what? design?

30/01/2020

What is design? This is the topic that was covered in Week 1's class. It was interesting to ask something that theoretically would be deemed an easy question by designers themselves. It was clear that the class was about our personal philosophies and our identities.

To people outside our mad world design is about change, beauty and improvement. To make a machine better maybe? But this isn’t “true design”. To create incredible swooping curves or strong lines that provide a contrast to a mundane world? Maybe. To me design is about understanding the world around us and interacting with it for an ever changing and improving world. It’s a science really. It’s like technology. Always either improving or changing depending on your point of view of course. To quote a slightly less informed self, design itself can “save lives, change lives and of course improve lives”.

Our design philosophy was an interesting section to the lecture being made to challenge our own thoughts and to describe ourselves and our best attributes. I found it interesting that in writing 10 words that define myself I opted for my traits and skills outside of design. Maybe in a room full of designers being “creative” doesn’t suffice. It was also at this point that I realised where my skills excelled and lacked. It was here that I realised my love for model making, woodwork in particular and also my love for theory and new information. For improvement I found my weakness lay mainly with putting 3D into 2D or my lack of effort on its behalf. The speaker truly made me see what I had to offer but more importantly what I had yet to master.

Identification as a designer demonstrates who we are as humans and what our work represents. Are we flamboyant and ever changing like artists or serious problem solvers biding by the rules like engineers? This question sparked a very interesting conversation/debate within our group. We were told pick a side. Art or Engineering? Choosing art for me was both the correct and incorrect option. It is a mix; like everything. A compound of information to describe a single thing. So why pick art? For me art has an unlikeness to engineering in the sense of its subjectivity. I find design to be fluid, mouldable as a concept. It changes with trends and changes with different opinions. Engineering doesn’t follow opinions, either it works or it doesn’t. We as product design students learn about drawing skills, modelling techniques and fluidity of the mind. Engineers learn about the application of mathematics and the laws of the universe to real life situations. The debate itself was brilliant in highlighting the class’s direction of thought. I found it brilliant to watch people argue their ideas while realistically there was never going to be a winner. The conclusion to this debate was that a mix of the two equalled design. Design isn’t an art or an engineering, it’s a collection of the two.