What is Design? This is the first question that can be asked of a design student. Some would say, it gives me pleasure, the beauty that she feels. Others chime in, the sensory input that brings a spectrum of colors to her existence is how design spoke to her. Yes, but that is an outcome of design, good or bad, what is design, really?
Design,
is the product of human imagination, animals and plants can’t see and imagine,
human ingenuity in art is to identify what ails our civilization. Design
writing helps understand the logic prescient in that modelling of facts that
were, yet unknown to us in the output. Design writing can sound frivolous to
the mainstream. Why go into nuance of something that was, use it and do your
thing. Each pin or cell phone holds a design, therefore generation of
imagination. More complexity brings more mysteries. The fact itself is the
problem, often. An engineer can fix nuts and bolts, a politician will fund the
industry, and the designer will build the world they will work in. Identifying
beauty in the quotidian things, exemplify and go ahead to define it in a
legible manner is design writing.
Also,
that design writing doesn’t exist in silos, it must cover the history of the
art and vision for the future. Something, that could only sound more obvious,
can remarkably unearth disparate facts about a brave new world that achieved
something unimaginable. Truth can be stranger than fiction, each product we see
holds a story, each story a process,
each process a civilizational mindsets, multitudes at the same time.
Design
can also be the output along with the business of the utilitarian at times. While
for others, it is a competitive edge in their course of creating history.
Design writing, encapsulates all that phenomena into its collective to enhance
our vision with tangible narratives. When the human steps out of himself, he
becomes what he might be. To solve problems, was the goal, but to create a
solution, is the meaning for a designer. I believe, it is enough for the soul
to know an addition has been made, imperfect it may seem tomorrow, because that
is the promise of evolution. There shall be seasons to come to declare with
finality. Design writing must know what to pick and what to loose on the way to
suit the human need. Even writing has its aesthetic appeal and that which makes
sense in the present generation will be called beauty.
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