Design: The Meanings Of This Word
Is there any other word that has come to mean so much and so little?
For speakers of a language as rich in synonyms and idiom as English, I find it remarkable the extent to which we are discussing the definition of this single word.
A difficult enough word for its broad range of original meanings, the poor thing has become so overburdened, not least in our use of it as a noun, as to begin blurring into meaninglessness.
The words “I am a designer” basically translate to “I plan the creation of things”. When did we lose the end of that sentence? Say instead, “I am a planner” or “I am a creator” and the left-hanging listener will ask, “…of what?”. Of airplanes or fashion or toilets or architectural interiors?
“I am a designer” is now often synonymous with “I am creative” or “…a creative”, another verb we’ve turned into a noun in an equivalent usage by publishing, marketing, and other business folks. This new terminology makes me wish fervently for a renaissance of elementary classification.
Even more confusing is the mixing of the meaning of great design on one side with art or aesthetic beauty and on the other with streamlined and exceptional performance.
In terms of cultural history, design as we recently perceived it, was the errant and undisciplined child of art and architecture. Once regarded as primarily in the frivolous province of feminine creatures, and strictly confined to the lesser realms of fashion, craft and industry, it perversely found its path to freedom via the development of modern art and architecture through the 20th century.
In terms of science and technology, economic growth has fueled increased use of the design label in everything from mechanics to application of theories.
Architecture, like science, remains firmly tied to an essential underpinning of academic knowledge, whereas art and design have successfully flown that coop, losing many strict definitions along the way, belonging with equal pride to the conventionally erudite and the autodidactic.
Those who pay the dues of acquiring academic knowledge delineate strictly between technical knowledge and raw talent. Their natural elitism is often couched in arrogance and intolerant of invention, yet remains based on sound values. Imo, the politically correct trends toward unconditional tolerance in modern academia might be better replaced with the equivalent of ‘tough love’.
We are constantly developing new design disciplines. The craftsmen who made traditional furniture and silver for our ancestors’ traditional homes up to the 19th century, gradually ceded their position to architectural and arts and crafts movements and industrial design. The force of this shift produced stunning decorative art and artifacts at its height, but more recently the applied scope of mass production, among other things, has returned much of the meaning and value of craft to individual hands.
In the 70s/80s, I developed a personal expectation that the technological revolution would propel a new creative pendulum, unleash a new creative force, in much the same way as the industrial revolution did. My basic expectation has not faltered, but I’m finding the effort of adapting our creative terminology to the new creations of virtual reality extremely difficult.
Do we need more words?
New words?
What means of identifying and communicating concepts do we have that exceed the power of language?
How many classifications and sub classifications of designer could we delineate in just the new category of technology represented by computers?
