Critical Questions 01-21

For Readings: Design Is Advertising, Design In The Future,
Welcome To The Credibility Loop

For those of us who have grown up living ‘the advertised life’ it is becoming harder to imagine what the condition of no advertising would be like. We are so saturated with advertising that it has become part of our lives and we expect to be bombarded with advertising throughout our everyday lives. Can we really imagine ourselves in an advertising free world? Would it be for the better? ‘Design Is Advertising’ reminds us that there are television channels in other countries that do not show commercials. Two of these channels are in England, and when I go back and watch these channels it feels a little strange to not see a commercial every 15 minutes.
There is a lot of talk of ‘identity’ and how we are all individuals and have different needs. Ilkka Suppanen from the ‘Design in the Future’ reading states that “When I design a product, I want to think about the human being that is going to use it, instead of a target group or segment.” Is it really possible to design for one human being in particular and still have a successful product? If you are designing for the one person who wants his chair to have five legs, what about the rest of the population who want their chair to have four legs? Do you lose business or are you content with being able to give at least one person what they want?