Many "graphic designers" are graphic artists, while "design thinkers" behave like neoliberal business consultants, writes Michèle Champagne.

It's time for summer breaks, jobs and heatwaves. What better way to relax than with a short, self-reflexive exercise: take the word "design" away and try to describe it otherwise" You have pen and paper and lemonade, about an hour to write and fifty words to play with. All words are in ? only "design" is out. It's a timely exercise and perhaps never more so than now that design had been buried under a pile of rhetorical nonsense.
Since the financial crisis of 2007-2008, since rolling housing bubbles, climate crises and pandemic waves, design and architecture have changed beyond recognition. Old production modes and scripts no longer hold, and perhaps that's why the exercise is popular now. For the last few years, I've been testing it with art, design and architecture students in Canada, as well as Maryland Institute College of Art and Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. Sometimes the exercise is explicit and sometimes it happens in conversation or reviews. Either way: remove the word "design" and the first thing you notice is that the alternative words help clarify things. Right away. Many "graphic designers" are graphic artists while others are corporate branding agents, which are two different things. Many "design thinkers" behave like neoliberal...