Full Text: Open Debate

Joe Duffy

Founder, Duffy & Partners, branding and design consultancy

Andrew Keen

Entrepreneur; chief intelligence officer, AfterTV

Resolved: Anyone can be a designer--and should be.

Duffy: Let's face it, everyone plays the part of a designer. Design decisions are made by most everyone, everyday--what should I wear today? What kind of car should I buy? What color? Which options? What about the new sofa for the family room? What design style? Which color and fabric? These actually are design decisions that make most Americans believe that design is a fairly easy endeavor.

Along with this, the access to information and the myriad of choices available to everyone today allows people to quite literally design their lives. And, because of this new cultural phenomenon, people in this country are learning much more about design.

This is a good thing. As Americans act more like designers, they learn more about the design process, and in exploring it on their own terms, they gain a greater appreciation for the talent that it takes to practice it at the highest levels. They also achieve a better understanding of its importance in their lives.

Keen: Yes, you're right. Many Americans do think design is a fairly easy endeavor. My 4 ½ year old daughter thinks she's a clothes designer. She comes down to breakfast every morning in trousers over dresses, deep purple and electric orange t-shirts, odd shoes, even odder headwear. Can dreadful aesthetics be cute? Yes, if you're the parent. No, if you're anyone else.

The consequence of this design democracy is an ugly spectacle of deep purples and electric oranges. It's a culture of me-me-me: my hideously personalized car, my hideously personalized sofa, my hideously personalized house. It's that fat woman in the tight dress that only exaggerates her obesity. It's that loud pick-up truck with the tinted windows and the tastelessly sexualized exhaust pipe.

If we care about maintaining an aesthetic of public space, design should be left to professional designers with rigorous training in form and functionality. Let people pour their uniqueness inwardly, into their own spiritual identities. But don't let them clutter up the physical world with the me-me-me aesthetic of individualized, amateur design.

Duffy: Perhaps if your daughter develops in her experience of personal design, she won't turn into my son's (he's also a designer) worst nightmare of a client: someone who knows what they want without any appreciation for how to get there. Personal design experience will make people aware of what it takes to unleash design's power in business and in daily life -- namely, working in the right way with a professional to make it happen.

We're lacking in the basic understanding of design in this country, unlike in Italy or Japan. Why? Our children are not participating in it culturally. The Japanese tea ceremony or the Italian flair for fashion and industrial design are learned at an early age and in neither case is it "all about me." Have you considered sending your daughter to boarding school in Milan?

Keen: Exactly. Not everyone can become a designer.

I agree with you that good design and a good designer reflects a broader, deeper historical culture. For my daughter to become a fashion designer, she would indeed have to be shipped off to Milan. For my son to design fast stylish motorcars, he would have to grow up in Germany. And I'm guessing that boarding at chez Duffy in his early life enabled your son to become a designer.

North Americans, meanwhile, excel in the design of personalized technology that empower us as individuals. Neither the iPod or the BlackBerry could ever have been designed in Italy or Germany.

So rather than expelling our kids overseas in the vain hope of rewiring their aesthetic senses, I think we should celebrate the global diversity of design traditions. Americans might not be able to design skirts or shoes, but who needs clothes when you have your domestically designed iPod in one (non-existent) pocket and a BlackBerry in the other?

Duffy: Sorry Andrew but I think you've missed the point. Your daughter would be well-served at an American fashion design program like Parsons or F.I.T. in New York. Those two schools are among the finest worldwide at graduating the best and the brightest in the fashion world. And, your son couldn't find a better transportation design curriculum than at the Design Center in Pasadena. After all, BMW's head of design, Chris Bangle (an American) learned the craft there.