In last Sunday’s Boston Globe, Dushko Petrovich explored how Boston could find itself as the home of a new art revolution. In his essay, Dushko cites all that Boston has going for it: “several great museums, a superabundance of universities, many galleries, a highly educated and increasingly sophisticated audience, and a density that allows for the most important element in cultural life: interaction between creative people.” Dushko makes a pretty convincing job that this revolution is right around the corner, and he’s right. Kind of.
Kind of, because it’s not an art revolution that’s coming, but a design one. It’s been brewing for a while.
In 2006, the public was just starting to educate itself on design. ApartmentTherapy, DesignSponge, sfgirlbybay and others were showcasing creations coming out of New York and San Francisco. Boston had a large, energetic design scene, but people outside of the city thought it was a quaint, stodgy old town, not giving it the attention it deserved. I started DesignBoston to help get that conversation going. Three and a half years later — whether its architecture, interior-, product-, graphic deisgn or more — if you’re offering unique, thoughtful, innovative creations, we want to share it.
A year later, the Design Industry Group of Massachusetts (DIGMA) was formed as “an initiative of the statewide design industries to organize and promote the Massachusetts design cluster as integral to the state’s economy. ” DIGMA unites the various design industries and promotes them to business, government, and the public. In the most recent Boston Home Magazine, DIGMA director Beate Becker shared an interesting fact:
Our impressive numbers may surprise people who think the city is strictly a science and technology powerhouse; in fact, more than 45,000 people work in design-related jobs in Massachusetts, from architecture and advertising to product design for New Balance and Reebok. Boston-area companies actually support the second-largest industrial-design population in the country, behind San Francisco.
The same year, the pinkcomma gallery opened. The introduction on pinkcomma’s website says it all:
This gallery aims to foster and recognize a more creative and experimental scene that has grown out of one of the world’s most significant capitals of architectural education. For all the city’s stodginess, Boston’s six architecture schools and their instructors have unleashed some of the most provocative figures on the world scene.
Through exhibits like “Rethinking City Hall” and “Heroic“, directors Chris Grimley and Mark Pasnik ask us to reconsider our built spaces. The upcoming Design Biennial Boston will “showcase emerging design voices through an exhibition and publication of innovative professional design works.”
This year, Design Museum Boston was formed to “educate the public on the role of design in their lives and the contributions of design within the creative economy.” It’s planned network of physical — galleries, storefronts and malls — and online exhibits will expose audiences “to the design process from a social, economic, and environmental point of view.”
Whether you’re a creative professional or not, design shapes your world. Look around, and you’ll see a world full of buildings, graphics, products and experiences that were all originally visualized by designers. The clothes you wear, the car you drive, the building you work in, even your favorite website; all are the products of designers’ efforts. Each is more usable and inspiring because of designers’ involvement.
DIGMA, Design Museum Boston, pinkcomma gallery, and DesignBoston are trying to achieve the same thing, but from different angles: DIGMA from an institutional level; DesignMuseumBoston in our places of commerce; pinkcomma gallery from the (literally and figuratively) underground, and DesignBoston from a grassroots level.
These are of course just four examples of the connectors bringing attention to the design industry around Boston, and throughout Massachusetts. As more connections are made, as newer, evermore innovative work gets produced, and as more people — in Boston and beyond — recognize the contributions of Boston’s design industry, Boston will truly be a hub of design.
