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Desktop Covered

The February issue of the Australian design magazine desktop features an interview with Jason about Inkahoots. It’s also a relatively safe bet that it’s the first time a (mis)quote from Karl Marx has featured on the cover of a national graphic design publication. The image is explained on the magazine’s blog: The cover image is a photograph of a granite plaque mounted out front of the Inkahoots' West End studio  in Brisbane. It was carved by hand by a local stonemason and is a replica of an inscription on Marx’s grave in London’s Highgate Cemetery. The original text is from Marx’s 1845 ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ and reads “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point however is to change it.” Referring to the dialectical relationship between ideas and the material world, it was ripe for appropriation as part of our ongoing series of Second Hand Philosophies, a little project that attempts to redirect and recontextualise design. After all, “The designers have only packaged the world in various ways, the point however is to change it”. Of course it is true that the “packaging of the world” has caused immense change, but that is exactly the kind of change that needs changing.

And the way the design media, in Australia especially, has skimmed the surface of visual culture, dodging design’s role in maintaining social and political inequity, disadvantage and atomisation, just renders designers impotent. Casts us as sycophants. Assigns us as slaves. But we will rise…