Dear Luke:

If there is interest in the distinctions between graphic/communication design and industrial design perhaps it should be a new topic. 

For now I simply note that you make a good point that the distinctions are not so strong. Technology has brought about a convergence in these two design disciplines: is a smart phone a graphic design delivery of communication content, or an industrial design product of manufacture? "It's both" is the obvious answer.

But citing recent definitions does not tell the whole story.

John Heskett just died, a sad loss, and in his 1980 book "Industrial Design" he roots the discipline in the industrial revolution. Overbeek's re-definition is logical and a clear expansion of industrial design to encompass much more than it has, in fact his definition seems aimed to include all of design with hints of Simon's definition, but I would argue that this recent expansion of industrial design practice to include interaction, service, and business innovation is a direct response to the information age/knowledge economy (from the industrial economy - now that I've mentioned economy I'll get Ken in the fray correcting me) and issues surrounding sustainability. Manufacturing more products is a problem for our society and traditional industrial design is on the wrong side of that issue. However, whatever industrial design is becoming, industrial design is not primarily about communication the way graphic or communication design is. 

Graphic or communication design, which as Frascara noted was rooted in print manufacturing is not now limited to that and is why many are acting to remove 'graphic' and replace it with 'communication' in the disciplinary name, remains about communication. Again citing seminal history books, whether Hollis' "Graphic Design History" (1994, 2001) or Meggs "A History of Graphic Design" (1983), communication design is rooted NOT in the industrial revolution 200 years ago but in cave paintings 15,000 years ago (Meggs, pg. 4) or Gutenberg's Bible 700 years ago (Hollis pg. 9), then and now, all about communication. A cave is not a product. A tomb filled with hieroglyphs is not a product. Communication is the core, the aim, the central purpose of communication design. I would argue that the information age/knowledge economy and issues of sustainability which have threatened 'industrial' design have had the opposite effect on communication design. The more data we generate, the more we need designers who can help make sense of it. Communication is not the same as knowledge creation. I believe communication facilitates knowledge creation. Would that communication did guarantee knowledge creation. Teaching would be a lot easier.

Again perhaps provoking a correction from Ken Feidman, employment numbers for industrial and graphic/communication design bear out the trends I describe above. Not only are there many more graphic than industrial designers (according to US bureau of labor statistics data), but growth projections for graphic designers are almost double that for industrial designers which the Bureau describe as slower than average. (2012 - graphic designers 259,500, 7% growth; industrial designers 39,200, 4% growth).

Polanyi's tacit/explicit knowledge process describes how we know and that transcends disciplines, so of course I agree that both communication and industrial disciplinary knowledge generation uses these processes. But so do many, many others.

Back to the topic that Ken started, clearly our disciplines are linked to social and economic forces. It is just my contention that the social economic trend remains toward communication being at the center of economic activity whether capitalist or anti-capitalist, and that communication is an intangible (except at the level of neurobiology) process facilitated by products, not a product itself. Industrial design, though evolving in ways that communication design is not, is still more about a tangible product or service system as the end product. Communication is ancillary.

Thanks for your response and the paper link. I apologize that I did not read it before responding here. I will however read it with interest.

I'm just thankful to have a job, actually, 3 or 4 of them!

Best...

Mike


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