'Good Design, Bad Design'

One of the first things that Johnathan said to us at the beginning of our lecture titled 'Good Design, Bad Design' was that the lecture was designed to provoke us. I immediately decided not to get provoked. This didn't work. Anyway, I found this lecture interesting as it was his personal point of view, not like most lectures where the tutor is given a system to follow. There were many topics touched upon in this lecture from racism to sexism, assuming to knowing, and although these are broad subjects which may not immediately relate, they tied together well.

The main thing in this lecture which got me thinking was when Johnathan showed us the images from the Ladybird books. Although I have seen images like these throughout my life and they were not anything new to me, Johnathan pointed out a few things which, for some reason, had never occurred to me before. For example, a picture of children sitting in their dressing gowns drinking milk, watched by their mother, with a completely oblivious father reading the newspaper in the background. Although this was not an obvious stereotype to me, it showed pretty clearly the womans place in the family - caring for the children. Johnathan then brought up, with some hesitation and glares from the female audience, the sexist assumption 'a womans place is in the kitchen' . After assuring us quickly that he was not sexist in any way and with some giggles from the onlookers, he made the point that since this was the imagery that he and others of his age were brought up with, why would anyone think any differently? I was surprised to find myself really agreeing with him, usually as a female I would be protesting this and joining a feminist group, ahem, but in this case this is a completely valid point. If you had grown up being told by everyone you knew 'the sky is not blue, it is orange', you would believe it because that's the 'knowledge' you've grown up with. Makes you think doesn't it?

Later on in the lecture, Johnathan was talking about his childhood. Although I am a strong believer in women having an equal position in society as men, I found myself making what could be seen as a sexist assumption myself. Johnathan mentioned that his parents had got divorced when he was younger, and that he lived with his father. I'm embarrassed to admit that I was surprised by this - I assumed that he would live with his mother. This is because, in my mind, when parents divorce the children live with the mother. I then felt like kicking myself - what a stupid thing to think!

Maybe I am not thinking in the way that Johnathan was hoping us to, but I have to say I haven't been so intrigued by a lecture in a long time as I'm usually the one falling asleep at the back.  I think the interesting factor in this lecture was that it was not a purely design based lecture 'this is a design for a chair, this is a design for a scarf, this is a design for a poster.............. yah de yah de yah', it appealed to me because there were so many different things brought up which could be linked to design. Think outside the box!