Dan Friedman on systems
27 July 2008
I don’t find the design work of Dan Friedman (1946-1995) particularly compelling, but his writing is extremely sharp. Here are a few excerpts from his monograph Dan Friedman: Radical Modernism, which describes his way forward from the modernist goals of certainty, objectivity, and simplicity.
The idea of systems, as opposed to single products, became a greater concern after World War II, when advanced technology brought about greater complexity and cultural influence from enterprises such as the Manhattan Project and the Apollo space program. Designers were also influenced by technology to perceive their work as relying on methodologies and information outside of their own personal perceptions and intuition. The methodologies were often borrowed from emerging computer techniques or management theory and were applied to a variety of new projects, such as industrialized housing systems, graphic identity systems, and office planning systems.
These methodologies had a significant influence on design in the 1960s. Organizing information into systems – a process of posing problems, coordinating coherent sets of information, and searching for solutions, independent of context, in timeless and universal terms – was in keeping with the classic aim of modernism. Such “perfect” systems are not now considered attainable (or desirable) for all knowledge. Perhaps events such as the Vietnam War and Wategrate proved to many of us how fallible systems of information can be. The goal of coherent systems increasingly has been seen as belonging to a strange (but often useful) mythology, and it is one basis for the current arguments between critics and defenders of modernism. … My solution to this argument is to acknowlege our heritage of rationality and perfection (even if it is seen as a fantasy) and to balance this idealized dream with the inevitable uncertainty that will always exist in contextualized practice.
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In my own designs, I tend to favor visual systems that aim – hopelessly – toward coherency (and legibility) while simultaneously suggesting a degree of spontaneous disruption (unpredictability).
Friedman also let loose some zingers in this interview with eye magazine:
Graphic design has always defined its focus in narrow terms – in ways that may stimulate graphic designers into a frenzy but mean nothing to the rest of society. When we try to extend our reach, as with fantasies about the emerging potential of multimedia, our ideas pale in comparison with Terminator 2, a U2 concert or the latest Las Vegas hotel. I believe it is a profession in an identity crisis caused by over-specialisation and deep polarisation.
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And we have deceived ourselves into thinking that the modernisation service we supply has the same integrity as service to the public good. Modernism forfeited its claim to a moral authority when designers sold it away as corporate style.
Ellon Lupton also has an interview from 1994.
