Matthias Wyler
matthiaswyler.com/now
The thing about design, and here I'm speaking as someone who has spent an unseemly amount of time kerning text that no one will ever consciously notice, is that we've convinced ourselves, or been convinced by the TED talks and the Arts Academies and the pile of articles about "design thinking," that we can prototype our way out of inequality. That if we just make the form elegant enough, intuitive enough, aesthetically pleasing enough, the improvement of our collective life will somehow follow. But a beautifully designed voting booth doesn't make people vote, does it? A sleek app for community organizing doesn't organize the community. But anyway, i still think design matters: the ramp matters, the legible typeface matters, the interface that doesn't punish people for being poor or old or not native English speakers matters enormously. But it matters as infrastructure for the life we still have to live, together, without a design team optimizing the experience. The bearable life, the marginally more just life, comes not from the perfect design system, but from the willingness to show up, to do the boring work of maintenance and care, to stop waiting for the beautiful solution to arrive and start bodging together something workable with the people who are actually here.
Location:
Zürich, Switzerland
Professional title:
Communication and Visual Literacy Designer
What do you do?
I'm a designer who creates websites, custom typefaces, and visual identities for cultural institutions, art spaces, and fun projects while also teaching web accessibility workshops.
Why?
The honest answer, I do it because I don't know what else to do with the particular combination of skills and neuroses I've accumulated.
What should we read?
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar