{"id":800,"date":"2024-03-01T12:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-01T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/atomic-hair.net\/?p=800"},"modified":"2024-05-09T15:25:31","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T15:25:31","slug":"why-bad-design-is-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/atomic-hair.net\/index.php\/2024\/03\/01\/why-bad-design-is-good\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Bad Design is Good"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years, I had an uncomfortable desk chair. My body knew exactly how long I sat in it every day. It was too short and too hard, the back was too low, and it rolled away from my desk on an uneven floor. It was badly designed. I noticed everything about that chair. All the time. As Bruce Mau proclaimed in Massive Change<\/a><\/em>, \u201cDesign is invisible until it fails.\u201d But when it does fail, paradoxically, \u2018bad\u2019 design can be profoundly good. I\u2019ve thought about that chair more than any other chair I\u2019ve ever sat in. It stood as a testament to the idea that we pay more attention to those experiences that challenge and discomfort us than our seamless, frictionless experiences, like sitting in good chairs. When something fails, i.e., a door flies off an airplane, or when we push a handle on a pull door, we\u2019re forced to see the world as something we\u2019ve designed<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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I regularly think of the late Enzo Mari<\/a>, a wholehearted and iconoclastic advocate for the power of DIY (design-it-yourself).<\/a> Allesandro Mendini called him \u201cdesign\u2019s conscience.\u201d He famously encouraged workers to engage their creativity and independent thought through antagonistic means. Instead of a flat-pack furniture manual, he gave you a drawing and some 2x4s to make a chair. By making things harder to use or more difficult to understand, Mari wasn\u2019t just being contrarian; he was railing against passive consumption. Good design quietly exists, but bad design demands our attention, engagement, and introspection. His legacy is that of dissent against \u2018good\u2019 design\u2014visible only in rebellion against the norm.<\/p>\n

\n

Good design is invisible.
Bad design is unignorable.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This rebellion is not new. Throughout history, a lot of good art has been bad design. The Dadaists and Brutalists both rejected the dominant aesthetic of their time. Instead of tradition, they embraced ugliness and absurdity. Through bad design, they pushed us out of our comfort zone, emphasizing engagement over ease. <\/p>\n

Rei Kawakubo<\/a> made us notice and interrogate our understanding of beauty and form. She used clothing to distort the body itself\u2014a powerful statement against the maxims and assumptions of mainstream fashion. In film, the Dogme 95<\/a> movement created strict, absurd rules to frustrate and rethink mainstream cinema\u2019s polished, formulaic productions. Their medium became the message.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most poetically, the architects Arakawa and Madeline Gins<\/a> took this a step further with their Bioscleave House\u2014a literal embodiment of challenging norms through discomfort. The house, designed to disorient and provoke, refused to be invisible, demanding instead to be continually, consciously navigated and questioned. Athens-based architect Katerina Kamprani<\/a> is another purveyor of discomfort-based design.<\/p>\n

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Bioscleave House, Arakawa and Madeline Gins<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mother Design<\/a>, too, embraces the \u2018bad\u2019 as a strategy to disrupt and engage. The brand we created<\/a> for Eyebeam<\/a>, a not-for-profit art and technology center in New York City, exemplifies this approach. It\u2019s uncomfortable\u2014vibrating color combinations, graphic patterns that challenge prolonged viewing, and a font that disrupts the flow of text with unconventional and awkward letterforms. It never sits still, fidgeting in a constant state of flux. Overall, the brand forces the viewer to engage with a message\u2019s medium before its meaning, turning the \u201ccrystal goblet\u201d<\/a> on its head.<\/p>\n

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In each of these cases\u2014from art to fashion to architecture\u2014it\u2019s only the \u201cfailure\u201d of design that made them successful. It\u2019s only in the breakdown of convention that new ideas emerge. In other words, we must embrace \u2018bad\u2019 design to uncover \u2018good.\u2019 In a frictionless world, bad design is sandpaper. It challenges complacency. It makes us uncomfortable. People don\u2019t like it. It forces them to engage, to question, and to think.<\/p>\n

The Bauhaus, Marcel Duchamp, Kool Herc, the Sex Pistols, and the Memphis Group thrived on principles initially seen as flawed or \u2018bad.\u2019 Yet, each profoundly reshaped our cultural and aesthetic landscapes.<\/p>\n

Bad design is not something to avoid; it\u2019s a critical component not just of the creative process but of living. Like Mari taught, it\u2019s about learning rather than following. It\u2019s about entering a building and walking into a \u201cpurposeful guess.<\/a>\u201d It\u2019s about watching a bad movie. It\u2019s about wearing a funny hat. It\u2019s about being weird. In embracing the \u2018bad,\u2019 we uncover the potential for transformation\u2014both in design and in ourselves.<\/p>\n

In a world where we laud good design for its invisibility, perhaps it\u2019s time to celebrate the unignorable\u2014the bad chairs, the frustrating UIs, the push handles on pull doors\u2014designs that fail beautifully, teaching us more about our world and ourselves than perfection ever could.<\/p>\n

\n

This is a guest post written by Elliot Vredenburg, Associate Creative Director at Mother Design<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 2014, Elliot was mistakenly sent an MFA instead of an MA by the California Institute of the Arts, so he decided to continue working in graphic design. For the past decade, he\u2019s worked as a multidisciplinary designer with various organizations and individuals, creating powerful, concept-driven work.<\/em><\/p>\n

He\u2019s led and contributed to collaborative projects with notable artists, cultural institutions, and global companies, including Netflix, the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, MGM Studios, Alex Israel, and Universal Music Group. Sometimes, he\u2019s a copywriter, too.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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