You won’t even know what true swearing is until we release the outtakes from the Be A Design Casts.

Let’s look at where a lot of boundary-pushing designers have come from (especially recently): punk rock/rock, SoCal skate/surf culture, the graf scene, tattoo culture, hip hop. Profanity infuses the points of reference, perhaps it’s just hard to (or one doesn’t see the need) to censor yourself, especially when it was NOT censoring yourself that you got hired/famous/cutting the edge in the first place.

As someone who both uses profanity probably more that I should, and probably used it a few times in a lecture I gave in the Omaha recently, I feel I should comment.

First, I don’t feel the design scene or lecture circuit is “obsessed” with using profanity to be edgy and cool. These days, with hip-hop’s rough language a part of every from-sea-to-shining-sea’s adolescent’s life, it’s probably much more edgy to NOT use it, really. But to say that design is a hotbed for coarse language is a stretch. And to automatically link it to the proliferation of graphic sexual imagery in our everyday lives sounds like some bad “gateway drug” propaganda.

I’ll be the first to admit that some specific uses of profanity make me uncomfortable, if not repulsed (i.e. if it is used in misogynous or racist ways). And if I was having tea with the Queen of England I might try to refrain from using the F-word. But profanity is a also wonderful tool to both express passion and to clear the air of overbearing self-righteousness and political correctness. It’s about the freedom to express oneself. And not unlike the lectures we might have heard in design school about the appropriateness of form to content, there are times when profanity—goddammit—is appropriate and true. I am a passionate person and sometimes it’s the only way that feels strong enough to express a point. Imagine an anti-war protest or classic Martin Scorcese film cleansed of coarse language.

This post could go on forever about the hypocrisies this line of discussion exposes about our sinner/saint-obsessed society and I will spare everyone. But I’d rather the discussion be about the context in which profanity is used, than profanity itself. We have our noses pressed to the trees in a time where we should be looking at the forest.

eric - (forgive me if i misunderstood your comment) I wasn’t in any way linking swearing to sexual imagery…just stating as you did, this convo could go on for-ev-er, without any resolution or right or wrong. agreed.

I really don’t understand profanity or people who swear regularly. (Maybe I should read the books Paul recommends so I can understand it better.) Seriously, I can’t comprehend it at all. Do they really think they sound cool, or intelligent, or interesting, or passionate? Do people who hear people swearing think, “man, there is a really articulate and passionate person.” Pardon me, but that is insane! If you swear, you sound like an idiot who doesn’t know how to talk! I am not going to go around telling people what they can and can’t say, but I can’t accept any argument that this is beneficial to any form of communication.

I can’t believe how accepted profanity has become. I bet more people are offended by me saying people who swear sound like idiots than by the cool kids who drop the “F” bomb regularly. That is messed up. Designers especially should strive to create new healthy ways of communicating rather than taking the easy way out with playground language. Profanity should be an embarrassment to any profession.

They are all words people. If everyone is going to take the stance that these words are anything more than just mere letters put together then one must have the common sense to know that they are just that. For example, words that instill hostility or intolerance…

abortion

iraq

nazi

even the word… vagina

yes these words depict a certain feeling just as the common 7 dirty words that aren’t allowed on television do. Does this make them… unspeakable? unprintable? personally, no. these words have no real value except for the value the listener gives them. In ending, this conversation can never really come to an end, ultimately its up to the listener/receiver.

“So what do you say when your working a deadline at 2am, your computer crashes, and you never saved your design?”

oohh…poopy crap damn. ?

I’m often conflicted with the language thing. I’ve been cursing since the seventh grade and I’d like to stop, because I know it doesn’t look right in the eyes of my saviour. It comes out really easily, though.

I wear different hats for situations I find myself in. I work at an Icelandic community newspaper during the day and keep my language pristine. In the rap and garage rock circles I hang out in, my lingo tends to be salty.