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Design Blog Design Blog » Design Triennial » But is it craft?

But is it craft?

The makers of Make, the techie-geek D.I.Y. magazine featured in the Triennial, have a new publication out, now in its third issue, called Craft:. This hip and beautiful little zine got me thinking about the craft revolution, which has reinvigorated the lives of design professionals as well as the lives of a vast and passionate general public.

Magazines like Make, Craft:, and Readymade show people how to make things, but how much can they really convey about craft itself? True craft represents an embodied, lived skill, grounded in the person of the maker, that is acquired over a long period of time. All design activities demand this embodied experience. Even digital processes like writing code or editing images in Photoshop are craft-based skills. You can learn about them from a book or a tutorial, but ultimately, you have to try them, and try them again and again.

As a college-level design educator, I know that each time I follow students through the process of conceiving and producing a work of design, I’m helping them develop their craft. It’s an incremental task, however, and craft is one area where older people have an advantage over the young, because this embodied experience takes years to acquire. (The challenge for us is to keep up with tools that keep changing.)

I’ve come to realize that writing is a craft, too, no different at bottom from the crafts of cooking or sewing or typography. With experience, one learns that crafting a sentence will take a certain amount of time and effort. One can be hit with inspiration or insight (that part is art), but making it all work and flow and communicate requires working and reworking (that part is craft).

About the Author: Ellen Lupton is Curator of Contemporary Design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

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Comments

  1. I was at a lecture at Cooper-Hewitt last week listening to the new owners of Heath Ceramics: Cathy Bailey and Robin Petravic. They should join this blog – are you out there, Robin? Cathy?
    Their comments on craft, ‘tactile castration’ caused by an over-emphasis on CAD, and their personal experiences of working as industrial designers, and now with potters and a wheel, was fascinating.

    Paul | Oct 29, 11:28 AM

  2. So inspiration/insight=art
    and working/reworking=craft.
    Then most of the world’s paintings are craft, not art. Big problem here.
    Maybe we need to do away with the term “craft.”

    Patrick Frank | Oct 29, 11:29 AM

  3. Yes, Frank, I think the process of working/reworking is part of writing, painting, design, and more. Painters and writers often speak of their “craft.” Designers do less often, unless they are referring to a handmade aesthetic. Yet craft is there in the sleekest work, when it is done well.

    Ellen Lupton | Oct 29, 11:29 AM

  4. This topic is of endless interest to me. I’m making a documentary called Typeface with Kartemquin Films (Hoop Dreams) that deals with the intersection of traditional “craft” and modern “art” (as well as design) throughout. There is a lot of gray area. If you’d like to read more about the film visit www.typefacethefilm.com

    Justine Nagan | Apr 23, 12:00 PM