By Afonso Matos, Silvio Larusso

1. “Critical Design” This outlook perceives design as more than a market service: it aims to show that designers can be agents of powerful social and political change, beyond the boundaries of commercial client-commission setting. (5)
2. From this perspective, designers are no longer meant to solve problems, but rather frame them. We are asked to shoulder the responsibility of raising awareness about the world’s issues. We are encouraged to become provocateurs. (5)
3. Design could be everything, everywhere. From the nowhere of invisibility to the nowhere of omnipresence, design’s culture seems to stride between these non-places. It behaves like a force that is barely recognized by most people even though it shapes their lives. (5)
4. Maze (The Reader, 2009) proposes three different modes of criticality within design. The first is an individual designer’s criticism towards their own personal practice. The second relates to criticism towards design in general, to its methods, culture, frameworks and dogmas. Then, the third mode relates to the cases in which design addresses urgent social and political issues. Here, in contrast to the previous modes, design itself isn’t so much the object of criticism as it is the vector through which this criticism is directed elsewhere. We can witness this framework at play in a whole gamut of recent approaches, sporting names like Social Design, Speculative Design, Design Activism, Design Fiction, Contextual Design, all of which could vaguely fit under the umbrella of this third modality. (6)
5. These approaches (critical practices stemming from research programmes, from funds and grants, from positions within academia – either as students, tutors or researchers – or just as the result of an “independent” practice (as in, independent from clients)) do not necessarily circulate outside the market, but instead within an exclusive market of their own. In their eager criticism of the workings of the outside world, these projects often forget to examine the socio-economic conditions that enable their own existence. How are they financed? Who can afford to uphold this dream of creative and critical autonomy after graduation? And also: Where do these projects circulate? Who gets to engage with them? What does that engagement lead to? (8)
6. (After finishing a project) we couldn’t help but pose two simple but grave questions to ourselves: “What can something like this really do to the world?” and “How can someone make a living doing projects like these?” (8)
7. The first investigation highlights a matter of privilege: Why does it seem like Critical Design is exclusive to a minority of designers who can conduct self-initiated, independent, critical projects, while the great majority or the profession doesn’t have the choice to do so? The second question focuses on the impact that critical discourses on design have upon the real world, outside of the profession – and the very origin of the urge to have an impact on the world. (9)
8. What is the relation between design’s power and design’s agency? (9)
9. But I think that kind of realism can sometimes be productive. Because that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re betraying your ethics or your values. We all grapple with that or are struggling with that to some extent. Like: to what extent are we “selling out”, or just giving in to a commercial practice? “Just” doing service design? We feel like we’re betraying the values and the critical thinking that we just acquired… (19)
10. The “power of design” discourse contracts out responsibility onto individual designers. On the one hand, it aims to show to the outside world the relevance of design in hopes that society at large will recognize it. But, on the other hand, it is usually a narrative which circulates within “the bubble,” in books written by designers and consumed by designers. It is then not necessarily raising the world’s awareness about design. Rather, it strikes us, and it does so with double effect: it inflates our egos and fuels our hubris, while simultaneously setting the bar extremely high for the tasks that should be occupying us, in sharp contrast with the daily jobs which pay our bills. (33)
11. Ontological Design – Posits that the human condition is inseparable from design itself. It signifies “a double movement” – we design our world, while our world acts back on us and designs us.” (Anne-Marie Willis, Ontological Designing) (34)
12. “The environment’s capacity to ‘design’ us is stronger than the one that we, as individuals, have to design it.” (Lorusso, S. (2021) Design and Power – Part 1. In Other Worlds #4) (34)
13. Designers are, presently, a tool for the industry. They are workers providing services, and thus they must respond to the demands of their bosses, employers or clients. That is their environment, to which they must abide if they want to survive. They don’t have the capacity to change that environment (to “design” it), as much as that environment has the capacity to “design” them. Designers are usually “too low in the power structure” (Ibid) to bring any kind of change into our realities through their intentions. Such intentions very rarely align with being in a position of authority where they can hold a grip upon most of the decisions that are made. (34)
14. The dream of Critical Design is, then, to counter this lack of power, propagating the image of a designer whose role concentrates all roles (creating content, editing, designing and producing) – an independent author(ity) divorced from the demands of the market. But in what contexts can this image hold ground? (34)
15. Saying that “we can be political because we’re designers,” and saying that these people that have other jobs are not political in their profession, which is not true. I think your political beliefs, your identity, is always entangled with your work, but still that doesn’t mean that it’s dependent on your work. (38)
16. https://www.instagram.com/ethicaldesign69/
17. Do you reform or do you revolutionize? (42)
18. When does authority (decision-making, reserved for those at the top, who decide what is to be made) coincide with practical execution (the work of those who are the bottom, the tools, the designers)? (44)
19. I also have the feeling that being a designer is almost like an identity. Other people, like my friends who do Computer Science, they don’t feel like they’re computer scientists, they don’t put that in their bio. Whereas I feel like, being a designer, it’s like it’s part of our identity. It’s very hyperindividualistic at times. You’re trying to create your own brand. It’s almost like a reflection of who you are. (49)
20. When we’re so concerned about trying to distance ourselves from each other, to appear marketable to the outside world, we may be forgetting that it could be nice to just say “I’m just a designer, a graphic designer, and that’s okay.” I shouldn’t need to call myself anything more than that. I don’t know, I think there’s some power in that humbleness. We should ask ourselves where this need for differentiation comes from. (49)