Coburger Designtage: “Function Is an Excuse”
Last weekend I had the opportunity to visit the “19th Coburger Designtage” (May 15-20, Coburg). I neither have enough stamina (still feeling “medium great”), nor time, nor pictures to write a full report, but I want to share two things I noted. Questionable things.
Figure: “Coburger Designtage” claim.
The first thing is an installation of some claims or slogans or whatever, including the following: “Function is an excuse.” I find that claim “remarkable” since it’s the last thing I expect to hear from almost professional designers. I find it “unwise”. Not only due to my understanding of art and design, but rather due to the lack of function and purpose of too many objects.
Probably we cannot discuss this claim in full as long as we don’t know precisely its intention. Too bad I couldn’t talk to the people who thought of this “provocative” slogan. It would have been interesting.
Figure: “Function is an excuse.”
The other thing is a drawing of a charger that holds three batteries and indicates its status only via one LED in either red or green. Again, I didn’t have a chance to talk to anyone about this, so it’s probably a copy of an existing device or just a joke. I don’t know. However, that charger is not only unrealistic (at least in Germany, every charger appears to manage two, four, or eight batteries), it also means bad design when thinking about color blindness. The designer just managed to hide the charger status from most trichromats, about 7-8 % of the population.
Figure: Draft of a charger, optimized for colorblinds.
The Coburger Designtage featured interesting approaches towards good design, too, but that would have been boring to present.
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Comments
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On May 28, 2007, 2:36 CEST, Dan Johnson said:
Hope you’re feeling better, Jens. So, they think “function is an excuse”? They never heard the phrase “form follows function”? If you’re designing something to be used (as opposed to just art for art’s sake) then function should be your primary motivator. It isn’t just “an excuse.”
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On September 28, 2010, 13:03 CEST, Bluecheck said:
“function is an excuse” is (or was) a name of (one) project. It is a try to make a design not because of the function, it is more important to make a interesting design, the function should be secondary. It is not the rule how students in coburg get teached. It was just a project with experimental approach - try the opposite of “form follows function”!
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On September 28, 2010, 15:58 CEST, Jens O. Meiert said:
Three years later, that is good to know. Thanks Markus.
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On September 29, 2010, 15:24 CEST, Bluecheck said:
I found your page randomly. The Coburger Designtage 2007 was my first contact with coburg. Since 2008 I’m a student there
so if you have any questions…