LIVING BY DESIGN

Super Normal


"The appeal of SuperNormal lies in the idea that our relationship with things we aren't usually aware of is richer than with things that are viewed in terms of design."


Designers generally do not think to design the "ordinary". If anything, they live in fear of people saying their designs are "nothing special." Of course, undeniably, peopel do have an unconscious everyday sense of "normal", but rather than to blend in, the tendency of designers is to try to create "statement" or "stimulation". So "normal" has come to mean "unstimulating" or "boring" design.

It's not just designers; people who buy design and clients who commission designers do not see "normal" as a design concept or even entertain the idea of creating the "new normal". To dare, then, to design something "normal" within this prevailing scheme of design common sense raises the stakes; it makes for consciously designed normal above and beyond normal that what we might call "Super Normal." Why super? Well, if our senses of normal falls within the realm of non-design, then the unthinkable attempt to undercut all the excesses and bold, brash statements recognised as design must conversely transend them. "Normal" refers to things as they've come to be; this "Super Normal" is the designing of things just as "normal" as what we've come to know, albeit in no way anonymous. There's a creative intent at work here, evenif that intent may be regarded not so much as designing, but simply not going against the inevitable flow of things as they come to be.

"Super Normal" is less concerned with designing beauty than seemingly homely but memorable elements of everyday life. Certainly nothing "flashy" or "eye catching"; yet almost always somehow appealing. As if, with viewing something with expectations of a new design, our negative first impression of "nothing much" or "just plain ordinary" shifted to "...but not bad at all." Overcoming an initial emotional denial, out bodily sensors pick up on an appeal we seen to have known all along and engage us in that strangely familiar attraction. Things that possess a quality to shake us back to our senses are "Super Normal."

When people hear the word "design" they think "special"; creating "special" things is what everyone, designers are users like, assume design is all about. When in fact, both sides are playing out a mutual fantasy far removed from reality.

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from Naoto Fukaswa and Jasper Morrison's book "Super Normal"