Fil,
On Jun 14, 2012, at 10:19 AM, Filippo A. Salustri wrote:
> How does one assess the impact/significance of that 5%?
> (I'm honestly asking out of ignorance about it.)
That was part of my question. The other is what the 5% is 5% of. Does this mean that there are 100x design fields and that 5x of them are "art and design" fields? That there are 1000y designers and 50y of them are in "art and design" fields or . . . ? The "we've found fifty gazillion design specialties (or whatever the number was)" seems like a worthwhile fact to contemplate. If the first interpretation of the 5% is correct (and I've been assuming that is what they meant) then does it just mean that "art and design" fields are less segmented than non "art and design" fields?
If all this just boils down to "There a a lot of different sorts of people who call themselves designers" then, Duh! If the takeaway from that is that say, a book jacket designer should not lecture an engineering designer on the nature of design assuming that the book jacket designer's experience is universal then, yeah, but the conversation started with those roles reversed, if I'm remembering correctly. And saying "But I'm part of the 95% and you're part of the 5%" would seem to require delving into the impact/significance question plus some others to escape being merely inane rhetoric.
Jaques' mention that this conversation is a bit of an echo is something that probably occurred to most of us who have been here for a while. Partially in response to a similar conversation several years ago, I put together my response in the form of a Flash movie/mini lecture. It's still at http://www.gunnarswanson.com/definedesign/ . A couple of warnings: 1) it's monster big so don't download it on an analog modem hooked to a satellite phone or something and 2) I ramble on at length and then start talking about related themes in terms of some of my work so someone interested in the whole "what is design" thing may want to quit watching after the Venn diagrams get replaced by graphic design samples.
Gunnar
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Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
Gunnar Swanson Design Office
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