Hi Eduardo, (and ciao Filippo)
In fact I like your definition, but I also like many of the others I read (and probably I missed many others). The problem is that, being the design activity and the theme of design so broad we could probably wake up every morning with a new definition, for one year, and I could be sure that (almost) all of them would be brilliant and very appropriate, but not univocal. And this was my point.
(sorry for Portugal, you will have more time to write in this discussion, I imagine)
Cheers
Nicola
Nicola Morelli, PhD
Associate Professor, School of Architecture and Design
Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
http://servicedesign.wikispaces.com/
Blog http://nicomorelli.wordpress.com/
skype: nicomorelli
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eduardo Corte Real
Sent: 19. juni 2008 12:06
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A simple definition of 'Design'?
Dear Filippo,
Dear Philippo,
I like the word depiction. It has no synonymous word in Portuguese so, it is
even more challenging. Depiction might be a description by pictures but it
is also used, in colloquial manner, as depicted in words, meaning that words
created an image. Some times we (you, they) may say that someone depicted
very well a situation in a conversation.
It is very intriguing that in my language we had a word “Desenho” that had
the same broad significance as Design have today in English although it
meant mostly “drawing”, and we had to import “Design” in the second half of
the 20th century. Design was meaning a speciality within “Desenho” , and
this created a social differentiation to the point in which Design is part
of my School’s name (since 1969). The consequence was that Desenho, in
Portuguese from Portugal (in Brazil is slightly different) now means simply
Drawing.
Back to depiction: We must acknowledge that Design depends mostly on
pictures and Engineering depends mostly on calculi and Literature mostly on
grammar an Music mostly on signs that represent sounds. In all these
activities we have a preparation of a work to be, that we started to call
design. But this is a colloquial meaning like some football coaches that say
they advocate “ A Positivist Philosophy” not because they liked Auguste
Comte but because they like their teams to play in attack. This do not makes
Positivism a Football tactics!
Design started to mean Design at the extent of some schools becoming schools
of design because of the Drawing meaning of the word and not from the
“desire in the future” or the “designation” meaning.
Design also started to mean any king of planned change in an existing
situation because designing through drawings was the most important and the
mostly cultural assimilated way of doing it.
We could very easily imagine a world in which a word such as engineering
could have the same role as design have now. The reason it didn’t happen is
probably because engines, machines and structures didn’t became as popular
as their formal interface with humans (culturally assimilated as made by
pictures). By the way, this does not mean that Mathematics and Physics do
not concur to a picture, through Geometry or Acoustics for instance.
Eliminating pictures or drawings from a definition of Design is a horrible
non-tribute to History and certainly will move design to a holistic
epistemological limbo filled with all the conceptual uselessness you may
imagine (you must read this sentence as you were John Cleese being the Holly
Grail’s Sorcerer describing the terrible white rabbit).
Cheers,
Eduardo
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