We live under many rules. Different rule sets, set by different people and systems, for different purposes and we’re kind of okay with that, I think. When you drive a car, when you prepare food in a professional kitchen, when you buy a ticket to a concert, there are rules for what you can and cannot do – but, and this is important, often more for what you can NOT do than for what you can. Rules, unlike rights, are limiting, and they’re often explicit. When you drive a car, one such limit is: please don’t drive faster than a specific speed, don’t drive on the sidewalk, or into other cars. And when you get your driver’s license, and I sure fucking hope this is true for you, you have agreed to follow those rules. But what if there are rules they’re not telling you about? What rules are unspoken, implicit, perhaps never actually agreed to?

In this Quick Why I want to pick a little bit at the scab of a word that is “normal”. As a term, it hides more than it reveals. It expects you to know what for other people isn’t even a question – and if you don’t know, you may well be judged for that. I guess I sound a little harsh! For a word as normal as normal, why am I making such a fuss?

Every time a designer or otherwise creative person uses that word, I feel the need to ask why. I bring this up every time I talk about words – how intent and assumption and subjectivity don’t always align with one another. So I make a fuss because designers use a word that maybe means a lot to them… but what does it mean to others?

Normal implies the existence of norms, a shorthand for rules set by other people, and like with so many other words, we’ve come to accept that shorthand as inherently valuable and meaningful. And like with so many other words that are used for judgement, they fail as a shorthand, because not everybody knows what lies behind them.

What do you really mean by normal? Do you mean that it lies in a particular range of the Bell curve? Do you mean that it is normal, or do you mean common, typical or average? Is it according to norms? Is it expected, required, demanded? And, if so, by whom?

If you say it’s normal to paint your apartment walls white, maybe what you really mean is that it’s typical, and common. If you say it’s normal to wear shoes indoors, maybe you mean that your family finds it acceptable. Maybe it’s normal to show up to your office on time every morning, but I’m willing to bet they also require you to be at the office on time every morning.

So ‘normal’ can mean so many things. But it also has a less precise meaning, and that one is moralising. It says that whatever is measured by normal isn’t about precision of statistics, indoors habits, or workplace dynamics: what is normal is acceptable. That makes certain things unacceptable only for the reason of statistics, or other people’s habits. It becomes a word of subjective judgement. If something is labelled ‘not normal’, we tend to understand that as a moral judgement. If we can so easily understand that ‘abnormal’ is bad, that makes ‘normal’ exceptionally loaded in a moral sense. If we can see that the opposite of ‘normal’ is rarely meant to be positive, that proves something about the judgement inherent to the word. I don’t think we need that sort of ideological stowaway if all we want to say is: this is common, this is required, this is what we’re used to in my house.

Also, as a word so subjective and so judgemental, it’s a trap for creative people. Because it is so loaded with subjectivity, that itself makes it difficult to rely on – what some people find totally normal, like wearing shoes inside their homes, some people, like myself, find unacceptable. It’s too ambiguous to throw around.

A designer can’t rely on normal. The problem is that every norm ends up creating and harbouring a set of assumptions. If you’re designing a fighter jet seat, you can’t average out all the body measurements of a thousand persons, you can’t simplify them into one defined standard of height, weight, arm length and who knows what else – because there is no ‘normal’ body if we can’t be moralistic or subjective about it – and nobody has an average body. What fonts look authoritative? What colour is the appropriate colour of a wedding dress? Whatever people call normal is often cultural, a product of habit, or even a result of other people’s mandate. Creativity has a near impossible job to do when it comes to the idea of ‘normal’. Your client might as well say ‘make it like my dreams’ or ‘make it more designy’.

Is ‘normal’ entirely useless? Should we never say it? No. I think it has value, but we need to be more aware of how subjective and personal it can be. If my doctor asks me how I feel, ‘normal’ just means we don’t have much to talk about that day. But the key is that you should assume that your normal may be different from everyone else’s. So, you can just be normal. But I won’t tell you what that is supposed to be. Normal is up to you alone. For everything else, we can be more precise.

Robin Mientjes, 2023