Stephen Bayley Enters the ‘Design Loves/Hates a Depression’ Conversation

The Guardian‘s Stephen Bayley has jumped into the fray started between Murray Moss and Michael Cannell by offering his own take on the “is design benefited by a depression?” question. Although Bayley is infinitely more gentle about the topic than Cannell was, he seems to, in part, agree that financial hard times do sometimes help design get more innovative and focused. But he’s certainly much less fixated on finger pointing than his predecessor, instead making an argument that can be badly paraphrased as: designers are great so they’ll figure out how to keep doing good things in this rough times. What’s more, he takes an interesting approach to the whole thing by looking at the interiors of new restaurants and how the economy is shaping how they’re designed. Will Bayley’s comments make Moss and his supporters mad or was this the piece that should have been written from the beginning? We wish we could tell you, but like we’ve said before, we have sworn never to use our soothsaying superpowers for anything but fighting crime. Sorry.

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