"I would think twice about designing stuff for which there was no need and which didn't endure"
About this Quote
A quiet rebuke, delivered with the mildness of someone who knows the real insult is waste. Robin Day’s line isn’t anti-design so much as anti-flourish: a warning against the seductive itch to make something new simply because you can. “Think twice” frames creativity as an ethical act, not a lifestyle accessory. The target is the kind of novelty that flatters the maker’s ego, burns resources, and leaves behind clutter with a short half-life.
The two criteria he pairs - need and endurance - are doing heavy cultural work. “Need” pushes back on consumer culture’s favorite trick: manufacturing desire and calling it necessity. “Endure” is the moral amplifier, implying responsibility across time. If the object doesn’t last, it doesn’t just fail aesthetically; it fails socially. It externalizes its costs onto everyone else: landfill, replacement cycles, the low-grade stress of living among disposable things.
Day’s background as a journalist matters here. Journalists are trained to ask the brutal question: what is this for, and who benefits? That newsroom instinct translates into a design philosophy skeptical of hype and allergic to the empty press-release promise. The line also reads as a late-20th-century corrective, emerging as mass production, planned obsolescence, and branding turned objects into fast-moving narratives. Day isn’t romanticizing the past; he’s insisting that good making should survive both fashion and scrutiny. The real subtext: if it can’t justify itself in use and in time, it probably shouldn’t exist.
The two criteria he pairs - need and endurance - are doing heavy cultural work. “Need” pushes back on consumer culture’s favorite trick: manufacturing desire and calling it necessity. “Endure” is the moral amplifier, implying responsibility across time. If the object doesn’t last, it doesn’t just fail aesthetically; it fails socially. It externalizes its costs onto everyone else: landfill, replacement cycles, the low-grade stress of living among disposable things.
Day’s background as a journalist matters here. Journalists are trained to ask the brutal question: what is this for, and who benefits? That newsroom instinct translates into a design philosophy skeptical of hype and allergic to the empty press-release promise. The line also reads as a late-20th-century corrective, emerging as mass production, planned obsolescence, and branding turned objects into fast-moving narratives. Day isn’t romanticizing the past; he’s insisting that good making should survive both fashion and scrutiny. The real subtext: if it can’t justify itself in use and in time, it probably shouldn’t exist.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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