Category: Design

Is Design Only For The Rich?

To many people today, something that is “designed” is more expensive and above what the common man can afford. Think about how we refer to “designer jeans” as opposed to just “jeans” — there is something extra on top of the necessary. Such a notion of design has also been expressed by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew during first-ever International Design Forum held here in 1988.

“Good design is more than just pleasing to the eye. A functional, elegant product can be cheaper to produce and sell for a better price, because it is of greater value to users.”

A question here is, what exactly is good design’s “greater value to users”? One value here seems to be “symbolic status”. I was reminded of this during a conversation with a stranger who complained that there is a lot of bad design in Singapore “even though she lives in the good part of town”. (I vaguely remember it as the Orchard/Tanglin area or something to that effect). In other words, this lady was suggesting that “good” design is to be expected for those who can afford it, while “bad” design is more forgivable for those who can’t.

This equation of good design with luxury  is also how many products differentiate themselves not only from one another, but also justifies why they cost so much more than items of similar function but are not “designed”. But is good design exclusive to luxury and should it always be of higher monetary value? While it raise the profession’s economic value, it also makes design exclusive and detached from public life. Perhaps one of the biggest challenge in growing a design industry anywhere is how designers don’t end up just serving those who are willing to pay for it. If not, design will just be a communicator of status and symbol — just pleasing to the eye.

SG Design in 2025: A leap with the arts & culture

While the setup of the DesignSingapore Council in 2003 has helped design grow in Singapore, what is less discussed is the role the arts and cultural policy has played. The 1989 Report of the Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts set things in motion by establishing the hardware for a local arts and culture scene, and this was followed by the 1999 Renaissance City Report that gave it the necessary software. In the last two decades, designers have benefitted from the government’s cultural policy, growing closer to their cousins in the arts and culture scene, and allowing them to cross-pollinate ideas and foster a creative community  — or what has been once termed the ‘Singapore Supergarden‘. Of course, the loosening of censorship law over the decades has allowed more forms of expression and created more opportunities for designers to pursue creative excellence too.

Today’s report on the Straits Times about the recently setup Arts And Culture Strategic Review Steering Committee shows how much design has grown. Two of the 19 members in this committee that will “formulate concrete strategies to mould distinctive peaks of excellence that would differentiate and distinguish Singapore as a global city and nurture the creative capacity of people at all levels” are graphic designers: Chris Lee from Asylum and Theseus Chan of WORK. The rest of the committee is made up of members from the media, architecture, film, arts schools, and public service officers. Interestingly, there are no artists in this line-up to shape polices that will define Singapore’s arts and culture scene in 2025.

Could the favouring of designers over artists in the committee reflect an arts and cultural policy driven by economics? If it’s creative capacity we are seeking, shouldn’t artists be at the forefront of it and leading this committee? But if it’s artists grounded in a sense of economics we’re looking for, then a designer makes perfect sense — after all, in the past ‘graphic designers’ were known as ‘commercial artists’.