Dec ‘22: What Design Can Do

A problem of style over substance: A closer look at how the mainstream media writes about design

Though design is one of the most powerful agents for change, it continues to be under-represented and often trivialised in the media. As design critic Alice Rawsthorn mentions in her book, Hello World: Where Design Meets Life, one such misrepresentation is ‘to relegate design to the role of styling or decoration’. In some ways this is inevitable as it is much easier to express an opinion on styling, as that attribute is something we can see. On the other hand, aspects of a design’s process and development, its logistics of execution and marketing — not visible to the naked eye — are more difficult to comment on. Focusing on the stylistic aspect of design, though limiting, is advantageous from the media’s point of view too, as that is where the money lies.