Questions/Promtps

  • According to this author, what role should design play in society?
  • What distinguishes the field, or fields, of design from other creative occupations?
  • Why should designers concern themselves with unsolvable theoretical questions?
  • What role does technology play in shaping design?
  • What are the most urgent problems facing designers today?
  • How, and why, is a designer responsible for solving these problems?

Response

Based on the reading my understanding is that designers should be aware of the social climate around them; how they influence it through their designs and how they are influenced by it. For example – technology has allowed for artists to be more self-published – “digital technology put creation, production, and distribution into the hands of the designers” – as well as allow for faster production and for it to reach more people.

What you put out as an artist has an effect on society (like how movies impact society to do some self-reflection or raise concerns for certain issues) design may have a similar effect. Design also influences those that come into contact with it – as nothing is ever truly/fully original anymore, as we take ideas from various sources of media that we’ve come across, designs that we see in day to day life can influence some of the ideas we come up with. Therefore designers should be aware of the content they’re putting out, and since technology has made this easier (as mentioned earlier), more responsibility is on the designers now, especially considering how technology has allowed for content to reach more people and have a bigger impact due to easy it is to share things either by mass printing or (recently more common) through different online platforms such as blogs (like this one) and social media spaces like Instagram.

Design has made itself different from other creative fields in that communication is more of the focus – being able to communicate an idea or message effectively and clearly with little subjectivity. Other creative fields also put more emphasis on what the artists want’s to convey whilst design is more focused on the client/viewer.