Opinion | Marc Vlemmings
After a year of reflection, Dutch Design Foundation, the organization behind the Dutch Design Awards, has decided to dedicate the award only to young design talent. With this new direction, the Netherlands no longer has a single design award for mainstream design that provides the embedding for young talent. This will be a loss.
The Netherlands had several awards in the first decade of this century that highlighted mainstream design, including commissioned design and design for business purposes. But after the dissolution of awards such as the Rotterdam Design Prize, the Goed Industrieel Ontwerperkenningen and the Gelderland Design Prize, only the Dutch Design Awards remain. Or rather remained, as it was announced last week that the latter award will also cease to exist as a prize that honors design in its full length and breadth.
Dutch Design Awards (DDA) celebrates designers who lead the way with radical imagination, exceptional talent and collaboration, reads the headline above the press release announcing the organization’s new direction. This means that the award will focus solely on young design talent. DDA already did that, as the Young Designer Award was part of the prize. By lifting design talent out of the embedding of mainstream design, it becomes a stand-alone event that can be easily passed by. Because in the DDA’s new formula, only three more talents will receive a Young Designer Grant of 10,000 euros and their projects will be on display during Dutch Design Week.
DDA seems to assume that innovative design concepts by definition come from young talent, but that is not law. The concept of design thinking — reviled by some, embraced by others — and social design derived from it has its origins with one of the largest design firms, Ideo. Another innovative design concept, speculative design, was used by Philips Design even before the term was coined.
Also, DDA seems to overestimate the impact of design when it writes DDA is committed to developing new perspectives that recognize design as a driver of innovation and opportunity. Design can give meaning to innovations and new technologies, and can make them more inclusive, but rarely takes the lead when it comes to innovations. What DDA actually does is perpetuate the myth of brilliant, young talent.
DDA is right that thinking about design in predefined categories no longer reflects the richness of today’s design landscape. But to then exclude the vast majority of design practice from the prize and focus only on emerging talent is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Surely it should be possible to judge mainstream design by different standards than those commonly applied to traditional design disciplines.