smow Blog #campustour 2017

Very much like Willie Nelson, we’re on the road again, and like a band of gypsies goin’ down the highway, we’ll be goin’ places that we’ve never been, seein’ things that we may never see again, and all the time insistin’ that the world keep turnin’ our way.

It’s smow blog #campustour 2017

On, and on, and on, and……. the smow blog #campustour 2017

Every June and July smow blog takes to the road and visits design school end of semester and graduation exhibitions; yet whereas in the past our tours have largely been determined and defined by other commitments, and restricted to Germany, with our #campustour 2017 we are planning something a bit more joined up, and for all wider scale.

Not only is the tour top priority, and something to which all other blog considerations in June and July will have to yield, but it will also see us visiting design schools throughout Europe.

Anyone with any understanding of the finer points of how the smow blog is produced will appreciate the monumental lunacy inherent in an intense, multi-institution, pan-European tour.

But then the smow blog is founded on and guided by that self same monumental lunacy.

We could just sit in the office every day rewriting press releases and begging for press photos. It would be great, we could create a soft-focus, google friendly blog and be in the pub every day by four.

And thereby not only contribute to the odious fatberg clogging up the internet but completely misrepresent design.

For to understand design one has to interact with it, observe it, touch it, use it, observe it from another perspective, kick it, discuss it, lick it….. OK maybe not licking, licking’s taking things far too far. But certainly only through experiencing design first hand can you not only form an opinion on a particular project, but through forming opinions on numerous projects develop an understanding, a comprehension even, of both contemporary design and for all those forces and motivations contributing to, influencing and driving contemporary design.

For us it would be a dereliction of duty not to get out there, observing, discussing, interacting and kicking.

And we can only recommend everyone takes the opportunity to view as much historic and contemporary design as possible as often as possible, be that industrial design, social design, design research, or an apparently simple chair.

“Ich will Designer werden” – “I want to be a designer” OK. But why? And what is a designer?

Visiting design schools is important to us for number of reasons, reasons which we hope to make clear in the course of our 2017 #campustour, but which ultimately are rooted in understanding future directions for design. Not so much in terms of projects, what the designers of the future develop we’ll happily leave the designer’s of the future to develop. It’s only polite. We’re interested much more in the framework within which that happens, what design schools are teaching, allowing even, as design, how that is being taught, in what context is that being taught, by what means, and in addition both what design students understand as design and also how design students understand their future role.

Our campus tour is in addition is the only way we can hope to get anything even resembling a “holiday”

Throughout June and July we’ll bring you a selection of posts from some of those schools we visit, in addition the tour can be followed on the smow facebook, smow twitter and smow instagram profiles under #campustour

Take it away Willie……..