Design

I have spent the greater part of my life as a designer (and so have you). However, though I make that statement with a degree of pride, I simultaneously do so with a degree of hesitancy, as I am certain that the greater portion of readers will not truly understand what I mean by it. This is no fault of theirs but the natural consequence of an almost society-wide confusion as to what ‘design’ actually is. And it is a confusion that I am sorry to say has been actively promoted for many decades and across many avenues of communication including, somewhat absurdly, design educators and the design media.

Now this is a dangerous topic for me to commence writing upon, as I know I am susceptible to falling foul of my passion and ending up writing a manifesto, when what I intend this post to be is simply another loosely themed selection of quotations and observations I have gathered together in my various notebooks over the years, as mentioned in an earlier entry. (Beauty, June 2021)

I don’t delude myself that anyone actually reads this blog but, wordy as I can sometimes be, I do want it to have some semblance of brevity and focus. Plus I think clarity is paramount so I’m simply going to try, as succinctly as possible, to first elucidate what I understand design to be. These are not exclusively my thoughts; a great many very good designers would, I think, agree. I shall therefore be borrowing some of their words in my explanation, as follows: (Please accept my apologies in advance for the predominantly and unneccesarily male-gendered language of some of the quotations.)

Design is NOT styling.

Victor Papanek, in his landmark publication Design for the Real World (1974), states:

‘Design is the conscious effort to impose meaningful order’ and ‘All men are designers … for design is basic to all human activity’ because ‘It is the prime function of the designer to solve problems.’

He then explains that for a design solution to be truly regarded as successful it needs to meet six functional requirements which he labels; Method, Use, Need, Telesis, Association and Aesthetics. I am not going to explain them all in detail here but that last one, aesthetics, is important to my current discussion. Of aesthetics he asks ‘Does it appeal to our senses of beauty and delight?’ and he ranks it equally with his other five functional requirements. To be clear, he considers beauty to be an integral function of good design, and I agree with him one hundred percent.

So what then is styling and how is it different?

Robert Pirsig, in his equally landmark work Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (also, appropriately, published in 1974) brutally but accurately describes style as:

‘Technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit.’

In other words, aesthetics are included as an equal functional requirement of good design, but a solution that is poorly resolved, perhaps difficult to understand or use, potentially prone to malfunction or breakage, and maybe environmentally hazardous to produce, could still find an eager buying public if it has been overlaid with a veneer of styling that conforms to a current ‘fashion’ or ‘trend’ created by marketers and promoted by multinational businesses as the ‘next big thing’.

Design is all about function; does it truly work, on every possible level? Styling is simply trying to sell something by making it conform to an evanescent desire; keeping up with the ‘new cool fad’ or the ‘latest craze’.

So, that’s my rant. I’m sorry it makes for such a very long introduction! Back now to my notebooks and some thoughts I have collected from numerous sources on the topic of design. What has any of this to do with the ostensible overarching intent of AEON: An Eternity Of Now? Simply that I believe truly good design can be an enabler. It can help us to create environments, processes, experiences, personal encounters and artefacts etc. that genuinely enhance our lives; that create opportunities for personal and communal betterment; that could potentially permit us to honestly consider ourselves worthy custodians of this beautiful blue planet we call home.

Contrary to my earlier notebook extracts, many of these are short and removed from their original context. Hopefully, perhaps with short explanatory notes where necessary, they will still stand as insightful observations or thoughts on the wonderful potentiality of good design in our lives. You may notice a couple of repetitions on the themes of experimentation and failure, questioning and responsibility, but I feel they add an important emphasis.

From Alain de Botton’s The Architecture of Happiness:

‘To design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know.’

‘What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.’

‘We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have replaced. We owe it to the worms and the trees that the buildings we cover them with will stand as promises of the highest and most intelligent kinds of happiness.’

From the Gaffa Galleries’ exhibition Chromology:

‘Our goal is to prompt a pause. To create a space for the observer to question what exactly it is that they value about an object or thing.’

‘For us, design is not about production lines, it’s about human beings enriching the lives of other human beings. It’s about the energy invested in the creation of a hand-made thing.’

‘When the work moves from our hands to yours, it becomes part of your story. One that you create.’

From David Harvey discussing Rebel Cities:

‘What kind of city we want to make cannot be separated from what kind of people we want to be.’

From Bertrand Russell’s In Praise of Idleness:

‘“Fruitful Monotony”, when apparent boredom transforms the seemingly idle brain into a powerful tool capable of generating bold new ideas.’

From Douglas Adams’ Mostly Harmless: (Explaining the technology of Unfiltered Perception.)

‘It wasn’t a complicated technological idea. It was just a question of leaving a bit out.’

Note: Sometimes, indeed often, design wisdom can come from unlikely places. This typically concise excerpt of Adams’ prose beautifully captures an oft overlooked or ignorantly ridiculed design maxim – less truly can be more.

From Sir Ken Robinson’s The Element:

‘What is true is that if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.’

‘Intelligence, applied to imagination, can lead to creativity.’

‘Creativity is the strongest example of the dynamic nature of intelligence, and it can call on all areas of our minds and being.’

From Shaun Usher’s Lists of Note:

Immaculate Heart College, Art Department Rules

Rule One ‘Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while.’

Rule Four ‘Consider everything an experiment.’

Rule Eight ‘Don’t try to create and analyse at the same time. They’re different processes.’

Lesley Loko quoted in Assemble Papers Issue #11:

‘In the act of design there is an implicit faith in the idea of something that isn’t yet here, something that’s about to come.’

Just a little more design wisdom from Victor Papanek:

‘Design must become an innovative, highly creative, cross-disciplinary tool responsive to the true needs of men.’

‘Design as a problem-solving activity can never, by definition, yield the one right answer: It will always produce an infinite number of answers, some “righter” and some “wronger.”’

‘The creative designer … must be given not only the chance to experiment, but also the chance to fail … Here, possibly, is the crux of the matter: To instil in the designer a willingness for experimentation, coupled with a sense of responsibility for his failures. Unfortunately, both a sense of responsibility and an atmosphere permissive to failure are rare indeed.’

‘Designers often attempt to go beyond the primary functional requirements of Method, Use, Need, Telesis, Association and Aesthetics; they strive for a more concise statement: Precision, simplicity. The particular satisfaction derived from the simplicity of a thing can be called elegance. When we speak of an ‘elegant’ solution, we refer to something consciously evolved by men which reduces the complex to the simple.’

And in closing, Peter Brook quoted in John Heilpern’s Conference of the Birds: (Discussing the creative process.)

‘The moment you arrive anywhere, you limit the distance you might have travelled.’

Travel well people. May your monotony be fruitful and your solutions elegant!