RIP ID Magazine – Is this a sign of a troubled discipline?

-

A lot has been said lately about the current state of the union in all things Industrial Design and some of them with a less positive outlook into the future, particularly in a consultancy environment as the one I’m exposed to and live in on a daily basis.  One school of thought says our practice has been loosing focus while the other says that it’s a much-needed reinterpretation of our role that makes us more relevant in facing the way challenges and opportunities present themselves to the world today.

My position in this matter is that of someone who’s agnostic on its way to become an atheist. Design Thinking being the world view supported by atheism and author design being whatever religion you pick. I’ve always seen myself somewhere in the middle and had been trying to counter balance the gravity pull that is definitively sitting on the Design Thinking theories these days. As of late I decided to stop resisting, embrace it and leverage its momentum.

This is a big identity crisis for many Industrial Designers today since embracing process and broadening the scope of action (often times with no physical product as the outcome of a project) detaches us from the physicality of things that is so dear to us. We grow apart from the idea of the craftsman that I believe most Industrial Designers aspire to be.

That being said, I want to anchor the focus of this post to the publishing world taking the ID magazine as a starting point.

Continue reading »