid-1 and the raging conspiracy theories across the globe. I have seen some terribly badly composed “data visualisations” and “infographics” spread like a virus yet there are people who actually buy it. I think now more than ever, it would be important for people to have a critical mind and an eye for this phenomenon.

So when the first text got me thinking already about the “ideas” spreading through social media, the next text about memes was a great continuum.

It was interesting since “an internet meme” is the only kind of meme I was familiar with. I didn’t actually know the roots of this word before reading this text which is kind of funny. I think I am a millennial after all :)

I don’t know why but lately I have been thinking about the fast spreading of ideas in this day kind of negatively. I am not so positive about the spreading of racist, far-right ideas.

Social media and the internet today is doing some good as well, but the results of, say, Black Lives Matter-movement via social media seem quite small after all.

As a designer/artist/illustrator, I am not sure if the amount of inspiration I get seeing other people’s works everyday, exceeds the anxiety I get from “not doing as much” or “not being as good” .

If talking about funny internet memes, I think I am more positive. I believe they make internet a bit better place.

The third text, “The Man in the Middle” was very much on point about capitalism. It painted very murky picture from the place of a designer, working as a part of the “merchandising apparatus”, believing the lie of “We only give them what they want”. I really like the phrase “overdeveloped society” which was apparently used already in the original text in 1958 - over 60 years ago. If our society was “overdeveloped” by then, what is it now?

I really relate to this text, and this description of a designer as part of a capitalist system is a reason why I think I will never be working within the field of advertisement, at least for big corporations myself.

I also found the part “the uses of culture are being shaped by men who would turn all objects and qualities.. into a flow of transient commodities” interesting, and it really got me thinking about the problematics of cultural appropriation of today.

When I read a bit further, my head-nods got more rare. I didn’t quite the fascianation of the term “craftsman” here. It seemed a bit utopian and somewhat too dramatic change to the last image painted by the writer.

The writer defines the word “craftmanship” by, for example: There is no ulterior motive for work than the product being made and the process of its creation.” I think there is more into it. We all need money after all. And if we work for a client, we need to respect their opinions and in this case, one motive for work would be client’s approval. I like the thought about working freely, learning from one’s work and developing one’s skills though.

And I do agree: Institutions ought to b e constructed and judged.

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Introduction: Reading 2 (Design and Knowledge) by Talvikki, 25.9.2020

The text called Into the Meme Pool by James Gleick was an interesting follow-up to the texts of the first reading package, which discussed authorship and the authenticity of information contributing to an individual’s authority. This text (Into the Meme Pool) discussed how information and our sense of knowledge is always a replication of something prior and can never purely be original. These replications or interpretations Gleick calls memes. Memes, he says, are complex constructs that we as viewers, listeners or interpreters have created. In other words, we could define memes as interpretations of the original source, whether that is a painting, song, novel, sculpture or a statement. The question he posed was: “Who’s in charge, we or our memes?” pointing out that our own sense of truth might be perceived differently depending on how others tell the story. As memes have “a life of their own, independent of any physical reality”, it is impossible to control memes and thus, quite scary considering the power they hold within.

The text called Man in the Middle by C. Wright Mills, similarly as to the first, states that the information we receive is always a documentation of the original source. Even though it might be the actual original work we are seeing or hearing, there are interpretations projected onto these that shape our perception and understanding of it. Mills says that these originals are given to us by witnesses and that if we ever wanted to experience a sense of truth or originality the closest experience we would get as infants or when we our insane. He brings up the concept and term “cultural apparatus” that he says are interpreting and presenting us with these different perspectives of the information and knowledge. Thus, the cultural apparatus is necessary for us to get access to information in the first place. However, we become depend on the information the cultural apparatus provides us with. The role that designers have in terms of the cultural apparatus he showcases in the examples of how the cultural apparatus has developed in the USA. There, he says, as the cultural apparatus has increasingly been commercialized, the role of the designer has evolved from the ‘pure’ craftmanship’ and the intrinsic joy of crafting and designing to the need to craft and design in order to produce for the sake of sales and revenue. And as he goes on to say that society has become a sales room itself, it is increasingly important for designers to be aware in what way they can have an impact and in what way they are influenced by their immediate surrounding. Saying this, Mills says that to craft and design authentically, the designer must be practicing design themselves. Therefore, merely buying or financing artists or designers, one is not possessive of the art itself. Instead, in order to ‘possess’ art, one must in some way be participating in the process of its creation.

The last text by Johanna Drucker showed the institutionalization and standardization of visual material as sources of information. From this point of view, Drucker critically discussed the credibility of visual material as reliable or unreliable sources of knowledge and information. She states that human knowledge has far exceeded the capacity that visual imagery could possibly describe, and present, and thus visual material demonstrates limitations. However, with its limits it also enables the explanation of information and knowledge, as it tends to simplify and therefore, maintain a big picture, whilst leaving detailed information to other forms or representation, such as literature. Thanks to standardizations, visual imagery has been able establish a form of knowledge itself and become part of institutions as forms of academic subjects.

These texts were an interesting insight to how we can rethink our position and role in society as designers. My argument has always been that I want a clear separation of work and leisure time. This means that I can get my income from a specific source and stop thinking about it once I leave the working environment. However, referring to Mills argument, I might be working better towards my own needs and others’ needs, if I perceived my work and leisure as an interplay. In other words, if I’d take into account my leisure time and for instance aspects such as commuting into my work and projects, I might approach them differently in the first place. I might be more empathic towards the solutions I create for my designs. On the contrary, and from the perspective of craft and art, I might as well enslave myself to having my leisure time and work intertwined. This is because, if I as an artist or craftsperson do want to pursue crafting and art as my source of income, I am relying on stipends or other sources of finance provided by foundations, which in turn I have to proof I am credible enough to receive. Therefore, I am increasingly required to promote myself as an artist or craftsperson to be believed by others to be worth of ‘investing’ in. In accordance to Mills words, I might become trapped in my “own success”, and thus, be all but free.

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Summary by Iiris 21.9.2020

We had an inspiring Sunday morning talk through Zoom with Saara and Talvikki. The viewpoints that we read earlier about Authority got surrounded with concrete examples through our experiences from our daily lives as designers.

We discussed about how important it is for us to achieve Authority of our own work. I feel that as an artist it would be more important to have my name on my art piece and the authority of it because that is a final result of my own thoughts and ”soul” and I get money by selling it to someone. But then as we talked together, when working with clients or team around us the outcome is usually a creation combined with everyones skills and thoughts. So it’s hard to divide who did what and for who to give the authority of the work. We had a mutual feeling that the biggest win-win situation is when the clients and end-customers are satisfied and we feel that we have been using our skills in the best way to achieve that result. Although I think that there is a difference when talking about illustrations/visual elements/logos as those are small pieces of art compared to larger campaigns with different implementations. Nowadays people get affected and inspired through internet and social media, wether or not they want to. Because of that we can’t surely know if the idea behind our own work is based on someone else’s work, which can also be inspired by someone else’s work and so on. So who invented the idea in the first place and who can take the authorship of it? 

Talvikki pointed out that some people in the service design field have a mentality more like ”I am the one who created that masterpiece service for you, so there you go, be happy with it”. To us it feels to be a more self-centered way of working. We talked about different types of personalities and how important your success in working life is compared to the rest of your life. Do we define ourselves through our work or should we be able to divide our woking life from our life around it. So coming back to chasing authority, if I’m fine by doing things for people to enjoy and clients to be pleased, do I end up with emptiness in my soul. I’ll probably never be that star designer and get awarded in competitions as an individual. Where does the the pressure to become a recognized and respected star come from? From Aalto University, so they can promote their high level of teaching? Or from Finnish design field? Or is our society creating the pressure to people in all the fields to become the best of the best? If you are not the best you are lost in the mass and less worthy. Talvikki pointed out an interesting thought about Finnish designers and how it feels that our design field is in a crisis. We constantly talk about honored designers from the past but very rarely come up with new names. Is the grace of authority lost it’s power? 

We talked about the balance between work and free time. Would it be healthier to be able to separate yourself from the work and remember to create meaningful activities that are totally opposite to what you are working with. To be able to enjoy and shine in many different fields instead of one. Feed the curiosity of your mind and gather new view points to your way of seeing life. These days people have better possibilities and the mindset to become T-shape people. Which means that we don’t need to stick to just one craft but keep our options open and jump around between different fields if they want to.