The ongoing ambiguity of what is "design" and what is "a designer" is compounded by the fact that these English words are often applied carelessly to a wide range of activities in design practice, design education and research, not to mention popular culture and mass media, from designer jeans to designer baby, to a point of becoming almost meaningless.
The conflated use of "art & design" by educational institutions is hardly clarifying the issue, and the carefree use of "design" is encouraged by design professionals themselves, for example, “Everything is design. Everything!”
(Paul Rand).
Yet, tellingly, when someone introduces themselves, or is being introduced as "a designer", in everyday human interaction, the response is invariably: And what do you design?
The "what" then, suggests that the use of the word design(er) is context dependent and needs to be qualified to be meaningful.
Indeed without qualifying what "design", or "a designer" is, how can design practitioners market and sell their products or services, design educators plan and deliver curricula, design graduates qualify and look for work, and design researchers formulate accurately and clearly defined research questions?
Could it be that the ambiguity, or confusion even, of what design is stems from the early days of design research when some of the main protagonists of the day, notably C Alexander and J C Jones, reacted against "design methods" (in Cross, 2001) opening up the then emergent design field to postmodernism and the research methodology of the humanities where the tree was replaced by the rhizome metaphor?
If so, by immersing the emergent discipline of design into the
maelstrom of postmodernism and multiplicity, the research approach, arguably, shifted too, from "scientific rigour" to discourse that enabled not only the construction of different meanings but also allowed for ambiguity.
Yet such a "designerly shift" in research from the sciences to the humanities, or from cognitive to discursive approaches, which emphasise natural language, has facilitated the expansion of design education, notably in the English speaking word, resulting in a plethora of new design programmes, including PhD by practice.
The expansion of the design field, moreover, reflects changes in the social/cultural climate where design education has become social capital (actual or potential, in a Bourdieusian sense), and part of the global economy, social media, and self-expression.
But is there a better understanding of what "design", or what "a designer" is through the humanities' looking glass? Or did the reaction against "design methods" throw out the baby with the
bathwater?
BJ
Cross, Nigel (2001). Designerly ways of knowing: design discipline versus design science. Design Issues, 17(3), pp. 49-55)
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