The modern culture of immediacy has changed design. In the on-demand economy, where content is king and the fastest wins, design is ubiquitous but mass-produced. Websites are churned out from templates, starter code and AI algorithms. A digital presence is a necessity, but the ever-increasing amount of content has changed how that content is perceived.
An initial shift to mass-produced work has created a need for design to be subversive and surprising. More digital images are produced daily than can possibly be seen. One method of gaining exposure is monetary; companies pay for exposure on different sites, Google has pay-per-click advertising, algorithms deliver targeted content to your inbox. The other method uses the power of the crowd. Memes and disruptive design stand out from the mass of traditional, A/B tested work. Good design takes risks. Examples include the Hyperbole and a Half “All the things” meme as well as the Twitter @horse_ebooks and the fake Instagram, or finsta, of Amalia Ulman. Paul Chan additionally attests that art must now evoke a reaction of wrongness and go against the grain in his 2011 article “A Lawless Proposition.”
Furthermore, the mass of content means that Beatrice Ward’s infamous crystal goblet analogy is no longer valid. Cleanly presented content alone cannot capture the attention of millennial. As Michael Rock claims in his article, “Fuck Content,” “content is, perpetually, Design itself.” Yet, in stating that the focus should be on the crystal goblet alone rather than the wine, meaning the design instead of content, Rock also misses out on the possibilities of combining the two in rebellious ways. We can spill the delicious wine from a beautiful cup and cause an emotional reaction to the lost wine. This Internet age means that design and content must both present compelling and unusual arguments to gain attention.
Design is additionally going interdisciplinary. As Daniel van der Velden states in his article “Research & Destroy: A Plea for Design as Research,” “design, as an intrinsic activity, as an objective in itself, enjoys far less respect than the combination of design and one or more other specialisms,” a phenomenon I believe to be true, as I am pursuing a interdisciplinary career. Design is slowly becoming an integral part of several fields and continues to expand its place in the digital economy.