It is a misconception that design was ever only about form, colour and material, says designer Annette Meyer, who carries this month’s Baton about the expanded concept of design. According to Annette Meyer, the concept has no significance in the practical world.

By Hans Emborg Bünemann

What is your view of the expanded concept of design? What does it mean to you?
To me, the term offers no clarity and no images. In a previous Baton, Associate Research Professor Ida Engholm says that design is about more than form, colour and material. I agree, but I believe that’s always been the case. Perhaps we’ve become more aware of it in recent years, but it’s a misconception to think that design was ever only about form, colour and material. Design is not just a physical thing; it’s something far more complex.

Take, for example, the underwear for colostomy patients that I was involved in developing for Coloplast, which manufactures medical devices. I spent a lot of time talking to the users, and I incorporated psychological aspects in the design development. In other projects I work with tailors, musicians, anthropologists and architects. It’s important to maintain the professional distinctions, both within the design trade – ceramics, fashion, textile etc. – and between different disciplines, but that’s nothing new.

Annette Meyer is an independent designer who works in the border zone of art, fashion and design. Photo: Søren Solkær Starbird

By connecting the natural outlooks that characterise the different disciplines and their fields of work, one can expand one’s horizon. For example, it would be really interesting if designers and lawyers were to learn from each other about how to think and do things. I myself, and many other designers too, could probably learn a great deal from lawyers about putting a price on one’s labour!

What is the consequence of the expanded concept of design for the way in which we think and talk about design?
We water the concept of design down when we expand it. I think we should use the concepts that already exist to demonstrate our awareness of, say, interdisciplinary approaches. To me, it’s more interesting to explore which disciplines can actually work in collaboration than to create a concept that is all-encompassing. We should stick to the concepts we know and talk about how they meet, rather than try to make one concept embrace everything.

What is the consequence of the expanded concept of design for the way in which we perceive and approach design research? 
First of all, I have to say that I know nothing about design research, and that to me, that concept doesn’t exist – hence, there are no consequences. In the practical world, the expanded concept of design has no significance – we don’t work with concepts but with products. For example, Coloplast would never ask me to design colostomy underwear based on an expanded concept of design!

In my everyday work, the visual and the auditory are far more important than concepts. When I want to explain to someone what I do, and how I think, I use familiar concepts that I combine in a new way. I do this as in addition to demonstrating the visual material from my work. But basically, I feel that the work should speak for itself.

What challenges does the expanded concept of design entail?
Basically, I feel that there’s nothing new under the sun. Classic Danish designers such as Arne Jacobsen and Poul Kjærholm focused on human interaction with the product and on product function by considering the ergonomics of the body’s proportions and movements. They also applied an interdisciplinary or expanded perspective, if you will.

However, I do see a change in society in recent years, a pressure to push quality aside in favour of branding and marketing. This means that designers also need to know something about law, economics and market conditions. A newly graduated designer is like a butterfly, fresh out of the cocoon, confronting reality for the first time, except that the butterfly instinctively knows what to do. The designer doesn’t.

The problem is, however, that it trivialises matters when everyone is required to master all sorts of things beside the core aspects of their training. This is also true for designers: I have to be able to produce a web site and market my work, expose my identity on the web, for example on MySpace and, not least, spend lots of time networking. The danger is that the bar is lowered every time one has to embrace a new set of professional skills.

Who would you like to pass the baton to?
I would like to pass it to Birgitte Jahn, the director of Danish Crafts.  

Mind Design #8, 2008