Design. Designer. Designed.
It's an interesting concept, and one that seems to have accumulated all kinds of baggage along the way. The label 'designer' is used as an adjective to imbue everyday objects with some kind of glamour. What is a designer fridge, a designer bag or a designer corkscrew? The use of the word clearly comes from the fashion industry, but as everything made is designed (not always well), it makes little sense to apply the word as a description.
And who is a designer? Someone who designs things, obviously, but don't we all design things? As soon as we choose to combine two objects, whether it is an arrangement of furniture or an extra topping on a pizza, aren't we designing something?
This is a Wikipedia definition of Design: (noun) a specification of an object, manifested by an agent intended to accomplish goals in a particular environment using a set of primitive components, satisfying a set of requirements, subject to constraints.
In other words, someone puts something/s somewhere for a reason.
The reason I am waffling like this is to introduce the following film about a really stimulating three day course that I participated in a couple of weeks ago. The course was run by the RSA in partnership with the Back Up Trust, and the film probably explains better than I could:
It's an interesting concept, and one that seems to have accumulated all kinds of baggage along the way. The label 'designer' is used as an adjective to imbue everyday objects with some kind of glamour. What is a designer fridge, a designer bag or a designer corkscrew? The use of the word clearly comes from the fashion industry, but as everything made is designed (not always well), it makes little sense to apply the word as a description.
And who is a designer? Someone who designs things, obviously, but don't we all design things? As soon as we choose to combine two objects, whether it is an arrangement of furniture or an extra topping on a pizza, aren't we designing something?
This is a Wikipedia definition of Design: (noun) a specification of an object, manifested by an agent intended to accomplish goals in a particular environment using a set of primitive components, satisfying a set of requirements, subject to constraints.
In other words, someone puts something/s somewhere for a reason.
The reason I am waffling like this is to introduce the following film about a really stimulating three day course that I participated in a couple of weeks ago. The course was run by the RSA in partnership with the Back Up Trust, and the film probably explains better than I could:
Leave a comment