Good Design is All Around Us

Insight

14th August 2013
by Scott Burnett

On a daily basis, I see loads of work – posters, logos, shopfronts, websites, films, publications, apps, ideas, ads – that make me twinge with jealousy and then think ‘Who did that?’. It’s one of the main reasons we started this project, to get a clearer sense of the great work going on all around us and the people and thinking behind it.

15 years ago when I moved to Dublin I was impressed by the quality and creativity of the work I saw in all aspects of Irish society, and with how different it was from what I’d seen happening in London. It had, and has, its own voice. I tried to get to know about as many of the designers I saw producing great work as I could. Now hopefully 100 Archive can start to capture and present this work and its purpose, context, stories and place in the world for people that didn’t see it first-hand. From Club Flyers and retail identities to Mr Tayto, the Trócaire box and religious textbooks for schools.

In those 15 years I’ve seen the frequency and amount of interesting work grow and grow, and we want more than anything to capture and present that work here, giving it a context, for now and into the future.

We’ve had a lot of people say to us that they wouldn’t have any work ‘good’ enough to submit to the archive. This isn’t how we see or understand this project working. Our hope would be that practicing designers would submit any project that they’d put on their own website. (In an ideal world we’d love if people were seeing it on 100 Future almost as soon as the job went live, but one step at a time). If this starts to happen 100 Future will start to show us what’s going on around us, who’s doing what and give us some insight into why and how.

The more work that populates 100 Future at the end of a year, the better the archive for that year will be, it’ll be richer, deeper and a more clear reflection of our landscape at a given point in time. And it’s not all about good, or best, because how do you even begin to judge that. It’s about relevant, powerful, meaningful, unexpected, direct, moving, clear, funny. It’s about what we do and how it helps make sense of the world around us.

So if we all start uploading our projects, maybe in another 15 years, young yet-to-be designers will get a good idea of just how much great work is happening around us now.

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