CriticALL!
Image Credits © Wibke Bramesfeld
From Google reviews to YouTube tutorials, and from online service desks to real-life ‘may I speak to the manager’ requests - we are all critics of our designed environment. It seems therefore strange, if not outrageous, that design criticism is a practice considered to be a haute-for-few instead of a low-for-all. Design belongs to all of us and, therefore, its criticism as well. How can we activate more people to become actively aware of and critical towards their designed environments?
In March 2020, Onomatopee launched CriticALL! - an open call to advocate for (un)professional everyday design criticism. Participants were asked to submit a short text that criticizes, discusses, analyzes or reflects upon an everyday design object, system, environment, or construct. The 15 selected essays were displayed individually in the project's installation and have been bundled in the CriticALL! publication alongside other (un)professional design critics' contributions.