{"id":732,"date":"2007-12-10T15:07:25","date_gmt":"2007-12-10T22:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/10\/design-whassat\/"},"modified":"2007-12-10T15:07:25","modified_gmt":"2007-12-10T22:07:25","slug":"design-whassat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/design-whassat\/","title":{"rendered":"Design whassat?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m slightly baffled at what&#8217;s going on in design at the moment. Never more has the term &#8220;designer&#8221; meant something completely superficial, not so useful, egocentric and unsustainable. And at the same time, in business circles, the term &#8220;design&#8221; is being hailed as the great solution to a changing economy and market. Has the concept of design diluted itself so much we can&#8217;t tell one from the other?<\/p>\n<p>When I was taught industrial design , it was always about problem solving. If the problem wasn&#8217;t valid, didn&#8217;t affect enough people or the research was poorly done, then the professors would shoot you down. I still feel that&#8217;s a great academic approach.<\/p>\n<p>When did design start being about &#8220;making a statement&#8221;? Is it because it&#8217;s easier to think of a general public of &#8220;all&#8221; as opposed to a public of &#8220;some&#8221;. Is it because it&#8217;s easier to produce just the one piece than to care about bigger production and it&#8217;s impact. Is it because designers envy the glamour of art? Is &#8220;designer&#8221; a new way to say &#8220;applied artist&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t have an answer to these yet&#8230; but we should collectively come up with some and quickly if we want to still know what design is supposed to stand for.<\/p>\n<p>A few links that brought this up:<br \/>\n+ <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nathan.com\/thoughts\/index.html#presentations\">Design is the problem<\/a> by Nathan Shedroff.<br \/>\n++ <a href=\"http:\/\/www.designcouncil.org.uk\/en\/Design-Council\/Files\/Podcast-Transcripts\/Allan-Chochinov-and-friends-Where-does-design-end-and-art-begin\/\">But is it art?<\/a> at Intersections07<br \/>\n+++<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/view\/id\/197\">Philippe Starck @ TED<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m slightly baffled at what&#8217;s going on in design at the moment. Never more has the term &#8220;designer&#8221; meant something completely superficial, not so useful, egocentric and unsustainable. And at the same time, in business circles, the term &#8220;design&#8221; is being hailed as the great solution to a changing economy and market. Has the concept&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/design-whassat\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Design whassat?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[48,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-product-design","category-rants","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p41XhY-bO","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}