Customer Reviews

Design Anarchy

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is a reminder that as artists we have no business contributing to the consumption machine. The rub is that anything made in a world of total commodification is commodity already. Kalle Lasn challenges this notion. It's easy to make a piece that can be bought and sold. The real challenge in art is to make work that resists that urge within itself.

Cynical artists disgrunted with society are certainly readers of Kalle Lasn's Adbuster magazines. They might have turned to buy this "Design Anarchy" design guide.

I found the provocative visual slideshow created by each page turn strong in message, but the bravado and ego in Kalle Lasn shows through by him stating that design anarchy, a term for a movement that he coined, is the next movement listed among art and design movements such as Bauhaus, Arts and Crafts Movement, and Post-Modernism. Anti-ads have been around for quite a while. Mad Magazine, which was going strong in the 1950's, is just one example of modern culture parody.

If you are a true anarchist, why do you want a given label such as that? Shouldn't you be just...doing...making noise, anti-art, protests, etc.?
Why not put together a book made of, say, stolen Prozac notepads from your local hospital? In all fairness, he preaches this kind of action, and probably on some level his book inspired me to think of this.

As another reviewer stated, if you look on the last page, you will see that the book is Printed in China. Mr. Lasn looked to find cheap labor to make the most money on this publication, with greedy business savvy just like a large corporation he loves to criticise.

Ah, the seduction of money. Now I'm really cynical.

Very good.
Well structured.
Worth the price and time reading.
Thank goddness for ADBUSTERS in our lives.
Gives good proof of our bad consuming habits.
Found myself a new passion: consume less and then find myself.
Must read and digest to open your mind.
Please leave on a coffee table.
Knowlegde is power.
Very good.

[...]

in this book there are a lot of things i agree with. its a hard time right now for a graphic designer, if you really want to do interesting things and at the same time you have to manage to work for the right people and to be somehow "politically correct".
apart from the huge format and the shiny pages that are used (which are not really ecological) - without any doubt a pure design question... maybe i am just a young graphic design student without much experience, but the last page let me think:
"printed in china"
this fact just changes the sense of the whole book. credibilty is gone. kalle lasn is taking himself serious?
or did he eventually pay them the same wages as in western countries?

Design Anarchy- is one of those books which reminds a Graphic Designer's actual duty; how to speak visually?, how to make cool things uncool and vice-versa, how we "graphic designers" are helping our brothers and sisters to live a totally false life...an Uncool one!
DA is an eye opener and mind opener aswell. When i was a design student i used to love Tibor Kalman's philosophy and Adbusters activism... Now when i am teaching my students, DA is my weekly guide to breathe the air of Creative Activism towards Corporate Culture amongst my students and fellows!
If "Art of Looking Sideways" was the Design Bible for me... Design Anarchy is the [Resurrection of Designers] for me.

Awesome book, if you're just curious about it, it makes you more aware of what surrounds you, if you work with propaganda, publicity, marketing or is an graphic designer or something similar, it makes you think about the road you're taking, where you are and where you wanna be, or if it's all worth it.

This book is a laugh, but one not a laugh worth paying for. The very title makes me smirk, Design Anarchy - hardback....