Design (Anti) Panism: An (Incomplete) Timeline

<p>Two oft-heard assertions inform today’s understanding of design: “everyone is a designer” and “everything is design.” It is within such professed design panism that designers (struggle to) articulate their role and position. But more than being a mere description of a reality, design panism is an interpretative framework, a rhetorical instrument and a semi-conscious expansion agenda. In a two-day seminar, we broke down the conflicting meanings of these statements in order to elucidate their consequences on the designer’s identity and sense of realization. By analyzing texts spanning more than half a century – from Norman Potter to Keller Easterling, from Victor Papanek to Ruha Benjamin – we looked critically into design culture’s fractures and continuities.</p>