Murray Moss Responds to Michael Cannell’s ‘Design Loves a Depression’

You don’t write an article about how mass poverty will lead to better design without ruffling a few feathers, which surely Michael Cannell knew when he wrote his piece in the NY Times the other day entitled “Design Loves a Depression” (we discussed it here). Designer and entrepreneur Murray Moss took quite a bit of issue with it and wrote a response over at Design Observer called “Design Hates a Depression.” To boil it down into just a few of his words, Moss argues that Cannell’s “article is regressive and mean-spirited,” and in short he believes that the writer wants anyone related to design to suffer, perhaps for these last couple of years of design-as-art inflation. We’re certainly not going to pick sides, largely because we think there’s a lot of value in each of the pieces — but we do recommend checking out the comments, to get the whole range of discussion, some fiercely pro-Moss and the others strongly pro-Cannell, leading to what’s becoming an interesting topic for your brain to digest.

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