Design Reflections
“Design”. What do we think of when we hear this word? Some people may think about something expensive, others will say that it is something out of the ordinary, a unique product, a fashionable accessory, useful stuff, and so on. And which of these opinions are accurate? At least something is true: None of them are wrong. When we design, what we do is produce, improve, and intentionally we plan to create things in order to change in a good way people’s daily lifestyle.
Something that really caught my attention when studying Industrial Design is the fact that there’s design everyday, all the time, because almost every thing we use comes as a result from a design process. And this process never ceases, because there are always new ways of design, like “stage design”, or even “cake design”; it is absolutely amazing the way that we don’t stop pursuing new ways and improving those that we already know.
This “process”, the design process that we always discuss about and refer in a conversation is not an easy task though. It takes hours, days and nights of exhausting drawing, re-drawing, modeling, control, trial and error, and decision.
As artists and designers, besides making a nice product, we will also make it useful. We are not only spending entire days working on something, because we also need to be part of the environment we are designing for. Then, our work is not limited to a workshop but the entire world, observing all the time trying to catch new problems that need to be solved, trying to realize how inefficient a simple product may be, but because we are used to it we never really thought about reinventing. Suddenly, we see ourselves analyzing the whole society, understanding individual’s needs and specific problems.
There is a huge number of people that don’t really imagine all the elements and processes an insignificant chair had to go through so that it could now be in front of a desk, and another in the dining room, and the classroom, and inside of a train. Everything has to do with design.
When we think about developing something new, something unique, we tend to believe that everything we need has already been done. In this case, it’s good to keep in mind what Thomas Edison once said: Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration. “Limit” is a wall we create ourselves, and only we are capable enough to overcome it.
