Literature Source: Design and its Discourse

A record of some literature sources that I gathered to support my critical discourse essay and the synthesis of what is relevant to my case.

MARGOLIN, VICTOR. Design Discourse. UNIV. OF CHICAGO PR, 1989.

Design is all around us. It infuses every object in the material world and gives form to immaterial processes such as factory production and services. Richard Buchanan considers design to be an architectonic art that can unify other, more narrowly conceived arts and crafts: “Design is what all forms of production for use have in common. It provides the intelligence, the thought or idea. Of course, one of the meanings of the term design is a thought or plan that organizes all levels of production, whether in graphic design, engineering and industrial design, architecture, or the largest integrated system found in urban planning.”

Herbert Simon, a leading figure in the fields of computer science, organizational development, and artificial intelligence, in a lecture in 1968 offered a definition of design that has since been widely quoted:

“Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a new sales plan for a company. Design, so construed, is the core of all professional training. It is the principal mark that distinguishes the professions from the sciences.

Maurizio Vitta, speaks of a culture of design that includes not only the production of useful objects (and here we should add processes, services, and techniques as well), but also their distribution and consumption. The culture of design embraces the totality of disciplines, phenomena, knowledge, analytical instruments, and philosophies that the design of useful objects must take into account, inasmuch as those objects are produced, distributed, and used in the context of economic and social models that are ever more complicated and elusive. The concept of a culture of design, which informs much design thinking in Italy where Vitta lives, reinforces the point that design is an activity that is defined to some degree by the social milieu in which it operates. Therefore we cannot conceive of any theory of design that is independent of a theory of society.

Also according to Maurizio Vitta, an important characteristic of postmodernism is the growing role of images in contemporary culture. Through the power of communications media, and particularly advertising, images become a persuasive means of motivating people to act.

Vitta calls attention in his essay to the problem which the symbolic identity of objects creates for designers. Design, he says, does not occur in a neutral field in which the designer’s contribution is universally recognized and accepted rather it is a contradictory intervention into a society that demands objects with use-value on the one hand but is preoccupied with converting them into ephemeral simulacra on the other: “But remaining within the usual scope of design, the designer’s centrality is confirmed because the consumption of the use-object requires that it be continually transformed while it remains faithful in substance to its original function; and the task of expressing the cultural, aesthetic, or semiological values that interact behind that transformation is the designer’s specific duty.”

And as the objects in our system is at the same time a sign of social identification, a communication instrument, a use-image, an oppressive simulacrum, a fetish, and a tool, design cannot help but be an instrument of social analysis, an area of intervention in everyday life, a language, a fashion, a theory of form, a show, a fetishism, a merchandise. Both its strength and its weakness lie in its being at the same time a crucial point in the social development of daily life and a marginal aspect of production, a source of culture, and a confirmation of the prevailing values.

Richard Buchanan essay “Declaration by Design: Rhetoric, Argument, and Demonstration in Design Practice.”

If one idea could be found central in design studies, it most likely would be communication. Directly or indirectly, this idea and its related themes have animated more discussion of design theory and practice than any other. He refers not only to graphic design, where communication is an obvious goal and where the concepts of classical rhetoric are now being applied with promising results, but also the larger field of design, which ranges from industrial and product design to architecture and urban planning and for which there is no unifying theory of rhetoric. Although not so obvious at first glance, the themes of communication and rhetoric in this larger field exert a strong influence on our understanding of all objects made for human use. The influence of a designer’s personal attitudes, values, or design philosophy, or the way the social world of design organization, management, and corporate policy shapes a design. In addition, when studies of the esthetics of design treat form not only as quality valuable in itself, but also as a means of pleasing, instructing, and passing information, or indeed, as a means of shaping the appearance of objects for whatever intended effect, these studies are rhetorical also because they treat design as a mediating agency of influence between designers and their intended audience.

Design is an art of thought directed to practical action through the persuasiveness of objects and therefore design involves the vivid expression of competing ideas about social life.

Elements of design argument. Most important is the idea of argument, which connects all of the elements of design and becomes an active engagement between designer and user or potential user. Designer, instead of simply making an object or thing, is actually creating a persuasive argument that comes to life whenever a user considers or uses a product as a means to some end. Three elements of design argument are applicable here, they involve interrelated qualities of technological reasoning, character, and emotion, all of which provide the substance and form of design communication. Designers draw on all three elements to some degree in every design argument, sometimes blending them with great subtlety in a product.

The first element, technological reasoning, is the logos of design. It provides the backbone of a design argument, much as chains of formal or informal reasoning provide the core of communication and persuasion in language. In essence, the problem of technological reasoning in design is the way the designer manipulates materials and processes to solve practical problems of human activity. Products are persuasive in this mode when in addressing real needs, they meet those needs in a reasonable, expedient way. Technological reasoning is based, in part, on an understanding of natural and scientific principles that serve as a premise for the construction of objects for use. It is also based on-premises drawn from human circumstances, that is, from the attitudes and values of potential users and the physical conditions of actual use.

The new area of product semantics is closely related to this aspect of persuasion in its attempt to engage the mind of the audience and make the workings of a product more readily accessible.


Dieter Rams. Omit the Unimportant

Every product serves a specific purpose. One of the most significant design principles is to omit the unimportant in order to emphasize the important. Good design means as little design as possible. Complicated, unnecessary forms are nothing more than designers’ escapades that function as self-expression instead of expressing the product’s functions. The reason is often that design is used to gain a superficial redundance.

Our culture is our home, especially the everyday culture depressed in items for whose forms I am responsible. It would be a great help if we could feel more at home in this everyday culture if alienation, confusion, and sensory overload would lessen. Designers are critics of civilization, technology, and society. Instead of trying to outdo our rivals, we designers should work together more seriously and thoughtfully.

Design is the effort to make products in such a way that they are useful to people. It is more rational than irrational, optimistic, and projected toward the future rather than designed, cynical, and indifferent. The work of designers can contribute more concretely and effectively toward a more humane existence in the future.

Knott, Stephen. Amateur Craft: History and Theory. Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.

Many would consider practices like this amateur’s mechanic’s work unimportant, not worthy of critical attention and certainly not significant enough to merit an entire book. I aim to contest this dismissive set of assumptions and demonstrate how amateur craft has made a vital and important contribution to the material culture of the modern world, and remains the freest, most autonomous form of making, within structures of Western capitalism at least. Amateur craft allows an individual to make something for the love of it alone, without the pressure of deadlines or the need to please a patron. Indeed, the space and time afforded by amateur craft is integral to the survival of a whole range of craft practices.

According to craft theorist, David Pye in “The Nature and Art of Workmanship” (1968), the very best quality production will depend on makers doing it for love and not for money. Those who are able to pour excessive resources of time and money into activities that are economically unviable in other everyday spaces of modern capitalism.

These unique conditions of amateur craft practice have thrust the phenomenon into. limelight in recent years. Amateurs are beset by limitations, whether to do with inadequate materials or tools, or a lacka space and time, and often rely on the fragments and scraps of modern culture - the commercially available tools, materials, external advice and readymades that have already passed through various networks of exchange. Attention to the history of amateur craft shows how it is linked to these structures of everyday life, and does not represent simple, individual opposition against 'the machine', as so often presumed.

Limitations to amateur craft practice demand our attention, as it is the constrained freedom of amateur craft that produces distinctive configurations of work. For example, creating a home workshop tailored to individual need is a model of hyper-efficiency, a system of management that would make any company boss envious, and concentration on processes of making rather than the final output leads to experiences of joy and play that are close to resembling the utopian dream of unalienated labour. So often overlooked, amateur craft is more complex, innovative, unexpected, roguish, humorous and elusive than its use as a cover-all term for inadequacy and shoddy work (amateurishness).

Vaughan, Laurene. Practice Based Design Research. Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.

Page 1-3. Design is forming and framing policy and social change agendas, while continuing to challenge and evolve traditional design practice fields. It might even be argued that the emergent design practice fields such as interaction design, service design, user experience design and design for social innovation are playing a pivotal role in this phenomenon. Equally, the increasing pervasiveness of digital technologies from ideation phases through to manufacture and distribution methods is creating new opportunities and paradigm shifts that design specific research approaches are contributing to. All these innovations in contexts, methods, and applications of design are calling for a new kind of designer, or at least an expanded capacity to undertake research with increasing sophistication.

What is the outcome from all this change? A profound transformation in how we understand, perform, critique, and position design, as individuals and as an interdisciplinary community of practice. The world has great and increasing expectations of design and its capacity to mould how we live, work, play, and survive into the future.

As those of us who come from design know, design can be a practice of problem solving, but, equally, one of problem making. Design can open our known parameters, expose the intricacies of relationships, ask questions, posit answers and then explode them open again. Design is political, even when it isn't engaged in formalized politics.

Page 31. Researching social problems

Designing differentiates itself from others of the creative industries by having a problem solving imperative. But the problems with which it engages have to do with social practices and so require comprehensive understanding of people as they go about their distinct everyday lives. In other words, practising design now demands comprehensive social research.

Although problem based, designing is nevertheless a creative act. The idea generating aspect of designing involves, it is claimed, non-rationalizable abductions or creative leaps (cross 2006) at best, these conjectures about promising solutions are based on a not-readily-explicable expertise that involves precedent-banks of similar cases and pattern recognition in relation to the outcomes of social research for design (Lawson 2012). What gives validity to these solution-oriented conjectures are according to Donald Schon’s influential work (1983, 1987), tight cycles of evaluative action-research with regard to each design move. This means that the practice of expert designing involves precisely the sorts of mega-cognitive, processual knowledge that characterize a discipline.

Because the problems with which designers engage concern everyday social practices, how should we live, how to enhance our quality of lice, design will not only involve understanding a problem through social research, then ideating responses through reflectively creative laps, but also always involve convincing others of those proposed responses given those framings of the problem. The practice of designing must therefore be legible to, if not directly involving, non-designers.

Chimero, Frank. The Shape of Design. Creative Commons Attribution, 2015.

Page 15
Design is imagining a future and working towards it with intelligence and cleverness. We use design to close the gap between the situation we have and the one we desire. Design is a practice built upon making things for other people. We are all on the road together. They form the foundation of the design practice, so our work should revolve around this truth.

Page 23
The relationship between form and purpose. How and why is symbiotic. But despite this link, why is usually neglected, because how is more easily framed. It is easier to recognixe failures of technique than those of strategy or purpose, it is simpler to ask how do i paint this tree rather than to answer why does this painting need a tree in it? The how question is about a task, while the why question regards the objective of the work. If a designer understands the objective, he can move in the right direction, even if there are missteps along the way. But if those objectives are left unaddressed, he may find himself chasing his own tail, even if the craft of the final work is extraordinary.

Page 32. Craft links us to a larger tradition of makers by folding the long line that connects us across the vast expanse of time.

Page 33. “Needs more love”. At the time, i took it to mean that i should improve my craft, but ive come to realize that he was speaking of something more fundamental and vital. My work was flat, because it was missing the spark that comes from creating something you believe in for someone you care about. This is the source of the highest craft, because an affection for the audience produces the care necessary to make the work well. This kind of affection has a way of making itself known by enabling those who come in contact with the work. The work has enough love when enthusiasm transfers from the maker to the audience and bonds them. Both are enthusiastic about the design.

Page 56
It begins with the proper mindset, established by asking why questions to define the true objectives of the work. The inquiry emphasizes the project’s true purpose and sheds any false presumptions about how to do the work or what it should be. It ensures the design’s relevancy by forcing one to ask about its consequence in the world. The designer can then make decisions that use the defined function as guidance. The fruits of this questioning define and emphasize the cornerstone of successful design: the work must first be useful before it can transcend utility into something visionary.

Similar questioning should also be directed towards the form of the work. An understanding of the three levers provides a structure to conceive of fresh configurations. Using the structure and affordances of content, tone, and format, one can riff on how the elements interplay and come to exceptional ends. Part of the exploration for novel design is using the materials at our disposal, especially those whose full potential have not been realized. We should look around us to see what available resources are not being fully used. For example the affordances of a screen in the promotional material for the concert. It is a simple thought, but one way to have a creative process come to different ends is by beginning with new materials. The true purpose of process is to create an accurate picture of the world. The misfit creative individual is stubbornly unwilling to abide by anyone else’s vision of the world without first testing those assumptions. There’s a desire for an honest assessment, because we can only create what we want by understanding what is achievable. We must know the adjacent possible before we can begin to imagine making the world better. Often what we perceive to be possible dims in comparison to what we can actually do. Our questioning, and the imagination it inspires, allows us to perform the most important magic: to make the world grow by revealing what was right before our eyes.

Page 71
We must respond and move, simply because the work moves and the space around design shifts as culture changes and the adjacent possible grows. Design is always in motion; we either sway with it or we get thrown off the line.

Page 75.
The success of one design, however, does not suggest that the others are less useful or not as good. Design can have diversity in its solution to problems without compromising the success of any of them. One approach does not negate the quality of another.

Culture also has an effect on the products of design. The relationship of design and culture presents another two-way bridge where influence goes both ways: culture creates design’s target by defining what is desirable. Simultaneously, the best design recalibrates what we think and how we feel about what surrounds us. The two shine on one another: culture changes what it expects from design after design changes culture, meaning that when our work hits the target, that target moves out from underneath it. The shifting bullseye suggests that we should reconsider our conception of design as a problem-solving endeavor. Hitting the bullseye is only ever a temporary state, and rather than seeing that as a problem, we should pull another arrow from our quiver and celebrate the moving target as the way we inch toward better circumstances. We should embrace the subjective nature of what we do and allow for the multiplicity of responses to thrive, because the mixed pool represents the diversity of human perspective. The diversity makes us strong. Most of all, we should build movement into our definition of the craft and its successful outcomes. The best design acts as a form of loosely composed, responsive movement, and seeks to have all adjacent elements sway together.

This is a generous definition, much greater than just problem solving, because the best design has to offer much more than making problems go away. Design can also build up good, desirable artifacts, experiences, and situations that are additive forces in this world. It helps us live well by producing and elevating new kinds of value, such as engagement, participation, and happiness. There are design’s true outcomes, because the practice, at its root, is simply people making useful things for other people. It’s life-enhancement, and we can make it for one another, so long as we act responsively and keep our momentum going forward.


Page 81-82
If we’re interested in having the work resonate and propagate, narrative becomes an essential component to design, because nothing moves as quickly and spreads so far as a good story.

Stories are a given, they penetrate all culture and interpretations of lids. Narrative is such a fundamental way of thinking that there are even theories that say that stories are how we construct reality for ourselves. We use them to describe who we are, what we believe, where we came from.
Narrative is a device we use to make sense of unfamiliar or unresolved things.
Storytelling is one of the most efficient communication method we’ve devised. Its effectiveness is why so much of the wisdom and insight about what it means to be human is wrapped up in fables and parables. Telling a story with design in a magazine or book for example is possible by using the passage of time as a reader goes down the page or moves from spread to spread. Slowly decreasing or increasing the line height of a block of text for instance tells a story by suggesting urgency or relaxation as the lines expand or contract. Similarly, magazine designers spend incredible amounts of time ordering and pacing their publications spread by spead, creating an experience for the reader as they flip through.

Page 86
And narrative is, of course, obvious in areas like film, music, and comics, because time is already in the material’s nature. There is an opportunity to tell a story whenever time can be assumed and pace can be controlled. In addition to converting information and entertaining, narrative is also a device that creates empathy, which allows us to better understand one another and ourselves. In 2008, Pixar released Wall.E, basically it’s a good example of how they convey narrative and emotions through a robot that supposedly have no feelings. Story has the ability to humanize things that weren’t thought to be alive before.

Page 91
There are two successful outcomes when a design focuses on its audience: resonance and engagement. Stories speak to the first and frameworks to the latter. Frameworks are the structures that allow for contributions to be made to the products of design, and increasingly, it has become the work of the designer to create these frameworks. One of the more central questions that design must now address is how one produces an enticing environment for conversation, community, and creativity. A framework is the bridge that connects the designer to the audience and goes both ways

Page 101
Design doesn’t need to be delightful for it to work, but that’s like saying food doesn’t need to be tasty to keep us alive. The pedigree of great design isn’t solely based on aesthetic or utility, but also the sensation it creates when it is seen or used. It’s the same for design, in that the source of a delightful experience comes from the design’s use.

There is a tendency to think that to delight someone with design is to make them happy. Indeed, the work may do that, but more appropriately, the objective is to produce a memorable experience because of its superior fit. The times that design delights us are memorable because we sense the empathy of the work’s creator. We feel understood, almost as if by using the work, we are stepping into a space designed precisely for us.

Page 102
Again, design gets wrapped up with how the work feels while being used. All design is experience design, whether it is visiting a website, reading a book, referencing a brochure, interacting with a brand, or interpreting a map. All of these interactions and objects of attention produce experiences of use, and those experiences can be made better and more memorable by skillfully catering to the audience in an accommodating way.

The intention of creating accommodating work fo deeper than just a surface treatment, and are meant to build and maintain a meaningful, nourishing, and codependent relationship between the designer and audience. The decisions that make a design delightful are an expression of compassion for the audience and care for the work being done. They should attempt to build up long-term benefits rather than temporary gains. The gestures that make a design delightful can be small, but their implications are meaningful, they are part of an attempt to engage an audience in a consequential, human way, and to maximize the opportunity of the situation for everyone.