BLICKFANG Workshop Zurich - June 2010
Stephen Burks, Curator of the Year
Pierre Keller, Director ECAL, Ecole Cantonale d'Art Lausanne

Today's lifestyle is at once local, global, digital and communal. In a world of unprecedented and pervasive design, we're more curious than ever to understand the relationships between the myriad forms design can take. We actively integrate ourselves with technology yet seek a life in balance with nature.

How design connects to the various communities of one's life is more important than ever. As designers, we're involved in the design of every object of daily life, but how these objects relate to our communities is often overlooked.  Can design and designers have a stronger connection to the communities it exists in or comes in contact with?

Now, more than ever, design is being used as a tool for socialization, especially in the events and consumer environments that bring us all together. Are we still a culture of consumers obsessed with luxury? Or is the next generation more interested in a luxury of authenticity and generosity?

Today's conscious consumer is asking more of his or her products in search for more authentic experiences that have a greater connection to his or her lifestyle. We've seen this shift most obviously in two completely diverse markets; food and technology. In the food industry, for example, trend-setting consumers today are seeking out hyper-natural ingredients and traditional recipes in an attempt to have meals that aren't necessarily healthier but somehow more 'real'. More often than not, this food resonates with a way of living that is somehow more comforting, satisfying or slower.

What is "Design For Community" if life slows down and gravitates toward the traditional?
Oddly enough, just the opposite is happening in technology. As computing becomes more portable and omnipresent, consumers are becoming more and more connected to their digital communities via social networking. In lieu of direct and immediate communication with local friends, we are effortlessly in touch with large numbers of virtual friends all over the world.

How does "Design For Community" support constant mobile social networking?
It's for these reasons, we have the sense that the world is somehow shrinking, but in reality we are expanding. We're reaching further and further around the world with our products, services and networks influencing other cultures and communities in unpredictable ways attracting them like a magnet from their world to ours, from their way of life to ours. At no time in history, has more culture and people moved from one side of the globe to the other as we do now.
As more and more communities migrate from the so-called developing world, which in many ways is more developed than our own, to the so-called developed world, our world view must also shift to become more inclusive, pluralistic and diverse.

What is the result of acknowledging this new demographic influence in "Design For Communities"?
And what about design itself? How is the typically closed world of design opening up? As a discipline, are we responding to these changes with changes of our own?
As a new generation of designers enters the profession and the larger culture of making for distribution, design itself is becoming more collaborative and hybrid in nature. Maybe we've arrived at a time when we rely less and less on individual proponents to propel us forward and begin to welcome a more collaborative approach to creating design solutions.
Now more than ever we're witnessing a growing shift away from the singular designer as author towards a notion of designers as part a collective consciousness of cultural influencers constantly proposing and presenting their solutions for a future of design living with community in a more sincere and authentic way.