Published onMedium.com, May 2019
1. We live in an artificial reality
In the contemporary world, we have the perception that images and artifacts exist just like an autonomous, natural reality, making us blind to the process which generates them.
We are so used to living in a man-made world that we recognize it as already given, as we should wisely consider something like the Pluvial Forest.
Artifacts became invisible to us in terms of their intimate, historical, manufacturing, and emotional reasons.
Understanding the work of a designer means, as a first step, putting yourself in a critical point of view with the reality that we usually see as natural.
We should not get the principles which generate that reality as a ready-made fact, but as a step in the continuous, unstoppable human process of transformation of physical and emotional realities.
A curious, automatically recalled bug often happens in that perceptive routine system, when we bump into an object or a space that we are not used to seeing. In front of the first appearance of something unfamiliar but clearly (well) manufactured, we use to say: “it is a design object! ” recognizing it the status of a product of human wit, a status that we are far from recognizing the bench in the park where we use to sit every morning.
Well, actually that bench should deserve the same deal in conceptual terms, as the fresher “Spun Magis” chair, but this does not happen exclusively for cultural reasons and perceptive habits.
Overcoming this perception while being aware of the cultural reasons and the meanings of the contemporary reality is one of the base habits for good design practice.
2. A lot of design fields but few differences
The design disciplines don’t have precise borders.
It seems correct to say that a common design discipline exists as a precise entity that has declined in several aspects of the artifacts’ production.
Visual Design (including the relatively recent branch of Interface) creates visual artifacts, while Industrial Design operates with objects for serial production. The exhibition creates artifacts for communication of products and contents, while Interior Design operates with a series of objects and technologies studied for the liveability of artificial spaces, paradoxically in perfect harmony with a landscape design that works with natural elements.
I suggest imagining the relation among the different design fields, like the architecture expressed by different types of buildings.
We are clearly talking about architecture as a discipline, whether we are talking about a private house or an air terminal.
The common aspect here is the activity of making a project in order to create new realities which satisfy certain aims, considering each product’s features, needs and possibilities.
3. The Project is the tool for creating transformations
We can quickly (and not exhaustively) define a project as the series of activities that create a process in response to solving a given problem. In this specific case, the problem concerns the creation of an artifact, already defined as any kind of man-made product.
To make a project means to make a process of sense, with the aim to give a consistent form to the possible solutions.
This means putting the thought into space, from the white canvas of a poster to the pixel grid of a mobile App or the lobby of a business center.
A project activity can be described as a dynamic pipeline, constantly adapting to the culture and sensitivity of the designer, the cultural and social context, the technical achievements, and the meanings that are given to the solution.
In the design studios, designers are not creating their projects by referring to Archer’s “Systematic method for the designers” and also enthusiasts of “design thinking” are always cutting out their personal special way to create design.
Making projects, like other human activities, is assumed to be a cultural fact and so a complex blending of outer conditions and personal interpretations, determining the need for flexible thinking and operative methods. This discretionary process is often confused with artistic (“romantic”) self-expressive operations, while the idea itself of a project establishes one of the main differences between traditional arts and design activities. Despite the borders, in this specific case, are blurred and these are still a matter of heated debate, we can assume at least one breaking point :
A painting is, in itself, its project and its realization: the two stages happen at the same time, it is a sort of impromptu transformation. Otherwise, the design is provided in two stages, well distinguished in time and in their problematics. The project and the realization are made in different moments, and often the realization comes just considerably later than the project.
4. A principle above all
“Design has nothing to do with beauty: it deals with existence. Maybe existence itself can be imagined like an aesthetic event”
Ettore Sottsass