Ken Friedman wrote:
> I tend to disagree with Chris on the idea that  wicked vs. tame
> problems distinguish design from engineering...... A typographer who
> prepares a simple page layout to the standards of a design manual
> practices design rather than engineering.
I think we getting a bit lost here.  I did not say that using rules was
engineering any more than I believe it is designing and I would be
guilty of denigrating engineers if I suggested that.  My view is that
the art of designing is the art of resolving wicked problems
(temporarily and for a particular situation). The art of engineering is
the art of taming a problem when we know enough to do so.

All problems might become tameable if we study them deeply enough and
for long enough (although some problems might make the student mad
before they give up their secrets) and all tame problems may become
wicked again if circumstances change.

The typographer is only designing if there is room in the rules for
interpretation, so I think we need a third concept, of production, to
complete the picture and that is what Ken's typographer may be doing
(although that makes them what we used to call a "paste-up artist" or
today a "mac operator", typographer implies that there is an "ography"
at work)

I have a very clear example of this at work - in the design of
educational software a company I know has a distinct design/development
stage of a project, where all the software structures, artwork
standards, interactions, language etc etc are designed and tested until
there is a complete understanding of the design, expressed as
storyboards and prototypes of each of the different kinds of entity or
building block that will be used. Once that is done they move into
production and, although the same people may be using the same tools
they no longer have any freedom of interpretation, or very little, as it
is important to sustain the consistency of the design and complete the
whole jigsaw puzzle. One could argue that they have "tamed" the problem
but only for this one very specific case. However the overall system of
learning structures that they use, and the system of managing the
project, are the result of engineering thinking from earlier projects.

So they have engineering in the underlying thinking carried forward from
project to project, design in solving the problems presented by a
particular project and production in the disciplines needed to move from
a tested design to a complete product.

I would also say that there are far more supposed "production" tasks in
what we think of as design than we generally notice.  A 3-D designer may
be very adept at producing designs for new versions of mature products
that tune in to what the market will expect and although their product
will be visually unique it may adhere to some very well understood
principles current in function, production and fashion and therefore I
would say that designer is very close to being production worker.

Incidentally, my first design job was really a production role - I
worked for a special effects company making model spaceships for a TV
series and we just took illustrations from a couple of books about space
technology and made them into 3D models (it was fun). When I was a
student in the early 1980s  the illustrator Syd Mead
(http://www.sydmead.com) was a huge influence on all the young vehicle
designers I studied with (including me) arguably he came up with the
real ideas and the rest of us just pored over his books and translated
them into products. Frank Lloyd Wright described his apprentice, John
Howe, as "the good pencil in my hand" and I believe he described himself
similarly in relation to his own mentor, Louis Sullivan, so arguably
there was a stage in both Howe and Wright's development when they were
engaged in production rather than design.

Which brings us on to apprenticeship and I'm tempted to say something
about my colleague, Nicola Wood's, work on that subject but maybe
another day.

best wishes
Chris