Traditional modes of production have perpetuated the idea that objects present themselves as a black box with a clear distinction between maker and consumer. Designers have ‘enjoyed’ a position of false neutrality under the guise of agents of mere functionality. In everyday life, however, no object or practice is neutral, but rather a result of its context and its ideological influences. This raises a number of questions: where does design go from here? Can designers expose their own ideological tendencies? And if so, can it act as a critique of ideology?

Ideology is a set of collective ideas and beliefs that normalize a perception of reality; it's a worldview by preset, which consists of strategies of thought aimed to serve a purpose. Ideology shapes social reality itself by dictating our behavior as functional roles to pursue and sustain a certain model of society. Its utilitarian nature forges our social convictions guided by the will of a larger force: such as the country, the party, or “the market” or any form of God we obey;  dictating our moral positions and transforming individuals into subjects, such as a faithful Christian, a good citizen, a loyal wife, a good worker, etc.

Nevertheless, its effectiveness is sustained through our material environment under material practices
and rites, such as voting, purchasing, or praying. But also performed through material practices in our designed environment, such as in clothes that define us as masculine or feminine, lazy or athletic: A sportive gear that looks dynamic has nothing to do with the factual body's achievements. But in an idea of what a good performance and a healthy lifestyle may be perceived inside of society. Just take a look at your closest shoes, even if we don't fully believe or commit to exercising, the object imposes by itself the morals that define what a good physical activity is and what a healthy lifestyle should look like.

Here design plays its role in infiltrating moral positions with regard to our place in society, enacting ideology’s promises through implicit symbolic endorsement. Thus to say, when something is designed, it is actively materializing a belief system and worldview; even when it’s not consciously intended.  Philosopher Slavoj Zizek argues that ideology is in the very design of the most mundane of objects; the toilet. Where the ideological perception on how to deal with human waste reflects different attitudes and political traditions of where they were designed. For example, in a traditional German toilet, since the flushing hole is in the front, we are forced to face our shit right after, while in the French tradition the hole is in the back to make any human waste disappear as soon as possible.


Those render different political approaches towards excess: A conservative contemplative fascination and a radicalist decision to get rid of the excess as fast as possible. To this classic equation, I might take the freedom to add the Dutch toilet as well: the shit sticks onto the sides of the basin before it disappears.
This could be interpreted as ideological negligence of being politically radical in appearance but conservative in its application. Through this example, we may infer that, whether consciously or not, design defines the infrastructures that ideology operates from. While designers reinforce certain worldviews and forge the myths that mediate our material culture, they also enact the functional roles of the ideologies we are part of by defining the way in which we communicate through design. In other words, while we design, we are designed by design.


I am a designer born and raised in the clash between the Brazilian hedonist optimism and Uruguayan nihilistic nostalgia of "things were better how they used to be", in a working-class family turned middle-class, with a communist-raised mother and a capitalist father. Suffice to say, that the subject of ideology was always the battleground of my upbringing and continues to be so.  Moreover, in a time while we witness the decay of grand narratives constructed by western society we also witness its remainders becoming simplistic and polarizing narratives of neoliberalism. Meanwhile, forms of authoritarian governance and conservative values claiming the natural order of things take over the world, Ideology is defined by authoritarian leaders such as Jair Messias Bolsonaro; “as brainwashing”, in order to simplify society’s complexities and deviate the attention of their ideological claims. Claims that furthermore dictate the morals of the following body and restrict the limits of the political imagination. This misconception of ideology, such as false consciousness or a collection of “isms” to simplify society’s complexities is perhaps the worst mistake. A mistake that renders ideology, a social phenomenon that no individual is exempt from, as something we could step out of, dismissing us from detecting which is the role we uphold to sustain
a particular model of society.

However, the response to such conservative claims is equally grounded on a misconception of ideology that as designers we also commit. Even when designing is acknowledged as political, the design field seems often stuck in itself: We showcase our beliefs according to the rules of the field, such as the carousel activism of social media, consequently softening society’s problems around the edges with solutionist approaches or the problem-solving flair from a convenient distance. Meanwhile, under the lack of opportunities among a growing body of design practitioners, we fight hand in hand under the offers of funding or exhibitions, changing topics all the time to showcase our skills, while practicing ideological standpoints while barely believing in them. Proving that even in the best of intentions, design enacts ideology’s promises of simplifying society's problems to its own field, becoming a tool to disguise systemic precariousness as emancipation.

Among this, all is not lost. Rather than bringing about a dead-end, this brings about new possibilities.
Now more than ever is time to acknowledge the symbolic forms that are transmitted from the past and reconstitute our agency as a way to research ideology from within. To use design to find the constructed nucleus under the mystical layer of our material culture; where economic and religious norms are transformed into moral norms that dictate and polarize.

While a Marxist approach to research ideology will try to demystify the myths that regulate our social behavior into grounded facts, we must also consider that show-and-tell is not enough. It should always start with confronting ourselves, the social formations, and the knowledge we inherit of the place and people we are born into. If we accept that design is a tool to construct the regulations of our social life,
to which we are subjected, it might as well be a tool for us to inquire about our role towards any and all inherent worldviews. To actively penetrate the main armor of ideology and detect the systems we are unconsciously complying to, where design’s ability to dictate can also offer its counterpart, such as in revenge for the utilitarian nature of our practice, we can use its use against itself.

ABSTRACTION AND EMPIRICAL ILLUSTRATION

We live our lives made up of a great quantity of isolated instants. So as to be lost at the heart of a multitude of things. (From the Double Dream of Spring, 1970.)

1. Gavrilo Princip’s last grocery list written
   
2. The time that alligator ate that fish
   
3. When the Yongzheng Emperor found that weird dust bunny under his throne
   
4. The great earthquake of Alexandria