In the second year of my undergrad program in Visual Communication Design I read a very important book — Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek. I remember that it made a very big impact on my thoughts on design at that point. It was helpful, because I was being hurled into the idea of design without knowing anything about it. After all, physicists learn physics in school and computer engineers learn computer languages and math in school, a designer just never learns design or design thinking before she goes to college for it. So, the book helped in making me understand conflicts within the design profession and how design can be an honest thing to do. The ideas from the book resonated with me, although over time I forgot about the book.

So, first semester into my new masters program at CMU, I picked it up again. There’s just always something new to learn in a second read.

I have only re-read the preface so far. But it got me thinking – is design a phony profession? If I look at my practice of design, within visual communications most of my work with typography and layout has been in someway about advertising for someone or something—Identity design, brochures, posters, and other persuasive material design. A couple of my school projects included perfume tester holders that imbibed the philosophy of the Jean Paul Gaultier brand, brand research for Nokia phones and concepts for application development — of course, all these are school projects, but it made me think – is this phony?

(My work as part of a class on Packaging Design, Undergraduate Studies, 2006)

Is this an illustration of something that Papanek points out in the first few pages of this book as persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress others who don’t care. What does it mean to spend meaningful time and thinking on designing a perfume bottle tester display for someone who doesn’t need it?