A Not-So-Serious Book Review pt. 2: “Design Anarchy” by Kalle Lasn

The reason I wanted to read Design Anarchy was to hopefully find some answers to the big questions: How to be a graphic designer without selling my integrity and being a designer without supporting over-consumption. But then again (read my past review of How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul), no such thing. It tries at some point, but it don’t succeed.

On their website, Adbusters describe the book as “Equal parts memoir, manifesto, scrapbook, and revolutionary design manual, Design Anarchy is an urgent call for artists, designers, architects and communicators to re-engage with the world.” What is meant by “Design Anarchy” is as Stefane Barbeau is quoted saying in the book:

“Design is traditionally driven by aesthetic, functional, production and marked factors. What if suddenly these parameters were grossly distorted, or even removed entirely?”

The problem with the concept of “Design Anarchy” is that, as I’ve understood it, it wants design to lose all sense of meaning and aesthetic. Quoting Kalle Lasn:

“What design needs is ten years of total turmoil, fuck-it-all anarchy. After that maybe it will mean something again, stand for something again.”

He wants to destroy what design is today and build something new. When I first read it, I thought to myself: that it was a wonderful thought, that we could all build a new way of designing together. But when I thought more about it I realized it sounded more and more like something that have no way of working in practice, simply because people are people and we all want different things; and I’ve noticed a large part of designers don’t care about integrity or design being used for something important. If designers don’t want a change, how can we then change the design business?

It’s difficult to grasp what Lasn imagines design anarchy to look like. If a design has no aesthetic or function, is there really anything left? Looking at the design of the book itself “design anarchy” seems to mean collages, handwriting and spoof ads. It looks like any other Adbusters magazine, a design which in itself is a contradiction: Adbusters’ goal is to clean up the mental environment (getting rid of the ads, systems that doesn’t work, unecessary wars, etc), yet the magazine is designed to look like an anarchic mess. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to have a clean design, setting an example? But I guess that wouldn’t look rebellious enough.

In the end the book doesn’t really make me understand and be passionate about the concept of “Design anarchy”. I see the desire to revolt against the design industry, and I think it is wonderful to imagine that our society could have some utopian quality to it, but the idea of design anarchy seems far-fetched

The book might wake up some minds (mainly people who follow Adbusters mindlessly I’m guessing), but to those of us who are already waking up, it doesn’t offer too much. It’s still a nice read/flip-through and even has hopeless as it sounds, the book has some quotes to inspire and to make you think (but don’t expect it to find any answers for you). I’ll end this with my favourite quote from the book (try replacing “design anarchy” with “integrity” and it will actually mean something):

“Design anarchy is madness. Choose it only if you’re certain the other options will corrode your soul and give you a bleeding ulcer. Only if you know you are among the chosen few designers who hold Promentheus’ holy fire in your hands. You’ll suffer for years and live like a stray dog, but you’ll have the joy of breaking all the rules, of freely mixing art and politics, of pouring your belifs and convictions into your work. Eventually, if you’re really as brilliant as you think, you’ll have a crack at pushing boundries of global culture with bold new forms and fresh ways of being.”