Preempting the turbulence of the graduate shows due this month London College of Communication’s ambitious post-graduate programme Design Writing Criticism, hosted the event “Why I Write” at the Design Council last night.
The evening was opened to three speakers with distinct points of view and presentation techniques, Vicky Richardson editor of Blueprint Magazine, Peter Hall critic for Metropolis and Denise Gonzales-Crisp. Denise’s appearance was via Skype, a medium that has now transcended some of its clunky technicalities and is increasingly a viable live interview medium, not to mention a valuable context it supplied for the speaker.
Aesthetic considerations, the power of story telling and the necessity of research were all mentioned as considerations for why they write. However, it was inevitably the ways in which writing is evolving, due to the race of technology, that came under closest scrutiny in the discussion. Exemplified by the presence of Twitter, flickering away on an additional screen in the background as an attempt to demonstrate its, as yet to be realised, educational potential.
The symposium, therefore, posed the question to observers and practitioners, not just “why you write?”
But also, “what is the future for design writing?” In its print medium, Blueprint faces drastic changes in the current economic climate, that Vicky Richardson considers exciting. Whether Richardson sees a future in an entirely online publication was not discussed. FAD has already taken the plunge on this debate, pioneering the platform that amalgamates the instantaneity of the blog combined with the necessary formulae of a magazine.
