Review Of The Design For The Real World: Human Ecology And Social Change, By Victor Papanek

Part One How It Is: First Chapter-What Is Design: A Definition Of the Function Complex

Advertising, in persuading people to buy things they don’t need with the money they don’t have, in order to impress others who don’t care, is probably the phoniest field in existence today. (Preface to the first edition – page ix)

As long as design concerns itself with confecting trivial “toys for adults”, killing machines with gleaming tailfins, and “sexed-up” shrouds for typewriters, toasters, telephones, and computers, it has last all reasons to exist. (Preface to the first edition – page x)

Design within a social context.

In clothing the need for security-through-identity has been prevented into role-playing. The consumer can now act out various roles by appealing caparisoned in Naugahyde boots, pseudomilitary uniforms, lumberjack’s shirts, various types f “survival gear,” and all the other outward trappings of Davy Crockett, a Foreign Legionnaire, Cossack Hetman, or John Wayne. (Page 16)

All of these plastic wraps are carefully designed and manufactured, as are the pseudofood served therein and the fake redwood structures that sell tese quick meals. The consequences are disastrous. (Page 25)