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Video Series (Part 1): What is Design?

September 16th, 2009 in Web Design Worldview

by: Matthew Griffin

In this first part of the Mirificam Press Video Series the question of the definition of design is explored. Four definitions from famous modern designers are considered along with a short discussion of the divorce of function from form.

Mirificam Press Video Series (part 1): What is Design? from Matthew Griffin on Vimeo.

Introduction

Hello, welcome to the Mirificam Press Video Series. My name is Matthew Griffin. I'm a designer and the Author of Mirificam Press where I write about design technique and worldview.

I'm excited about the topics we're going to be discussing in this series. There are a lot of questions in design that just aren't being answered satisfactorily in the design community right now. And they're questions that every designer should consider and wrestle with at one point or another. They're the questions of the nature and purpose of design. That's really why I started writing Mirificam Press and why I decided to do this series. There's a void in our vocation right now when it comes to the deeper questions. The questions that really shape who we are and how we see ourselves fitting into the world as designers.

Some of these question you may have considered nominally in the past, some you may have never considered at all. And even if you've taken the time to search out resources as I did at one point, you've no doubt discovered that whatever answers are out there are coming from pragmatic or postmodernist camps of thought. Nothing serious is being written from a Christian worldview. And that's a sobering indictment against Christian designers as well as a grave injustice to the design community as a whole. And I think as we take this systematic journey beginning at the heart of design, You'll see why.

So we'll start in this session with the with the most obvious and central question of design. What is Design?

I. What is Design

    A. The struggle to define design

        1. We call ourselves designer. It's important to be able to define what it is we do

We call ourselves designers so it's nothing less that imperative that we are able to define just what it is we do. Now, obviously, the label design extends into multiple applications and disciplines so I'm going to start by showing some objects that may or may not qualify as design. Think about whether or not you'd consider each of these to be an example of design.

a website (I-A-1_001), a building (I-A-1_002), a painting (I-A-1_003), a freshly clipped bush (I-A-1_004), modern abstract art (I-A-1_005), logo (I-A-1_006), a fractal (I-A-1_007), a bird's nest (I-A-1_008), a fork (I-A-1_009), poster (I-A-1_010), sculpture Fountain of Neptune at the Piazza Navona in Rome (I-A-1_011)

An exercise like this tends to muddy the waters a bit, especially for the modern mind. You would almost think that design is beyond our power to define. It seems so elusive. Every time we think we have it we're presented with something that just won't quite fit.

        2. Some definitions of design

So let's look at some popular definitions of design that have come from the design leaders of the recent past and see where we stand right now.

a. Bruce Archer, a famous 20th century designer and engineer defined design like this: “Design is that area of human experience, skill and knowledge which is concerned with man’s ability to mould his environment to suit his material and spiritual needs.” (I-A-2_a_001_bruce)

I actually like Archer's definition. It's very broad. But it allows some objects in that have traditionally been viewed as a separate category. (I-A-2_a_003_bruce) By adding the qualifier "and spiritual needs", (I-A-2_a_002_bruce) he allows creative products that serve no material function to enter the mix. So, for example our Pieter Brughel painting (I-A-2_a_002a_bruce) and our sculpture (I-A-2_a_002b_bruce) could be included in his definition. Also, by focusing the definition specifically on human experience and man's ability, he has excluded the bird's nest since, obviously, the bird is not a human. But is design a specifically human activity, and it so why? The fractal is iffy. I went ahead and removed it. (I-A-2_a_004_bruce) And just one definition into it, we're already scratching our heads a little bit. It's not as easy to define design as we think, when we actually start trying to work our definitions into the real world.

b. The Bauhaus Manifesto gives a more modernist definition of design, leaning heavily toward the view that design is a purely functional or practical activity. But around the middle of the manifesto it says this about the designer: (I-A-2_b_001) "In rare moments of inspiration, transcending his conscious will, the grace of heaven may cause his work to blossom into art."
The Bauhaus definition draws a harder line between the earthly and the transcendent. (I-A-2_b_002) Design is relegated to the area of material needs and functional application (I-A-2_b_003). But, in rare moments of heavenly inspiration, it's reported to erupt spontaneously into the realm of art unaided by the designer's own will. I was actually pretty shocked when I read that line the first time. It's just tucked in there right in the middle of sea of modernism. It's almost like they were anticipating a postmodernist objection. So the Bauhaus throws a kind of gnostic mysticism into the definition. But for all practical purposes, their definition would embrace the more classic design objects (the building, the logo, the fork, the poster) while rejecting the paintings and possibly the sculpture. But there's still that caveat of the spontaneous transcendence that could allow this definition to encompass just about anything. So it's hard to say whether the more stringent illustration fits, or one that's wide open. (I-A-2_b_002)

c. Norman Potter in his book "What is a Designer" explains design this way: (I-A-2_c_001) (I-A-2_c_002) "Obviously, the more aesthetic and sensory latitude available within a particular range of design opportunities, the closer they resemble those offered by the practice of 'fine-art'." In other words, the fewer constraints placed on a project, the closer the project is to fine art. Then he goes on: "The less latitude, the closer design becomes to the sciences, and to the fields in which the scope of aesthetic 'choice' is truly marginal." So again, the more constraints on a project, the closer the project is to the sciences.

Potter's definition is intriguing and a little more outside the typical boundaries. At first glance he seems to see design as a category encompassing arts and sciences. (I-A-2_c_003) Design being characterized by tighter constraints such as bridge building and arts being characterized by fewer constraints such as a painting. This would put design and fine-arts on the same continuum, which, as you'll see later is closer to a classic Christian understanding of design. But this isn't really what he's saying. If you read on to the second chapter entitled "Is a designer an artist?" you'll quickly see what I mean. There he makes it clear that the designer is the solver of real material problems while the artist is primarily the interpreter of meaning and the conveyer of self-expression. You'll see that theme pop up again later in our discussion about postmodernism and design. (I-A-2_c_004) So this definition really puts Potter closer to the Bauhaus definition, only without the added concept of spontaneous transcendence.

d. There's another a definition I've always like but I'm not sure of its source so you'll have to excuse the lack of reference here. It goes something like this: (I-A-2_d_001) "Design is any object or system which displays the irregular patterns indicative of intelligence."
I always thought this was a smart way to define design. It avoids the trap of the function and form debate and just focuses on the perceivable attributes of a designed thing. (I-A-2_d_002) The other definitions seem to be wrapped up in the purpose of design rather than design itself. But maybe there's a reason for that. Would this definition, for example, allow our modern art piece to be lumped in with the rest of design? (I-A-2_d_003). We know by context that this piece was produced by a human being (presumably intelligent). But it doesn't contain the irregular patterns indicative of intelligence. It's essentially random and chaotic which is exactly what its creator intended. (I-A-2_d_003) So in analyzing this definition, we begin to get a hint that there may be something deeper, more complex to design than what we're allowing for in the modern world.

        3. The confusion

Okay, that's four example definitions we've looked at and every one of them proposes a model that disagrees (at least partially) with the other three on what should and shouldn't be called design. Some, like the Bauhaus definition, we can't really nail down because of special vaguely defined exceptions written into the definition. We haven't even gotten to the tangential stuff yet. We're talking here about the foundational subject in the design vocations. The question of what we're doing. This doesn't bode well for the rest of this series. How can we talk about the purpose of design, or the ethics of design if we can't even define it?

    B. The modern antithesis

        1. A common thread in the definitions

In all these attempts to define design there's a common struggle, sometimes implied, and sometimes directly addressed: it's the struggle between design and art. It's trying to find where design ends and art begins. And this struggle is the central reason for the perplexity in the modern mind in this search for a definition of design. In modern western culture in general there is an assumed antithetical relationship between art and design or art and science. Francis Schaeffer referred to the two parts of this broken view as the (I-B-1_001_house) upper story and the lower story. Art is in the upper story (I-B-1_002_house) with faith, soul, spirit, and form. While design is in the lower story (I-B-1_003_house) with body, reason, mind, rationale, and function.

        2. Seeing the dichotomy

Since the upper story and lower story are antithetical, they can never touch. (I-B-2_001_house) The philosophical house is broken, and that's what makes objects like this (I-B-2_002_fork) completely baffling to the definitions of design we've discussed. What is it, art or design? We've struggled so hard to separate art from design and here they coexist with no apologies. The function of the fork and knife is undeniable but its form contains elements that serve no other purpose than beauty. So the two supposed antithetical concepts of function and form are residing together. You can separate them theoretically, but in reality they aren't separated. Or how about this (I-B-2_003_me). Here is a soul and body, mind and spirit, faith and reason all together, inseparable. But the modern mind usually sees him like this (I-B-2_004_divided). There are two different types of people, the upper story people (the painters, poets, decorators) and the lower story people (the engineers and mathematicians, the designers). Well, that creates a very obvious practical problem for us because if we're honest we all have a little bit of both. And that's what most of these definitions are trying to account for. This problem is not lost on them.

 

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