‘Design is art people use’. So begins the essential 2006 manual D-I-Y: Design it Yourself, edited by Ellen Lupton, curator of Contemporary Design at the Cooper Hewitt, in collaboration with the graduate students she teaches as Director of the Graphic Arts MFA program at the Maryland Institute College of Art. It’s a phrase worth remembering at a time when both the escalating celebrity of designers and the ever-increasing cycle of consumption means we’re less reliant on our own creativity to solve the basic problems of everyday life. Lupton is a champion of the DIY movement, and this easy to use and genuinely hip guide proves that she’s unafraid to hand the baton of high design to everyday folks so that they can improve the way they work, live and create—without utilizing the paid services of a professional.

In a recent review for Eye, I lampooned certain outcroppings of the seemingly never-ending DIY movement for using the guise of creativity to convince otherwise reasonable people to devote their time to completely pointless activity (again and again I come back to the ‘Knitted Car Antennae Cosy’). But D-I-Y manages to finally shut me up by offering tips that actually achieve the best of what design should do, that is, improve your life by making it simpler, more organized, and more visually suited to your own unique tastes.

Some quirky but usable projects that you just might actually need to live your life now or in the future include: presentation formats (Power Point and DVD), photo albums, promotional DVD and CD packaging, stationary and wedding invitations, poster lettering, company newsletters, hang tags and clothing labels, business cards and basic html for website design.

If you’re uncreative like me, the knee-jerk reaction will be to get really inspired by the intimidatingly crafty possibilities suggested by this collective of visual artists, and then proceed to directly copy what they do yourself. Of course, the point of the book is not to give you a list of static instructions for one-time projects like, say, a knitted antennae cosy, but to show you how to think like a designer and then use this thinking in various practical applications. With a chapter on DIY theory (succinctly explaining ‘public’, ‘capital’, and ‘property’), and the basic principles of design (find your voice, people), you could probably learn something more lasting than how to make your own coasters for a bar opening; though, if you’re short on ideas, you could just rip off the rubber stamp idea and hope your friends haven’t read the book. As the intro states: ‘This book demystifies the technical side of small-scale publishing in various media while opening up your mind to the creative side of design.’ See? There. Easy.

When it’s done best, like it is in this book, DIY is an attempt to put the commodity of design production back into the hands of those who live with its daily repercussions. Whether we want to admit it or not, every morning we get dressed, drive a car, flaunt a pair of shoes, eat food or lounge in a chair, we’re making creative decisions that send a message to the world (you can’t escape it: even the deliberate choice not to advertise yourself through logos, labels and styles says something about your lifestyle). Good DIY is about taking ownership of the ideas we project to the world through our clothing, belongings, and actions. Let Lupton’s confidence inspire you—the DIY design movement will never replace the dedicated problem solving of innovative professional designers. If anything, it will continue to spread design literacy to an ever-widening public, encouraging a more sophisticated appreciation of visual culture that will inevitably make what you do even more valued than it already is. So get knitting.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 2:40 pm and is filed under Book Reviews, Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.