Here is my twelfth column at Modatava.com "What Does Design Mean??!" (English translation below)
http://modatava.com/modacilar-birbirinin-kopyasi-sirinler-gibi-2356
// Modatava.com 'daki onikinci köşe yazım bu linkte "Dizayn Ne Demek??!"
http://modatava.com/modacilar-birbirinin-kopyasi-sirinler-gibi-2356
I’ve never thought I would tell about design like a lesson. Some people really force me to! Design is “originality”, if a company/fashion designer/brand sells something for 50 years with same look or little changes every year, this is not design, this is stereotyped style. Label doesn’t make the products design either; you should look whether the products are original or not.
I’m not going to give any name from here; I don’t want to be involved to a court either -they can be guilty and strong- a ceramic company pushes the same cups, bowls and for long long years people buy them too expensively under the sake of design. I wonder, as a corporate company not firing any worker, how did the unblushing sales representatives get old and give their last breaths telling products are ‘design’? Are they paying the copyright fee to the grand grandchildren of the man who created the design in the very first year?
A clothing company, two more uprisings. Friends, how can you tell 60’s balloon skirt or fedora hat (Humphrey Bogart hat) as “our new design/creation in our ‘this year’ collection”? The creative team, arts director in the advertising company, are you sleeping or you prefer to spread wrong expressions just because your client should feel glad and pay for the work? I don’t want to hypothese that you don’t know; simplest way, hire a consultant. If you know, don’t be silent. Suggest them as “sir, these are not new creations, revitalizations”, so what? Maybe you will have addition for enlightenment of their boss.
For bigger pieces of products, home goods, otomobile, yatch, camping equipments, many unscratchable/unburnable miracles are designed too. There are some people thinking ‘heavy’ design work starting with deciding what tree’s wood wanted for your dining room, how many legs it should have, how many kilos it can handle to carry, availability for indoor/outdoor usage and that long time single friends are called industrial products engineers. They design but bear with more than creating.
Also there are confusing expressions. Our glamour girl (!) is a pattern designer but she writes her profession headline as ‘designer’. Your profession is valuable too our glamour girl (!), you give life to dresses, sheets, swimming suits; if you can’t create interesting patterns none of them will be sold out. This, that can’t attend to pattern contests, only you can. Know and stand straight. Don’t call yourself designer again, OK?
Hmm not to leave out, I should mention own style of a designer. Friends, create a style for yourself, please. All of you are hipsters, all of you are mermaids! Why fashion environment is like Smurfs, copies of each other? Fed up seeing males with squared shirts folded up to elbows, females wearing needle heeled booties. Friends, have consultancy, it’s not bad to take advises from a ‘knowledgeable person’..