I had started a series on Facebook last year called “Heroes, Villains, & Alter-Ecos” that was inspired by a clever blog called The Superest. The basic premise here is to illustrate a superhero or villain that represents a particular sustainability issue, with each subsequent character in the series having powers that negate or defeat the [...]

Merry Christmas! The holidays never seem complete without a decorated, brightly lit Christmas tree. However, is this evergreen symbol of the holidays truly green? And of the plastic and natural variety, which is the more responsible choice?
 
The arguments for and against both options seem like they could go either way. Plastic trees, while reusable, are [...]

We are facing many critical issues at present from financial instability, to climate change, to resource issues. Is it the end of the world as we know it? Well, that doesn’t need to be a scary or bad thing. The world needs change and designers must be ready to help define the future.

This is my first blog in over two years. Since this is intended to be a design-centric site, I figure a good way to start off is to address what I think design is and why it is important.

When I was first in the Industrial Design program at Illinois, we were asked to define “design.” I don’t quite remember the definition I had at the time, but my teacher told us something along the lines that it was the aesthetic and functional considering and forming of mass-produced objects. That would be an object-centric outcome of design. There are others who say design is a process, typically including phases like identification of the problem, research, ideation, and refinement. But those don’t fully address the definition of design, the meaning of design. I think to discover what design is requires knowing why design is.


Why design? I will defer to Victor Papanek, a designer, author, and educator whom I greatly respect. To him, design is “a conscious and intuitive effort to impose meaningful order” (Design for the Real World). To me, this is profoundly true and hits the heart of design; we are all seeking order and trying to make sense of this world, which includes the people and things in this world.