Are there limits to design and logo development?
"What does this have to do with design?" The statement came from an industry colleague who shook his head and sighed in despair. He had just been exposed to a lecture that was closer to the social sciences than design as such. We attended a design conference where exactly this deviation from the norm was met with clear frustration. He had come there to hear about logo development, typography and things like that, but was also forced with knowledge of something completely different. This can certainly create annoyance, but also awaken curious reflection. Because what does everything outside design really have to do with design?
The answer is quite a lot. And it is noticeable how design concepts are used in the language. You easily design a design for a design product without the grammar tripping over the language. That is, design can well be a verb, noun, and adjective. When we think about everything around us that is designed, we also get a sense of how extensive this subject area is. Yes, just think of the book you are reading, the clothes you are wearing, your tablet, the chair you are sitting on or the house you live in. We even try to capture nature in a form called landscape design. Everything has a form - a design - because someone has thought and planned it that way.
But, design is also a contradictory concept. As a verb, it acts seriously and usefully to the benefit of the consumer. As an adjective, it is reduced to self-love and vanity.
When a product becomes a designer product, the vital part is no longer sincerity, but style and aesthetics. The difference between a bottle opener from Alessi and a Norwegian traditional beer jug lies in the fact that the latter is clear in its function, the other not. Another important difference is, of course, the price tag. It is the same thing in graphic design when symbols lack the necessary substance and communicate nothing about what they represent. It was probably for such reasons that the German industrial designer Dieter Rams formulated the statement that good design is as little design as possible — implying that the design must never overshadow the function and the utility value.
A designer has, in other words, a complex role to play. Shape, colour and aesthetics are necessary elements in their toolbox. To have an overview of a world ocean of typographic styles, as well as knowing how all these should be used. Having good strategic insight is necessary, and being able to act confidently and pedagogically explanatory in a boardroom filled with professions other than your own. The designer must also be technically competent, yes, preferably a virtuoso on the Mac. But, despite all this expertise, it is not enough. Something else is also required.
For example, an intuitive ability to understand the needs and challenges of others. Our industry colleague was, therefore, wrong. It's not necessarily everything you know about design that makes a designer great, but the insight and interest in everything else. The most interesting thing about the design subject is that it is always about something else, such as art, politics, society, business or whatever it may be. Nothing human should therefore be foreign to the designer. The more you are interested in, the better designer you will be.
Everything is not design, but design is about everything.
