Heskett begins with the question, what is design? He makes the argument that because of the wide range of design professions and terminology associated with these professions, it makes it difficult to define what design is. He goes on to define it as such, "Design is one of the basic characteristics of what it is to be human, and an essential determinant of the quality of human life." "Very few aspects of the material environment are incapable of improvement in some significant way by greater attention being paid to their design."
I underlined this last sentence in the book because I think it defines what design is very well. At its root, I think design is a way to better peoples existence through making what we do, where we live, what we see, each day easier. And Heskett makes the point that there are few things in our lives that we cannot improve on.
He next takes us through a brief history of design where he talks of primitive man and the tools they used. Not only was that the obvious place in history to start the chapter but a great way to further illustrate the point of chapter one. The evolution of tools crated by our ancestors to make work easier is a great example of making our lives easier through design. Heskett continues with touching on moving from hunter gatherers to a more agriculturally based way of living. With each new era comes new problems to solve and new tools required. What I find interesting in this section is this is where skilled trades really emerge. It was these first skilled workers who were, in a way, the first designers.
The beginning of the Industrial Revolution brought about such sweeping changes in the way people bought and sold products. These changes along with the introduction of the middle class brought about a greater demand for products and designs. To illustrate this point Haskett uses the automobile. Once a plaything for the wealthy, Henry Ford's ideas for mass production and Alfred P. Sloan's ideas of adapting that mass production for different markets helped create a great demand for automobiles within the middle class.
One of my favorite chapters, chapter 3 deals with Utility and Significance. I like this argument and how it evolved in the history of design. As more people were buying goods and companies were figuring out new ways to sell these goods we started to see a new trend in design for design sake. Companies hired designers to redesign products without changing the overall function for the purpose of selling more products. There started to develop an overall distaste of useless ornamentation leading designers such as, Louis Sullivan to state that "form ever follow function." The Idea that form follows function was the basis for new movements in design. Walter Gropius started the Bauhaus in 1919 on the idea that we could strip away the useless decoration and design a functioning building or product.
Heskett finishes chapter 3 discussing how, as companies became global, the idea of design thinking started to take shape. Designers had to understand the culture of the people they were selling to as well as their needs. He illustrates this by using the story of Coca-Cola entering the Chinese market where they had to adapt their packaging to be more appealing to the customer.
Heskett spends the next three chapters explaining, in greater depth, the different roles of designers. Chapter 4 deals with objects. Heskett discusses the role of Product Designers. He uses many examples of both good and bad product designs such as the Juicy Salif by Philippe Starck. Although a work of art the Juicy Salif, which is supposed to be a fruit juicer Heskett explains, is almost completely nonfunctional as such. The reason he uses this example is to illustrate the difference between an object designed for its function and one designed for its aesthetic.
Product designers have not only the task of creating usable products but also understanding the environment the user will be working in. In another example Heskett uses the Aeron chair. The designers, Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf, not only solved the basic problem of the chair, as a means to sit, but took into consideration the environment and ergonomics to build a chair which solves other problems people may face throughout their working day.
Chapter 5 discusses Visual Communication and how people communicate. People depend on visual communication every day through either printed material or television. It is a source for news and information. Heskett explains that we are surrounded by visuals everyday and these visuals are designed to communicate information immediately. It may also be required to communicate without language. One example he uses are the symbols developed for the 1972 Munich Olympic games where Otl Aicher used simple figures to communicate to a wide range of people from different ethnic backgrounds by eliminating language all together.
Visual Communication is also used as a means to sell through advertising and marketing. Heskett says, "the influence of advertising cannot be underestimated, particularly where it has been refined as an instrument of inducing mass consumption." He goes on to use the United States as an example and explains how certain aspects of advertising have become part of our cultural fabric.
Heskett discusses environments in chapter 6 and sums up the subject in the first paragraph where he says, "When considering environments, additional layers of complexity come into play. In common with objects and communications, form, color, pattern, and texture are basic compositional elements, but the articulation of space and light is a specific characteristic of the design of environments." In other words, somethings are up to the designer to choose, color, form and texture but somethings are not and it is these things among others that interior space designers must take into consideration.
Our environments are where we live, work and play. The role of an interior space designer is to determine what the space will be used for and how best to use the space. Heskett discusses the impacts designers have to our experience within these spaces.
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