Dear Robert,

These are good questions, but I’m not really prepared to address them. In shaping a taxonomy of design activity and design knowledge, I’ve used several models dealing with domains – the issue of the four orders is somewhat different. The four orders fit within the domains as I have mapped them, but different taxonomic structures do, indeed, elicit different tones and meanings.

It would be a mistake in my view to suggest that graphic design constitutes the “core” of design.

To speak about an activity as the “core” of a larger circle of activities and processes suggests that those processes grow around the core. In my view, suggesting that the four orders of design propose an historical development is problematic. Before returning to this issue, I want to put forward an historical discussion.

Archeological and historical evidence date the first hand-made tool to 2,500,000 BC when homo habilis made chipped stone axes. Axes with handles came much later, of course, but my view is that purposeful design of artefacts begins with homo habilis (Christian 2004: 159-163, 326-30; Ochoa and Corey 1995: 1-8; Oppenheim 2003: 123, passim; Watson 2005: 24-25).

There has been some suggestion in design circles that design begins with fire, but tool-making preceded the domestication of fire by nearly a million years. Homo habilis created the first tools around 2,500,000 BC. The domestication of fire occurs much later in prehistory by at least a million years, possibly longer (Pyne 1997: 25; Watson 2005: 26). For example, Ochoa and Corey (1995: 1, 3) date the earliest firm evidence of fire to a site at Zhoukoudian near Beijing in 500,000 BC.

There has been some debate on this. I’ve had a few conversations on the issue with friends. For the past few years, designers have been saying that fire was designed rather than discovered. As nearly as I can tell, this idea traces back to Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman’s book, The Design Way. It's a terrific book, but it is my view that they are mistaken on this issue.

Fire existed long before the evolution of the first primates, and longer still before the development of hominids. Fire existed long before the evolution of creatures to whose credit purposeful design could be attributed. Beyond this, there is an open debate on how fire was first domesticated and put to use. As an historical – or archeological – claim, the argument that fire was not discovered but designed is inaccurate. One may say that the use of fire was designed, but fire itself was not. Most historical sources speak of the domestication of fire based on discovery. Early fire users found fires and learned to carry them, at some point between 1,800,000 years BC and 500,000 years BC. At the oldest date, it took over a million years before human beings learned to create fires with tools (see also Stearns 2001: 7; Ochoa and Corey 1995: 1, 3)

Under any circumstances, the archeological record shows that pre-humans (homo habilis) made and used tools between one million years and two million something years before later pre-humans (homo erectus) domesticated fire. The key to the debate on the first use of design is that the first tools are primitive tools, while hafted tools, spear throwers, fish hooks and the like came far later.

Graphic information design comes far later still. Cave paintings and visual art begin around 40,000 years ago (Watson 2005: 33-35). Human beings created the first external documentation and information systems some 20,000 years ago (Burke and Ornstein, 1997, pp. 29-30). Urban design and architecture came along some ten thousand years ago in Mesopotamia. Interior architecture and furniture design probably emerged with them. It was almost five thousand years more before graphic design and typography got their start in Sumeria with the development of cuneiform.

In one sense, knowledge representation and what would have been the graphic design of the era play a crucial role in human development. The externalized representation of knowledge through documentation and information created a new kind of human being. Even in the rudimentary form of what archeologists call the baton, a carved bone or antler, information tools began to “reshape the way we think” (Burke and Ornstein, 1997, pp. 29-31). The relationship between these tools and the human mind is significant. Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, and Walter Ong all developed a vital discourse on the ways in which our visual media shape us as creatures and shape our understandings. (See also Friedman 1998.)

But now, we’re talking about different forms of emergent evolution and the ways that we related to and changed in response to these as human beings.

In the same way, it is my view that tool-making by pre-humans helped push the shift from prehumen to human. Tool use helped to make us human. At another time, fire became significant. Later, knowledge representation becomes vital.

This is a long way around to a short answer with respect to your question. In historical terms, graphic design is not the “core” of design activity.

The four orders represent a conceptual order – I believe that there are several ways to represent this, both in words and visually, each capturing different properties.

One property that is not useful is the notion that each order embraces and supersedes the prior orders in the way that a version release of computer software or video games supersede earlier releases.

We still need graphic design, communication design, information design, and other forms of knowledge representation for many specific tasks. While we use information design and knowledge representation in ways that may be enabled or improved by new technology, we need what the first order of design provides. No other form of design can perform the same function. Therefore, the other orders do not supersede the first order. Two useful examples are Per Mollerup’s (2013) Wayshowing > Wayfinding: Basic and Interactive, and Mollerup’s (2014) Data Design -- Visualising Quantities, Locations, Connections.

For this reason, the re-designation of the four orders as “1.0, 2.0” and so on is problematic.

But I must also admit that I did not see the Golsby-Smith (1996: 5) model as representing a “core.” I have to give some thought to explain properly what I think it suggests, but it entails a complex issue of conceptual layering rather than a core and outer layers.

As I see it, each of these models captures certain aspects of design effectively. So does Klaus Krippendorff’s model, and so does GK VanPatter’s model once you move beyond the computer release metaphor.

But as I said at the start, you’ve asked some good questions. These are a few brief thoughts. The visual representation of these issues requires careful analysis. The different representations in relation to one another might benefit at this point from a review and a synthesis of the different approaches.

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design> Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page http://about.me/ken_friedman

Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China

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References

Burke, James and Ornstein, Robert (1997) The Axemaker’s Gift: Technology’s Capture and Control of Our Minds and Culture. New York: Tarcher Putnam.

Christian, David. 2004. Maps of Time. An Introduction to Big History. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Friedman, Ken. 1998. “Building Cyberspace. Information, Place and Policy.” Built Environment. Vol. 24, Nos. 2 and 3, pp. 83-103. Available at URL:
https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
Accessed 2014 January 9.

Golsby-Smith, Tony. 1996. “Fourth Order Design: A Practical Perspective.” Design Issues, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring, 1996), pp. 5-25. Available at URL:
https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
Accessed 2014 January 9.

Mollerup, Per. 2013. Wayshowing > Wayfinding: Basic and Interactive. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers.

Mollerup, Per. 2014. Data Design. Visualising Quantities, Locations, Connections. London: Bloomsbury.

Ochoa, George and Melinda Corey. 1995.
The Timeline Book of Science. New York: Ballantine.

Oppenheim, Stephen. 2003. Out of Eden. The Peopling of the World. London: Constable and Robinson.

Oxford University Press. 1998. Oxford Encyclopedia of World History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pyne, Stephen J. 1997. Vestal Fire. An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe, and Europe’s Encounter with the World. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Stearns, Peter, ed. 2001. The Encyclopedia of World History. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Watson, Peter. 2005. Ideas. A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud. New York: HarperCollins.

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Robert Harland wrote:

—snip—

Assuming the use of matrices and diagrams are important in the development and communication of this idea of four orders of design, interesting questions emerge from attempts to “depict” the idea of “four orders” beyond a textual interpretation.

In relation to the first order, Buchanan (1992: 9-10) uses the phrase “symbolic and visual communications,” but later (2001: 12) presents us with a matrix referring to “graphic design” standing for “symbols.” The latter fits comfortably with the following “industrial design,” “interaction design” and “environmental design” as respective second, third and fourth orders of design. The nomenclature makes good sense to me.

Golby-Smith (2001) uses concentric circles, placing “word image” at the “core” of a concentric circle depiction, also standing for “graphic design.” Humantific also use a concentric circle model but refer to “communication” as “traditional design” in their “Design 1.0.”

Using Buchanan’s nomenclature and the subsequent depictions by Golby-Smith and Humantific, is “graphic design” at the “core” of design? Can it be considered a basic underlying principle that continues to underpin industrial design and “explorations of interactions and environments?”

These questions have been on my mind for a couple of years and now seem appropriate to air.

Any thought welcome, or am I clutching at straws here from what I perceive as an under-represented discipline on the list.

—snip—



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