Design Obeserver posts ’New Europe, New Spirit,’ an interesting piece on Eastern European design, by (the ubiquitous – and that's a good thing) Rick Poynor.

He warns us, the New-Europe designers that design is at a crossroads and “ there is a chance not simply to produce a local imitation of western design, but to develop goals and ways of working which have their basis in the visual histories and cultural concerns of the region. Without clear thinking and careful planning, it is possible that things will go wrong and that design in his part of the world could find itself overtaken and corrupted by the worst aspects of design and advertising – the two are becoming inseparable – in the west.”

This gloomy perspective needs a better definition of terms. So he continues:

« Some of the questions that have once again arisen in recent years, in relation to design’s role in the advanced capitalist economies of the US or Britain, could seem even more pressing in central Europe while, to another way of thinking, they might be seen as completely irrelevant. The complaint, in the wealthy nations, is that communication design has become servile. Its main purpose today is to promote and advertise commercial goods and services and this is what the vast majority of designers end up doing. It is not that advertising and promotion is wrong in itself, say design’s critics, but the amount of time, talent and resources devoted to this kind of design means that other areas of design, vital to a healthy, democratic visual culture, are neglected – for instance, information design, design for charitable organisations, design for education, design for cultural purposes.

In the last 20 years, we have educated young designers to believe that this is the way things are and any sense that designers might once have viewed things differently has faded. One key change is that whereas earlier generations of graphic designers often spoke about their responsibility to society as visual communicators, it is rare to hear practising designers discuss their role in such terms today. “The main questions that must now be addressed to designers themselves are how do you view your role?” writes Krsic [Dejan Krsic, a Croatian designer]. “How do you perceive it? Not what kind of work would you like to do, but what is it that you want to achieve through it?” »

And more:

« Perhaps the most valuable lesson would be for central European designers to resist the western brand mania that leads to everything looking the same in the shops, streets and media, and assert the human value of local visual traditions. Finding a way to reconcile these concerns with the urgent demands of economic progress, while preserving a sense of national identity, may be the most challenging design task of all. »

As much as I confess my huge admiration for Mr. Rick Poinor, I also must confess I find all this confusing. Is it about the social responsibilities of the designer? Is it about an Eastern European style and preserving national identities? About not selling out?

I have no idea how being a Hungarian is like. Nor Slovenian, Croatian and so on. The worst news is that I have little idea what being a Romanian is all about. 50 years of communism efficiently erased almost all the colorful memories of the sizzling Romanian cities from between the World War One and World War Two. The role models in the Romanian culture, science and business were killed, locked up in jails, forced to serve the interests of the political class. In a centralized economy design is unnecessary, so there is no real design tradition, only isolated people who managed to design a blender, a book jacket or a theater poster once in a while, but like in all other areas mediocrity was safe and rewarding.

For the Romanians, there is a long process in front of us to clarify and redefine who we are and what values do we have now, after the 50 years of devastating paralysis and crippling brainwashing. Like a good shrink, a foreign identity consultant is badly needed and Brandient is acting like a mediator and lobbyist to get the process started for a couple of years now, but this not going to be easy. Spain, and more recently Portugal shows us that it can be done. Also, we're anxiously waiting to see the first results for Poland – who is at the beginning of a similar national identity revitalization process – and learn from them.

I feel that being a designer and trying to “preserve a sense of national identity” in my work is not only challenging, but also confusing and an almost impossible task at this particular stage. It is safer to talk about building a new sense of national identity than about preserving it.

The selling-out part is the most annoying because it really makes no sense at all in a place were almost everything is undesigned and has to be urgently improved. From local corporation identities to retail outlets, from National Railroads (CFR) to Romanian Airlines (Tarom) to from public signage to healthcare communication, it all has to be redesigned or, more often, designed from scratch. It is too much work and far too few competencies and resources to do it. The value proposition of design is not yet understood in this economical and cultural development stage – and thus design is grossly underpaid. To make things worse, advertising agencies often sell design (and good design, many times) at embarrassingly low prices, as a bonus for the media budgets, driving the ad industry up on the expense of driving the design industry down. Nothing new here, Wally Olins often talks about how this things affected his business in the UK some twenty-thirty years ago.

Do we all understand that we're talking design in a scarcity-ridden market? What selling out?

Designers’ social responsibility has to be translated, in my opinion, into hard work now. And not desig-for-designers-infatuation type of work – there is only little need for that – but design for the streets and for the struggling entrepreneurs and yet fragile businesses of the new economy.

Let's save the 'selling-out' part for latter, say, 20 years from today.