What does the word 'Design' mean to you?

[Cheshirechappie]

Following an interesting discussion about a drawknife design on the Handtools section, it occurred to me that 'design' can mean different things to different people. Perhaps it can mean different things in different contexts. Now obviously, I have my opinions, which I'll probably try to put forward for discussion in due course, but for starters I thought I'd just ask what others thought.

So - what does the word 'design' mean to you?

 

[deserter]

To me design is the process of imagining and planing an item. It incorporates 3 main considerations, aesthetics, function and cost. It is how we mix these three that gives us the end article, for example the shakers gave us furniture which was purely functional and relatively inexpensive whilst not really worrying about aesthetics, where as the French craftsmen who created the Louis 18th furniture through cost and function out of the window to create items with massive aesthetic appeal (for the time) and which conveyed a message about the social status of the owner over that of the common man.
There definitely is no right or wrong way to design things, just different mixes of the above, although there are set classic design styles and pointers which help us to make items which will appeal to the majority.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Not many takers! Thanks, deserter!

Well, I did say I'd try to offer my opinion, so here goes.

First, a bit of background. By profession, I'm a mechanical engineer. I've spent most of my professional life in the high-integrity end of the chemical industry, working on the design of specialist chemical plants. An average capital value would be in the £100 milion range. The design process is therefore very collaborative - maybe 200 engineers and draughsmen, supported by many technical specialists. The consequences of a design failure are significant - think of the Buncefield incident - and could, in the worst case, involve fatalities and considerable environmental damage. So 'design' is a meticulous, complex and demanding process involving a deep understanding of the chemical process and how it might go wrong and result in fault conditions that the plant must withstand, and environmental impacts like extreme gales and earthquakes that it must also absorb. Everything must be proved by calculation - no 'try it and see' - before the authorities will authorise the plant to go into production.

So design, to me, is a pretty serious business. Get it wrong, and people could end up dead.

Now - to furniture. Here, the design process is a bit different. It tends to be singular rather than collaborative, and the consequences of failure tend to be less severe. A design for a chest of drawers may fail if you have to scrunch up your shirts to get them in, but nobody is going to be injured.

There are many decent and genuine people who have devoted many hours to the business of designing and making good furniture, things that do their job well and please the eye, the hand - even the ear and nose. Things that use materials sensitively and appropriately. I don't want to decry these people, because they have made the world a better place. It doesn't matter whether they do so to make a living or just for their own enjoyment; what they do is honest.

However, there seems to have developed a cult of 'design', championed by academe, as a sort of be-all and end-all. Much self-important pretensious hot air is expended in lauding some 'designs' and some 'designers', in much the same way that has happened in the art world. I think that's sad, because it detracts from, not encourages, honest down-to-earth design. A tool that looks amazing but does it's job poorly is of little use except perhaps as a paperweight. A chair that looks simple but is very comfortable to sit in (and still comfortable after half an hour) is a successful design. I'm all in favour of trying new things, in furniture, in tools, in chemical plants - but let's remember that there is little milage in solving problems that already have many good solutions, or in making amazing-looking tat that falls apart precisely one hour after the guarantee expires.

Wouldn't it be good if the engineers stuck to building chemical plants that didn't go bang, the furniture makers could get on with making decent, lasting furniture, the toolmakers made tools that did their job well, and the academics b*gg*red off back to their ivory towers and left the rest of us to get on with it?

 

[woodbloke]

With your particular aspect of designing, clearly 'function' takes precedence over 'form'...and rightly so. But in the world of furniture it's generally the other way round with the functional element playing second fiddle. The 'function' element is obviously important from an ergonomic and anthropometric viewpoint, but it's the 'form' or aesthetic appearance which comes first - Rob

 

[Paul Chapman]

However, there seems to have developed a cult of 'design', championed by academe, as a sort of be-all and end-all.

There's another category of designer that has appeared in this digital age - the designers who will cram in as many features as they can, just because they can.

My pet hate at the moment is digital cameras. What a pain they are. My photographic background revolved around the classic cameras like the Nikon F, where the camera was like an extension of your eye and finger. After all, there are only three things you need to do before pressing the shutter release - set the shutter speed, set the aperture and focus the lens. All instinctive stuff. But not with digital. With that you need a 168 page instruction manual to tell you how wonderful it is, even though you don't want or need most of the features.

Why won't designers learn that less is more :?

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[Cheshirechappie]

It's true that in chemical plant design, function usually over-rides form. That doesn't mean that form is ignored, however. I once worked on a plant in which all pipes were designed to take the shortest route from startpoint to endpoint. The result looked like metal spaghetti, and was a nightmare to provide supports for. The more usual approach is to bring pipes to a rack, and run them in neat-looking (easily supported!) ordered runs. That makes maintenance easier, too. So 'form' can positively influence 'function'.

Let's take chairs as an example of a fairly common piece of furniture. The function is to be comfortable to sit in. Obviously, looking easy on the eye is also a major plus. However, looking spectacular but being uncomfortable to sit in is a design failure, surely?

As an example, how about John Brown's Welsh stick chairs. I suspect that John would have been amazed (and possibly rather offended) to be called a 'designer'. He just made chairs. Since he'd made a few, and cared about what he did, the chairs he made were both comfortable and very easy on the eye. He did 'design' them in the sense that he selected suitable pieces of wood for each component, shaped them to suit the human form, assembled them in a way that ensured they stayed together for a good while, and finished the chair to make it pleasing to the eye and hand. But he didn't set out to 'make a visual statement'. Design was just part of his craft, not an end in itself. he didn't consciously set out to, but in making a good, functional chair, he made a beautiful chair.

Maybe there's a lesson here. Make furniture (or tools, or lemon-squeezers, or ships) do their job really well, and beauty will often follow almost as a matter of course. Sure, it can be helped along a bit - maybe a moulding to soften a change in width, say - but it shouldn't be the driving force of a piece of furniture. If it is, you may have an ornament, but probably not a useful piece of furniture.

I can't help feeling that a lot of the 'designed' furniture you see in the magazines is nothing more than expensive ornaments. Nothing wrong with trying out new things, but to laud it above elegantly, well-crafted functional furniture misses the point of 'good design' for me. Things like natural-edge table-tops (cut you to ribbons if you fall against it) and unsupported table-tops made of burr slabs (which centuries of woodworking experience tells us will self-destruct in about a decade), for example. Perhaps a bit more attention to sound craftsmanship and understanding of wood might inform some of the 'designers' a bit.


Paul - read your post after typing this one - and I agree with you absolutely wholeheartedly!

 

[cambournepete]

My pet hate at the moment is digital cameras. What a pain they are. My photographic background revolved around the classic cameras like the Nikon F, where the camera was like an extension of your eye and finger. After all, there are only three things you need to do before pressing the shutter release - set the shutter speed, set the aperture and focus the lens. All instinctive stuff. But not with digital. With that you need a 168 page instruction manual to tell you how wonderful it is, even though you don't want or need most of the features.

You want a Fuji X100 then. It's about as close to an "old-fashioned" camera as you can get right now.

 

[Harbo]

Paul most cameras today are very easy to use - just point and shoot.
For the non- enthusiast no need to read the manual?
In the old days you needed to train up on Depth of Field, Shutter speeds, film speeds, aperture, exposure times, range finding etc etc - much more difficult for a beginner?

Rod

 

[woodbloke]

Let's take chairs as an example of a fairly common piece of furniture. The function is to be comfortable to sit in. Obviously, looking easy on the eye is also a major plus. However, looking spectacular but being uncomfortable to sit in is a design failure, surely?

As an example, how about John Brown's Welsh stick chairs. I suspect that John would have been amazed (and possibly rather offended) to be called a 'designer'. He just made chairs. Since he'd made a few, and cared about what he did, the chairs he made were both comfortable and very easy on the eye. He did 'design' them in the sense that he selected suitable pieces of wood for each component, shaped them to suit the human form, assembled them in a way that ensured they stayed together for a good while, and finished the chair to make it pleasing to the eye and hand. But he didn't set out to 'make a visual statement'. Design was just part of his craft, not an end in itself. he didn't consciously set out to, but in making a good, functional chair, he made a beautiful chair.

Maybe there's a lesson here. Make furniture (or tools, or lemon-squeezers, or ships) do their job really well, and beauty will often follow almost as a matter of course. Sure, it can be helped along a bit - maybe a moulding to soften a change in width, say - but it shouldn't be the driving force of a piece of furniture. If it is, you may have an ornament, but probably not a useful piece of furniture.

Chairs and seating in general is probably one of those areas where the 'function' is as important as the 'form' as they interact so much with the human body. I think you're right, but when form and function coincide, then a 'classic' is usually the result. In my view, there have only ever been a few classic chair designs in the 20th century and to name just three they're the Barcelona, the Eames recliner and the Wenger dining chair, all still being made. There are others, but I can't put a name to them at the 'mo Making a really good chair that works well and looks great is maybe a bit like the old ship building adage...'if it looks right, it is right" I think there's a lot to be said for that.

Paul - if you don't want your new camera, I'll do you a swap for my old D60 :mrgreen: (hammer) - Rob -> hat, coat etc

 

[Paul Chapman]

Paul - if you don't want your new camera, I'll do you a swap for my old D60 :mrgreen: (hammer) - Rob -> hat, coat etc

Nice try, Rob, but no cigar - or camera :lol:

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[woodbloke]

Paul - if you don't want your new camera, I'll do you a swap for my old D60 :mrgreen: (hammer) - Rob -> hat, coat etc

Nice try, Rob, but no cigar - or camera :lol:

Cheers :wink:

Paul

:lol: :lol: - Rob

 

[Jacob]

I might be wrong but I feel that the Bauhaus exhibition coming shortly is going to be highly influential. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/ ... e-barbican
Progress was interrupted so much by WW2 only a generation back, not to mention the lives lost. I think it can take longer than people think to pick up the threads after such disruption.

 

[Paul Chapman]

I might be wrong but I feel that the Bauhaus exhibition coming shortly is going to be highly influential. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/ ... e-barbican
Progress was interrupted so much by WW2 only a generation back, not to mention the lives lost. I think it can take longer than people think to pick up the threads after such disruption.

It's interesting to follow the links fom that article and look at the house Walter Gropius designed when he moved to Massachusetts. Much of what he and others from the Bauhaus did are still having a strong influence. Should be a very interesting exhibition.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[billw]

To me design means a multitude of stages. You start with inspiration, a realisation of a need for something, or a desire to create a certain piece, or perhaps even simply seeing another piece of work; you move onto mental imaging where you mull over visualisations of what you'd want, or like, the end result to look like, perhaps it's totally original or perhaps it's your own interpretation of a piece of work you've seen elsewhere; then you're onto articulation at which point you're taking those ideas in your head and planning them on paper, or computer, and starting to build in dimensions and materials; following this there's a period of rationalisation where the design starts to mould itself around practicalities such as function, cost, and simple feasibility; and finally you're into formation at which point you've created a design that is ready to be turned into a reality.