For years, I had an uncomfortable desk chair. My physique knew precisely how lengthy I sat in it on daily basis. It was too quick and too laborious, the again was too low, and it rolled away from my desk on an uneven ground. It was badly designed. I seen the whole lot about that chair. On a regular basis. As Bruce Mau proclaimed in Large Change, “Design is invisible till it fails.” However when it does fail, paradoxically, ‘unhealthy’ design may be profoundly good. I’ve thought of that chair greater than another chair I’ve ever sat in. It stood as a testomony to the concept that we pay extra consideration to these experiences that problem and discomfort us than our seamless, frictionless experiences, like sitting in good chairs. When one thing fails, i.e., a door flies off an airplane, or after we push a deal with on a pull door, we’re compelled to see the world as one thing we’ve designed.
I often consider the late Enzo Mari, a wholehearted and iconoclastic advocate for the facility of DIY (design-it-yourself). Allesandro Mendini referred to as him “design’s conscience.” He famously inspired staff to have interaction their creativity and unbiased thought by antagonistic means. As an alternative of a flat-pack furnishings handbook, he gave you a drawing and a few 2x4s to make a chair. By making issues tougher to make use of or extra obscure, Mari wasn’t simply being contrarian; he was railing in opposition to passive consumption. Good design quietly exists, however unhealthy design calls for our consideration, engagement, and introspection. His legacy is that of dissent in opposition to ‘good’ design—seen solely in rebel in opposition to the norm.
Good design is invisible.
Dangerous design is unignorable.
This rebel isn’t new. All through historical past, lots of good artwork has been unhealthy design. The Dadaists and Brutalists each rejected the dominant aesthetic of their time. As an alternative of custom, they embraced ugliness and absurdity. Via unhealthy design, they pushed us out of our consolation zone, emphasizing engagement over ease.
Rei Kawakubo made us discover and interrogate our understanding of magnificence and kind. She used clothes to distort the physique itself—a strong assertion in opposition to the maxims and assumptions of mainstream vogue. In movie, the Dogme 95 motion created strict, absurd guidelines to frustrate and rethink mainstream cinema’s polished, formulaic productions. Their medium grew to become the message.
Maybe most poetically, the architects Arakawa and Madeline Gins took this a step additional with their Bioscleave Home—a literal embodiment of difficult norms by discomfort. The home, designed to disorient and provoke, refused to be invisible, demanding as a substitute to be regularly, consciously navigated and questioned. Athens-based architect Katerina Kamprani is one other purveyor of discomfort-based design.
Mom Design, too, embraces the ‘unhealthy’ as a technique to disrupt and interact. The model we created for Eyebeam, a not-for-profit artwork and know-how heart in New York Metropolis, exemplifies this strategy. It’s uncomfortable—vibrating colour mixtures, graphic patterns that problem extended viewing, and a font that disrupts the circulate of textual content with unconventional and awkward letterforms. It by no means sits nonetheless, fidgeting in a continuing state of flux. Total, the model forces the viewer to have interaction with a message’s medium earlier than its which means, turning the “crystal goblet” on its head.
In every of those instances—from artwork to vogue to structure—it’s solely the “failure” of design that made them profitable. It’s solely within the breakdown of conference that new concepts emerge. In different phrases, we should embrace ‘unhealthy’ design to uncover ‘good.’ In a frictionless world, unhealthy design is sandpaper. It challenges complacency. It makes us uncomfortable. Folks don’t prefer it. It forces them to have interaction, to query, and to suppose.
The Bauhaus, Marcel Duchamp, Kool Herc, the Intercourse Pistols, and the Memphis Group thrived on ideas initially seen as flawed or ‘unhealthy.’ But, every profoundly reshaped our cultural and aesthetic landscapes.
Dangerous design isn’t one thing to keep away from; it’s a vital element not simply of the inventive course of however of dwelling. Like Mari taught, it’s about studying fairly than following. It’s about getting into a constructing and strolling right into a “purposeful guess.” It’s about watching a nasty film. It’s about sporting a humorous hat. It’s about being bizarre. In embracing the ‘unhealthy,’ we uncover the potential for transformation—each in design and in ourselves.
In a world the place we laud good design for its invisibility, maybe it’s time to rejoice the unignorable—the unhealthy chairs, the irritating UIs, the push handles on pull doorways—designs that fail superbly, instructing us extra about our world and ourselves than perfection ever may.
This can be a visitor publish written by Elliot Vredenburg, Affiliate Inventive Director at Mom Design.
In 2014, Elliot was mistakenly despatched an MFA as a substitute of an MA by the California Institute of the Arts, so he determined to proceed working in graphic design. For the previous decade, he’s labored as a multidisciplinary designer with varied organizations and people, creating highly effective, concept-driven work.
He’s led and contributed to collaborative initiatives with notable artists, cultural establishments, and world corporations, together with Netflix, the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Video games, MGM Studios, Alex Israel, and Common Music Group. Typically, he’s a copywriter, too.
