Dear Ken

Purposely I didn't change the header, as David's post gave me a lead to
indirectly comment on Don's "Dismay and Delight" triggered by his
provocative view of the design field.

First, in my post, I characterize Don's view as a limited one, at the same
time pointing at various other views of the field that, equally, may
probably trigger similar mixed feelings into other observers. I recall the
fact that looking at Engineers, at Dancers, or at any other professionals in
the field in a similarly limited perspective, one will inevitably develop
similar biases as Don's and others.

Second, in the same post I take the opportunity to express my own dismay by
recalling that many among us often take their own sub-discipline for the
entire field (re the fable of 7 blind persons with an elephant, or the adage
of taking a tree for the entire forest). My way of venting off my (and I may
be not the only one) consternation was to reflect on the probable cause of
the limited view of the field so adopted and so clung on by several among
our colleagues. The cause may lie in the artifacts, i.e. words, we use to
express our concepts, and the way we, each in our respective cultural mold,
use those artifacts. And since cultural molds change in time, so also evolve
concepts and artifacts used to express those new concepts. In some 'modern'
non-western cultures, a nurse is called a Doctor, a drafting technician is
an Engineer, etc.

Third, I hinted at the fact that in the 50s, Jacques Viénot introduced in
the Francophone culture, the concept of 'Esthétique industrielle' in
replacement of the 3 century old concept of "Arts Déco". Viénot's is the
same concept (and expression) that precisely triggers Don's 'dismay and
delight'. However, to Viénot, trained in decorative arts, and his European
continental contemporaries, the feeling was more that of delight and 'good
taste' than dismay as felt by the Anglo-Saxon Don and his engineering
background. As another illustration of how material artifacts arouse such
different and often mixed feelings, you remember that it was interestingly
pointed out that the 'Bushman' were neither delighted nor dismayed, rather
awed by the Coca Cola bottle thrown out of the airplaine cockpit into the
Kalahari desert.

Fourth, I purposely attempt to pull my colleagues away from individual
feelings, towards a deeper group and individual reflection on how we
differentiate and call the various concept (s) of what we do as
professionals in various sub-disciplines in our large field of the
artifactual world. I pointed out, with illustrations from the French
language, that probably the Anglo-Saxon term 'Design' isn't the right term
to express, worldwide (some in the Anglo-Saxon world seem to be quite happy
with the term!)  all the concepts we each hold on what we respectively do. I
suggested that we leave alone Don's and others' ambiguous sentiments and
mixed feelings of dismay, delight, terror, uneasiness, frustration,
resignation, boldness, and probably many more triggered both by the
'carry-all' term 'Design' and by the specific sub-field of ('creative')
Aesthetics. Instead, I called upon all colleagues to look into other
cultural bounds and see if, perhaps, we couldn't come up with other terms,
expunged of such sentiments that torment all of us in a way or in another,
terms that could more adequately and more accurately designate what we do,
both as a field of our exclusive intervention in the world and designating
the respective sub-disciplines of our individual practice. I gave as an
example a few terms that we, in the Francophone milieu, came up lately,
encouraging others on this list to come forward with their suggestions.
Hoping that one of these days, we might come up once for all with fully
satisfying (i.e. not any more traumatizing, or less so) answers to the
eternally recurrent questions:

Q1: 'What do you do for living?
R1: 'I am a Designer'.

Q2: 'What is Design?' 'What do you design?'
R2: ...!

And finally, addressing your 'two cents', I definitely was going to change
the header for a response I am preparing to Terry's questions. They are
questions pertaining more to linguistics rather than to (easing) our
torments, and I was going to fiddle around accordingly in search for the
most meaningful (evocative and easily retrievable) header.

So, I take your 'two cents' and off-list communication as more addressed
rather to Terry...!

Best regards


Francois
Montreal

P.S. If I succeeded in convincing you that my previous post was under the
appropriate header, then I guess this one should be under the same header
too. But I leave up to you, as our moderator, to put it wherever you judge
it belongs best.