Throughout the quarter, design has become transformed from a mere profession into something much more vast that encompasses many aspects of our lives. Design even surrounds us everywhere like the daily objects we use from computers to bush cutters. Design is everywhere and in everything from the designers that create to the consumers that utilize and provide feedback on the objects. Design is in the initial and re-development processes to the prototypes created to the re-working of designs and re-inventions. Design is not just an idea tested and developed, but also the result of that very idea.
After a semester of design I find myself without the ability to pinpoint and answer to the question “What is Design?” the only things that come to mind are the ideas above. Design is a noun and verb, or the process as well as the outcome. Likewise, it is both the people involved and ideas. To further complicate the vast span of design, each new generation looks at design in society differently than the next. The definition is as “elusive” and “lost in time” as Kostas Terzidas suggests, changing and altering in each new generation.
Twenty years ago designers were not even thinking about sustainability or the impact their design would have on the future. These designers were engulfed in the design standards of their times and what design was not what it would be or should be. Design today is more focused on the ideas surrounding sustainability and conservation. Designers have developed a code of ethics to consider how their designs would impact the future and generations to come. This emphasis on creating design that could stand the test of time and better the society of the future is just in its infancy, but highly important to current designers.
Nathan Shedroff suggests the conversion of design with other outlets, business and sustainability, in order to fully achieve good design. Likewise, the designers of the film “Objectified” insist that good design is achieved through the functionality of form and the breakdown of the useless parts. Throughout the quarter, I have developed a greater understanding of how vast and changing design is within each generation of designers, but I have moved further from the ability to define design. This is by no means a bad thing as I am just embarking on my design career and just like the ever-changing world of design I to believe that as I designer I will change with the design world and so my ideas and definitions with take on new forms symbolic of the new ideas and content. I have decided to offer a working definition, if you will, a sort of Scott McCloud-ish definition.
What is design: Design is forever changing and everywhere in society; design is both a noun and a verb, a process and the outcome; design is never-ending and always just beginning; design is…(to be continued!!).
Ideas borrowed from lectures, class, film, and readings:
Kostas Terzidas: The Etymology of Design; Professor Housfield: Class lecture notes and slides; Nathan Shedroff: Lecture on "Design is the Problem”; Gary Hustwit: Film Objectified; Scott McCloud: Readings from Understanding Comics
Image borrowed from:
http://stashpocket.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/nanyangtechunisingapore.jpg
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