Rick Poynor: Design Thinking and Thinking Design

For visitors to this site Rick Poynor needs no introduction. Suffice to say that his Melbourne lecture was an eagerly awaited one. Speaking in the glorious surrounds of the Capitol Theatre, Poynor took two phenomena, Design Thinking and Critical Design and played them off against eachother in a fascinating contrast. The contrast even within the range of critical designers was striking – from the playful joy of Bruno Munari to the baffling (and somewhat alienating) work of Metahaven. Rick’s agenda / opinion was transparent which, as always, made for a focussed and engaged argument. Despite the straightforward nature of his presentation, the questions from the audience were unfortunately convoluted and at times even showed a misunderstanding of his general premise.

After several visits to Australia, Rick is aware of Australian designers who operate within a critical practice model. These may have proven to be a helpful reference for the audience to reinforce that this is not a geographically remote debate but one that permiates through all graphic design practice.