simples

My name is Frederico Duarte. I was born on 03/05/1979 (March fifth, nineteen seventy-nine). When I was about ten years old, my mother bought me a polo shirt. It had quite a few more buttons than most, and when I got it, I used to wear it all buttoned up to the top. I thought that was how it should be worn – why would all these buttons be there if they were not to be used? That preoccupation must have lasted for a while, but at some point I changed my mind: I never again buttoned the top buttons on any other polo shirt.

That shirt reminded me recently that through the years, I’ve learned some things are created, designed, a certain way, but that doesn’t mean their form wholly defines the way they are. The last button on a suit jacket should also be left unbuttoned, the fork should be placed on the left-hand side of the plate, and despite all our typefaces, the combination of column, hyphen and single parenthesis is now instantly understood as a smile on every screen.

Convention, history, (popular) culture – these things have always puzzled and fascinated me. When I began studying communication design in university, I soon learned there was much more about design – a term not even translated in Portuguese – than I initially thought, and during my five years of study, it never got easier to comprehend – but it certainly got more interesting. Three years later, after working as a designer in Lisbon, Kuala Lumpur and Treviso, I realised I had a problem. I actually didn’t enjoy my profession’s core intent: the generation of form. As a designer, this is almost suicidal – it’s like being a pole vault athlete and growing tired of jumping. I was, and still am, more interested in what comes before – observation, research, collaboration – and what comes after – critique, interpretation, analysis.

Later, I had the chance to work in design without designing. Through researching, curating and writing, at ExperimentaDesign, the Lisbon design biennale, I worked with people, institutions and companies, promoting design and “project culture”. I also had a chance at doing some curatorial work for Voyager (2005) and the (P)- Design de Portugal exhibitions, but it was in early 2008 that I had the opportunity of creating a programme from scratch: Inspired Lisbon by Bombay Sapphire was a 5-day event that gathered in Lisbon people from three continents to ask questions on how designers are shaping our future.

In 2007 I started writing on design for a daily newspaper a few months after hearing Paola Antonelli say there is a lack of interpreters between design’s “inner circle” and “the rest of the world”. I took it quite seriously, and started to address a mostly non-designer audience, which proved a harder job than interpreting design for designers, because ultimately, rather than seducing people into a “design world”, interpreting means making people aware they are living in a “designed world”. A world shaped by forms generated by designers, but also by the way we all use, or don’t use them – just like those superfluous buttons.

I know I still have a lot to learn to better interpret all this, and now is the time to do it. So when I heard about the School of Visual Arts’ Design Criticism programme, I told myself this was my next step. I immediately knew it wouldn’t be easy: being part of this small, inaugural, privileged class will be my most important challenge to date – and I’m not just talking about getting there. 

Classes started September 2nd, I arrived in New York August 26th. 
Before I left and crossed the Atlantic, I wanted to collect, organise and make available all my writings and a few thoughts on design, in this archive I called Simples (Portuguese for Simple).

I’ll try to update it as much as I can, in English and in Portuguese.
Welcome, and come back often. Feedback is always, always welcome.

frederico[at]05031979.net