What is design? (1/6)
Who's to say?
In 1971, Victor Papanek said that design is the conscious and intuitive effort to impose meaningful order—that design is the primary underlying matrix of life.
More recently, design scholar Susan Yelavich has said that design has never been a discrete practice—that it's part of a continuum—while industrial designer Tucker Viemeister has said that design is the intention between form and function. Design research avant-gardist Dominique Sciamma has said that a human project culture, open to all disciplines and their bearers, working together to create the conditions for successful life experiences for everyone, today and tomorrow, is the real definition of design.
According to the International Council of Design, design is a discipline of study and practice focused on the interaction between a person and the man-made environment—taking into account aesthetic, functional, contextual, cultural, and societal considerations. as a formalized discipline, design is a modern construct:
« The field of design is made up not only of practitioners but also educators, authors, journalists, critics, and researchers, yielding a rich theoretical canon… Today designers work on business strategy, they create virtual environments, they craft digital interfaces, they design service systems, and new branches of design are evolving continuously… Designers are trained to analyze problems holistically, searching to understand not only the immediate or obvious problem but the system that created it… Designers strive to ‘do more with less.’ They maximize economy (of materials, of investment, of energy, etc.) through creativity and ingenuity; this idea is central to design. »
—International Council of Design (2024)
To be continued…