[Design Indaba] The disease of marketing-driven design

The irrepressible Gert Dumbar, graphic designer extraordinaire, hates marketers. He told the audience at Design Indaba this morning, Friday, 29 February 2008, that marketing driven design is a disease, probably emanating from America which is anyhow responsible for the evil of capitalism in his opinion!

Born and raised in Indonesia, he spent time in a Japanese concentration camp during the Second World War, ended up at art school, had some talent and is now as head of his own prolific studio, Studio Dumbar, inventing a new language of design… visual branding.

Dumbar’s philosophy is that the designer is author and clients are just there to pay the designer, not direct him. This has of course gained popularity in design circles, notoriety in client circles.

(Any marketers should stop reading now or have their therapists standing by.)

He hates marketing-driven design. Marketers are too stupid, he says, to distinguish between a Van Gogh and a Rembrandt. (Loud applause from the audience here.) “I hate them. They dress themselves the wrong way in the wrong clothes, drive the wrong cars, have the wrong third wives and all have the same furniture - it’s modern!” They also earn far too much, he adds. Well, at least he didn’t give their mothers credit for dressing them funny.

Dumbar goes on to pontificate that he agrees with a quote that ‘marketing research is a science invented in America to protect management from fear of failure’ and adds to that… “Marketing driven design is a devilish blow by capitalism. Marketing is an invention from America. A lot of bad things come from America, including capitalism. This disease is now coming to Holland and we need to stamp it (out)!”

He believes in the purest form of graphic design, based in visual design. Extremely exciting to him. No more laws of topography, no vain designer, only a form of engagement…. “I think if we could look 15 years from now, these sorts of congresses are only about one thing in life – the engagement in your profession. It is not any more about the colour of a car, or a nice design of whatever, it is surely the drive and the optimism of engagement you can bring in your profession. The world simply needs it…”

Simplify systems and organise chaos, is his final message.

To learn more about his radical ideas, go to his website www.studiodumbar.com/main.php.