The difference between a U and an S

I’m sitting in Berlin in a great café with a bear on the logo, on my way to Paris, not ready at all for my talk tomorrow, but have been terribly impressed by what I saw at the Designmai event. More on that later I promise.

I was also part of a panel, invited by my friend Goerg Bertsch, and lead by Mel Byars about “what do people hate about the world of design” with fellow panelists Sophie Lovell, German editor of Wallpaper* and V. Ragunath, architect and photographer.

Strange to find myself surrounded by people from my former life in industrial design as we found ourselves talking about design, designer/client relationships, how can the internet help designers, and the lack of theory in design to make for good critiques (in a more evolved way than “i publish what i like”) but not at all about what we hated about design and what can be improved. Too bad, that conversation needs to happen and be seriously directed and orchestrated.

Strange also because i now find myself talking in between 2 roles, too advanced in my understanding of the web and it’s dynamics for most product designers, not enough for most geeks. At least I understand them both and in Paris tomorrow I’ll try to talk to the geeks about why they should be talking to industrial designers. Maybe one day i’ll be invited to talk to designers about why they should care about what the hackers do with their soldering irons in their kitchens.

By designswarm

Blogging since 2005.