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sklinker wrote:
Counterpoint: Emotional (is) Intelligence.
By Scott Klinker, Designer-in-Residence, Cranbrook Academy of Art
Tucker’s Emotional (vs.) Intelligence rant makes some good points. Our mental environment is governed by irrational and often destructive emotional messages. Many designers feel a need to place their faith in rationality. The entire project of Modernism was based on such a faith. It led to a collective energy that we called ‘progress.’ It was a shared ‘truth’: designers could solve problems with rational scientific methods, we could improve living standards, make cheaper, better products for the greatest number of people. It was the driving force behind design. It was political and progressive. Although I did not grow up in the Modernist era of design, I believe in its basic tenants. I share Tucker’s lament for more rational times, and a more universal energy to guide us.
But when Tucker claims ‘this is not a parlor game of left vs. right or emotions vs. Intellect, it’s fiction vs. truth.’ I get confused. Whose truth is he talking about? Is it some universal, objective truth? Humans are capable of great compassion. Humans are capable of great selfishness. Truth is relative and subjective as we humans go about living a life, negotiating these natural, but contradictory impulses. The writer Jim Harrison said ‘we live in a time of few truths and many stories.’ This, to me, is not a jaded observation. This, to me, may be design’s single greatest truth. It represents the irrationality of the information-saturated, consumer capitalist world I grew up in, but also suggests the most rational way that I can approach this world as a designer. Truth is relative. Reality is relative. Just because I ‘realize’ objects doesn’t make it a dominant social reality. By shaping the material support for culture, designers make culture. Culture is built on the stories and values shared and believed by a group. If I believe in progress, and I do, then I put my faith in building a story that has a fighting chance in world of competing stories. The thing that makes stories such a powerful weapon of communication is that they appeal to the emotions. Designers should exploit the irrational emotional appeals of design to put across the more hopeful stories we need. Call it spin if you want. Designers unite. Spin for a better world!
I’m on Tucker’s side. But I would go one step further to say that we are in need of more than a renewed rationality in design. We are in need of a second, and sustainable, Modernity that revives the idea of progress by inventing smarter, greener systems. But for the story of a Second Modernity to take hold in the global public imagination, designers should bring out the big bullhorn and speak emotionally. Speak to the public’s hope, to their civic pride. Build technologies around hopeful values and make them emotional, s3x and cool. And then spin that emotional story with everything you got!
Scott Klinker is the principal of Scott Klinker Designs and Designer-in-Residence at Cranbrook Academy of Art’s graduate 3D Design Program.
www.cranbrookart.edu/3d
sklinker wrote:
Counterpoint: Emotional (is) Intelligence.
By Scott Klinker, Designer-in-Residence, Cranbrook Academy of Art
Tucker’s Emotional (vs.) Intelligence rant makes some good points. Our mental environment is governed by irrational and often destructive emotional messages. Many designers feel a need to place their faith in rationality. The entire project of Modernism was based on such a faith. It led to a collective energy that we called ‘progress.’ It was a shared ‘truth’: designers could solve problems with rational scientific methods, we could improve living standards, make cheaper, better products for the greatest number of people. It was the driving force behind design. It was political and progressive. Although I did not grow up in the Modernist era of design, I believe in its basic tenants. I share Tucker’s lament for more rational times, and a more universal energy to guide us.
But when Tucker claims ‘this is not a parlor game of left vs. right or emotions vs. Intellect, it’s fiction vs. truth.’ I get confused. Whose truth is he talking about? Is it some universal, objective truth? Humans are capable of great compassion. Humans are capable of great selfishness. Truth is relative and subjective as we humans go about living a life, negotiating these natural, but contradictory impulses. The writer Jim Harrison said ‘we live in a time of few truths and many stories.’ This, to me, is not a jaded observation. This, to me, may be design’s single greatest truth. It represents the irrationality of the information-saturated, consumer capitalist world I grew up in, but also suggests the most rational way that I can approach this world as a designer. Truth is relative. Reality is relative. Just because I ‘realize’ objects doesn’t make it a dominant social reality. By shaping the material support for culture, designers make culture. Culture is built on the stories and values shared and believed by a group. If I believe in progress, and I do, then I put my faith in building a story that has a fighting chance in world of competing stories. The thing that makes stories such a powerful weapon of communication is that they appeal to the emotions. Designers should exploit the irrational emotional appeals of design to put across the more hopeful stories we need. Call it spin if you want. Designers unite. Spin for a better world!
I’m on Tucker’s side. But I would go one step further to say that we are in need of more than a renewed rationality in design. We are in need of a second, and sustainable, Modernity that revives the idea of progress by inventing smarter, greener systems. But for the story of a Second Modernity to take hold in the global public imagination, designers should bring out the big bullhorn and speak emotionally. Speak to the public’s hope, to their civic pride. Build technologies around hopeful values and make them emotional, s3x and cool. And then spin that emotional story with everything you got!
Scott Klinker is the principal of Scott Klinker Designs and Designer-in-Residence at Cranbrook Academy of Art’s graduate 3D Design Program.
www.cranbrookart.edu/3d
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