MrBishop
Well-Known Member
Tibor Kalman on Social Responsibility
Tibor Kalman was born in Budapest and raised in suburban New York. He was educated at New York University and on the streets of New York City. In 1968 he started working for the company that became Barnes & Noble. In 1979 he founded M&Co. He was art director at Artforum, creative director of Interview, and the founding editor in chief of Colors, for which he edited the first thirteen issues. In 1993 he suspended M&Co. and moved with his family to Rome. In 1995 he left Colors and reanimated M&Co. to work primarily on noncommercial projects.
Since returning to the United States, are you happy or are you disappointed in where design as a community has gone?
I'm disappointed. A couple of things bother me: One is the extent to which technology has evolved. The evolution of technology has been tremendous. I'm not computer-literate at all. And at the risk of being thought an old fogey, I mistrust what computers do to ideas. But given the impact of computers within the design world, the impact of computers on photography, the impact of the Web, I think that there has been a really fundamental sea change, a kind of shift of the critical mass.
For better? For worse?
For both. It's made it much easier for designers to become more responsible about the things that go through their studios. That's an opportunity that right now is wasted.
Wasted in what sense?
It's wasted on obfuscation. It's wasted on trashy kind of commercialism instead of even cool commercialism. It's wasted on corporate Web sites that are pointless. I think a thing like the Levi's Web site, which everybody talks about as being a really cool, is useless because they haven't figured out what it should do. If they could figure out what it could do, it would be revolutionary, but designers are failing to do that. Again, they're failing to consider that content begets form, not vice versa you can't get around that. If something is useless it does not mean that it won't sell. Look at the stuff on the shelves at Kmart, watch the home shopping channel.
Has the word "cool" replaced "meaningful"?
Well, I think the word "cool" has replaced the word "content." If you have enough attitude in your work, if it's cool enough, then it doesn't matter that there's no content. The best example of this is David Carson. It's cool, and so it doesn't need to say anything. And I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what design is. Because it's just a language. It's just a means of communicating. It's a medium. It's not a message. It doesn't have any message in it unless somebody comes along and puts a message in it. Just because you make something cool doesn't mean that it is something. If nothing is cool, then it's nothing. And that's why this sort of work is disappointing for me.
And yet you feel that given this new technology, designers have more power and therefore should have more responsibility?
Because of the technology, we have the opportunity to become really important. We don't need publishers anymore to do this. Just look at the Web designers, they can single-handedly reach the world eventually with full-motion video and stereo sound. We can do this for free, we can all do it at home, not only designers, but also everybody else in the world. So I am excited by it because I am hoping that people are going to be serious enough to not be constantly in search of something that's just cool, but to be in search of ideas that can eventually begin to fill these huge empty vessels of technology.
Are you gearing up to preach to the design community again?
No. Yes. No. I'm just trying to do good work. I'm trying to make it really hard on myself, and I'm trying to make it really hard on my audience, and I'm trying to do work that just leaps forward. That's what I want.
© Copyright Tibor Kalman 1998. Contact the Publisher for permission before making use
of any part of this article
(212 777 8395 or [email protected])
Edited for readeability (deBish)
Tibor Kalman was born in Budapest and raised in suburban New York. He was educated at New York University and on the streets of New York City. In 1968 he started working for the company that became Barnes & Noble. In 1979 he founded M&Co. He was art director at Artforum, creative director of Interview, and the founding editor in chief of Colors, for which he edited the first thirteen issues. In 1993 he suspended M&Co. and moved with his family to Rome. In 1995 he left Colors and reanimated M&Co. to work primarily on noncommercial projects.
Since returning to the United States, are you happy or are you disappointed in where design as a community has gone?
I'm disappointed. A couple of things bother me: One is the extent to which technology has evolved. The evolution of technology has been tremendous. I'm not computer-literate at all. And at the risk of being thought an old fogey, I mistrust what computers do to ideas. But given the impact of computers within the design world, the impact of computers on photography, the impact of the Web, I think that there has been a really fundamental sea change, a kind of shift of the critical mass.
For better? For worse?
For both. It's made it much easier for designers to become more responsible about the things that go through their studios. That's an opportunity that right now is wasted.
Wasted in what sense?
It's wasted on obfuscation. It's wasted on trashy kind of commercialism instead of even cool commercialism. It's wasted on corporate Web sites that are pointless. I think a thing like the Levi's Web site, which everybody talks about as being a really cool, is useless because they haven't figured out what it should do. If they could figure out what it could do, it would be revolutionary, but designers are failing to do that. Again, they're failing to consider that content begets form, not vice versa you can't get around that. If something is useless it does not mean that it won't sell. Look at the stuff on the shelves at Kmart, watch the home shopping channel.
Has the word "cool" replaced "meaningful"?
Well, I think the word "cool" has replaced the word "content." If you have enough attitude in your work, if it's cool enough, then it doesn't matter that there's no content. The best example of this is David Carson. It's cool, and so it doesn't need to say anything. And I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what design is. Because it's just a language. It's just a means of communicating. It's a medium. It's not a message. It doesn't have any message in it unless somebody comes along and puts a message in it. Just because you make something cool doesn't mean that it is something. If nothing is cool, then it's nothing. And that's why this sort of work is disappointing for me.
And yet you feel that given this new technology, designers have more power and therefore should have more responsibility?
Because of the technology, we have the opportunity to become really important. We don't need publishers anymore to do this. Just look at the Web designers, they can single-handedly reach the world eventually with full-motion video and stereo sound. We can do this for free, we can all do it at home, not only designers, but also everybody else in the world. So I am excited by it because I am hoping that people are going to be serious enough to not be constantly in search of something that's just cool, but to be in search of ideas that can eventually begin to fill these huge empty vessels of technology.
Are you gearing up to preach to the design community again?
No. Yes. No. I'm just trying to do good work. I'm trying to make it really hard on myself, and I'm trying to make it really hard on my audience, and I'm trying to do work that just leaps forward. That's what I want.
© Copyright Tibor Kalman 1998. Contact the Publisher for permission before making use
of any part of this article
(212 777 8395 or [email protected])
Edited for readeability (deBish)
Only you, Gonz, would call an idea backed with FACTS pompose while enthusiastically accepting any and all supositions and conjectures thinly supported by inuendo that Bush spews forth...
Just not when Gonz opens the door...we call it humor Ink...You seem to understand it as long as its not about Dubya. Are you sexually attracted to him or something?
