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September 13, 2005
Species
I am going to take a stab at answering these question(s) here…
I’m going to posit that Will’s term “beside” refers to the affective, cultural, and therefore immaterial “products” or rather “potential” that every corporation generates (in addition to their physical/rational gadgets, gizmos, doodads and so forth). And this being said, the category of “beside” is larger and more important that the physical “excess” that a corporation generates which makes the “beside” more of a real and consequential contribution to society.
I wholeheartedly believe that the example of film-maker who comments on the value of the shirt-makers product by promoting its’ use in his/her film, is a phenomenon that is completely organic. This belief is ABSOLUTE to me, even if both of these seemingly disconnected bodies are owned by a huge conglomerate like Viacom that forces cross-promotion among all of it’s children companies. If Viacom forces Paramount to promote the new SpongeBob car trinket in the current kids’ movie, it doesn’t mean the public will desire it any more or any less.
See, the shirt maker company can strive to reach as much of the market as possible, but it can in no way design whether the product will be respected and then remediated successfully, authentically, striking a chord among the consumer population. And further, the “shirt” story could devolve and no one would or could plan that either. What I mean is that the shirt, via the movie exposure, could become so high in demand, that the factory can’t accommodate for its’ spiked sales, which in turn, could cause total consumer rage, which would then be satirically documented by any number of authoritarian periodicals destroying all equity and all allegiance to the shirt maker and his/her body of products.
This association between the two variables can be good or bad. But it is in my opinion, a roll of the die.
Where does design fit in all of this? Can this process be rationalized? Honestly, I feel like those questions are akin to asking, can response to product be controlled? And see, people like Al and Laura Reis would like us to think so. But come on! We (the 12 of us) smirk with derisive laughter at such outlandish claims! I don’t fault their enthusiasm for going global, not at all. But even I find fault with their colonial-style manifesto that reads like a list of assumptions, simplifications and empty promises. I like what they are saying about branding and such, but not how they say it. The how in this case, is the design…
One last idea about this organic, mutating “besideness”… involves kids. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about them for thesis and I’m positively convinced that they know more about networking, fractioning, riffing, spliffing, mixing, matching and other various “beside” issues than any of us could ever hope to understand. They don’t really produce anything, instead they comment, critique, conform, ignore, distribute, repeat, etc…And for them, it’s purely organic. I’m not talking about products and advertising, I’m talking about communicating. One person is in fact many people in one crossing many boundaries many times. And today, more than ever before, “beside” is no design, it’s survival.
Posted by Jessica Gladstone at September 13, 2005 06:43 PM