“I picked a bad time to become a critic” – Elizabeth Goodspeed on the collapse of design critique

Predictably, design has often ended up being misinterpreted or dismissed as a styling ruse. Unfair and clichéd though such stereotypes are, they have been remarkably effective in distorting perceptions of design by obscuring its constructive qualities. The danger is that by doing so, they may be preventing design from being given the chance to prov... See more

Graphic design, the discipline of aesthetic production, is facing a crisis as it reconciles with catastrophic effects of network technology on its profitability. Even prolific designers who produce work with a characteristic original aesthetic are quickly copied. As their work is pillaged and reproduced downstream (leftstream), it becomes increasin... See more

For as long as there is no clear consensus on what design represents, it will be prey to more muddles and clichés.

Shuherk cast the rise of curatorial accounts like his as a failure of the legacy-media ecosystem. The job of providing well-informed recommendations once belonged to professional critics employed by newspapers and magazines. As media companies have struggled to adjust to the digital age, the number of full-time criticism jobs has dwindled, leaving ... See more

Design’s versatility and its ability to adapt to so many different contexts are among its greatest strengths. But the lack of coherence in its industrial role has fostered more misunderstandings.

- The problem is one of content. The misconception is that without deep content, design is reduced to pure style, a bag of dubious tricks. In graphic-design circles, form-follows-function is reconfigured as form-follows-content. If content is the source of form, always preceding it and imbuing it with meaning, form without content (as if that were ... See more

Call-out Instagram accounts like Diet Prada flourished despite contributing nothing more than public complaints about designers’ failures to adhere to the Current Thing; fashion stopped being fun.