Dear Eduardo
your post is a stimulating and helpful one, and I am learning much from it, and so appreciate this very much.
However, at the same time I wonder if there is some kind of genetic fallacy lurking there. It does not seem to me to be as simple as you make it out to be.
Just because something called Design may have originated in ODesign (where ODesign is Design meant Originally or in the earlier past) does not mean that it should have, or that it is best that it did.
Nor does the fact that current notions of Design had its origins, or its primitive DNA in ODesign mean that it should be defined by ODesign.
The question I have at the back of my mind is, though Design may be come from ODesign, whether it is unfair or unnecessary to beg two questions:
1. whether ODesign was in fact the most developed notion of Design, or put it another way, whether the DNA so called in ODesign whilst most primitive, was in its most perfected form. To draw a principle from design, an original notion is not always better than a later iteration. So the tracing of a pedigree does not quite work for understanding design. Design is not a dog lineage which one seeks to keep pure and untainted, but is instead itself a rational construction by a thinking human person making decisions about what to put into it, and what to leave out in its next conception, so that we can arrive at a preferred state of affairs insofar as the concept of design is concerned.
2. whether the designation of ODesign as "real" design could be too hasty, and in fact is equivocally employed: for, whilst for some things, such as an original work of art or a drawing, the original is the real and the copied or poor copies are not, for other things, the original is not at all the real, where "real" signifies not the first, but the best version. So for instance, when you say that such a person is a "real" man, one means not that he is the original man, but that he has the fullness of manliness in him. And I would say, that it is not "real" in the first sense that matters for design, but the second. Rather than speak of real design qua original design, the task should be to identify real design qua design in its fullness and completeness, in its most perfect mode, which is not necessarily the historically original one.
I submit therefore, that your methodology for understanding what "design" is seems very suspect, even if your erudition is ever impressive
Jude
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From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eduardo corte-real [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2013 8:09 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: what design is...
Dear Friends,
If we are listing Design activities we should go back when the first
institutions using the word DESIGN presented themselves to the world saying
this is what Design is and this is what we teach and this is what the
people we educate will do. Simple, isn’t it? So, in England something
called the Government School of Design was founded in the 1830’s and in the
USA another something was founded called the National Academy of Design.
Both resulted from the conviction that the academies of Fine Arts of the
time were not doing their job in favor of Art because they didn’t included
an Ethical principle in the outcome of their activities. However both
institutions started to teach Drawing based curricula (the same as the
Academies's but with diferent themes and purposes). The purpose was that
Art could produce objects to be produced, beautiful objects that may be
used by humans and not only contemplated.
That’s the original DNA. It became robust and international by something
called INDUSTRIAL DESIGN very rapidly followed by something called GRAPHIC
DESIGN both conjured in the forges of Drawing Culture. All real branches of
real Design come from there. If you don’t find a connecting line to one of
these you will be dealing with either opportunistic naming or the
adaptation/adoption of the colloquial meaning of the word design.
It is very interesting to find out why we call “design drugs” to some drugs
but this does not mean that the activity behind its production may be
called Design, it is still Chemistry or Pharmacy.
Best regards
Eduardo
PS: That’s why Mathematic is so interesting for Design. Because it is such
a good complement for an activity that in its essence is developed in the
culture of drawing.
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