Dear Ken,
Design activity is a human behaviour. We are discussing it and theorising about it, I'm presuming, in an egalitarian manner avoiding gender biases, power relations, racism and the like.
Germans, Swedes, Indians, Slovaks, Russians, Afrikans, the Dutch, Israelis, Arabs, Iranians and even Australians get to do design, talk and write about design, make concepts about design and even theorise and do research involving design.
So what the heck is the obsession for defining the history of the terminology of design as a concept only in terms of its first written use in English?
Clearly, the idea of design was written in other languages prior to it being used in English otherwise there wouldn't be etymological roots of the English term design as designare and designo.
More importantly, there are words in other languages that mean the same as the English word design but in some cases precede it by decades, centuries or millennia: -
Entwurf, Konstruktion, Konstruktionslehre, Planung (German)
Naqsband (Persian)
Ontwerp (Africaans)
cizgi, konstruksiya, konstruktor, layihə, layihələşdirmək, naxış, naxışçılıq, rəsm, tərtibat (Azerbaijani)
diseinatu, diseinu (Basque)
crtež, dezen, dizajn, dizajnirati, kreirati, namjera, namjeravati, osmisliti, plan, projektiranje, projektirati, šara, umjetnički oblik (Bosnian)
disseny, dissenyar (Catalan)
design, desinyo, modesinyo (Cebuano)
crtež, dezen, dizajn, dizajnirati, konstruirati, kreirati, namjera, namjeravati, osmisliti, plan, projektiranje, projektirati, šara, umjetnički oblik (Croatian)
crtež, dezen, dizajn, dizajnirati, konstruirati, kreirati, namjera, namjeravati, osmisliti, plan, projektiranje, projektirati, šara, umjetnički oblik (Czech)
anslag, design, dessin, formgive, formgivning, mønster, plan, skitse, tegne (Danish)
schets, tekening, werkje (Dutch)
arvutlema, arvutlus, disain, disainima, eskiis, joonestus, joonistus, kava, kavand, kavandama, kavatsema, kavatsus, konfiguratsioon, konstrueerima, konstruktsioon, kujundama, mudel, muster, näidis, plaan, planeerima, projekt, projekteerima, stiil, visand, visandama (Estonian)
banghay, dibuho, dibuhuhan, disenyo, drowing, guhit, idibuho, krokis, layunin, magdibuho, maglaan, magtalaga, mag-uukol, panukala, plano, proyekto panukuia, tangka, tatak (Filipino)
aie, järjestely, keksiä, suunnitelma, suunnittelu (Finnish)
avant-projet, concevoir, dessein, dessin, étude, motif, plan, projet (French)
hönnun (Icelandic)
complotto, designare, disegnare, disegno, mirare a, progettare, progettazione, progetto (Italian)
architecto, coco, cogitatio, cogitatum, cogito, confabricor, consilium, coquo, describo, descriptio, destino, incursus, lex, machinor, memoria, mens, propositum, signum, tela (Latin)
mereka bentuk, reka bentuk (Malay)
bykart, tegning (Norwegian)
cel, deseń, konstrukcja, kreślić, model, obrys, plan, planować, projekt, projektować, rysować, ułożenie, zamiar, zamysł, zarys (Polish)
planificar, projeto (Portuguese)
construcţie, construi, desen, desena, desen decorativ, destina, face un plan, intenţie, model, plan, proiect, proiecta, schiţa, schiţă, scop, ţel, ţintă, tip (Romanian)
dibuja, estudio, inciso, planificacion, planificar, trazar (Spanish)
planera (Swedish)
amaç, dizayn, dizayn etmek, kastetmek, komplo, komplo kurmak, model, modelini çizmek, niyet, plan, planlamak, proje, stilize etmek, tasarı, tasarlamak, taslak (Turkish)
bày ra một kiểu, bức vẻ kiểu, chủ tâm, dành riêng cho, dự định, dự tính, kế hoạch, khái lược, kiểu mẫu, mẫu hàng, quyết định cho, sáng kiến, sắp đặt, thiết kế (Vietnamese)
The above is of course is a very limited list and omits many significant words that mean design from countries with strong design traditions and in some cases, traditions of writing about design that extend well before the Christian Era (e.g. India and Persia).
So, which came first, the noun version of design or the verb?
You are arguing that the whole of the structuring of the definition and theory making about design should use the verb form on the basis of the currently identified earliest written use of the term in one country that wasn't the first. Not only that, the documentation is sparse (not many books in English) and the difference in time between the verb and the noun usages on that very limited sample is only 30 years.
Instead, I suggest, that for a large number of reasons in terms of making the easiest, clearest and most powerful and elegant design theories and concepts, simplifying design research, addressing several otherwise unaddressable theory problems, and unifying design theory and education across hundreds of design fields that we should use the noun form of the word design.
It works better for all.
What's your problem?
Best wishes,
Terry
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Dr Terence Love
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-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Sunday, 21 September 2014 12:36 PM
To: PhD-Design
Subject: Re: background vs design
Dear Terry,
Please allow me to differ on the matter of nouns and verbs with respect to the word “design.”
You wrote:
“It demonstrates how the *design* (noun) referring to the drawings for manufacture is characteristically and historically more common, and hence more important, than the verb form (designing) or the occupation ‘designer’ which seem absent from any discussions at the time.”
This is incorrect.
The noun form of the word design is “design,” either general, “a design,” or specific, “the design.” The noun form of the word also occurs in the plural, general “designs” or specific “the designs.”
The verb form of the word design is “to design.”
The word “designing” may either be a gerund (noun), a participle (verb), or the simple present tense of a verb.
Two short definitions of a noun from Merriam-Webster’s are, “a word that is the name of something (such as a person, animal, place, thing, quality, idea, or action) and is typically used in a sentence as subject or object of a verb or as object of a preposition” and “any member of a class of words that typically can be combined with determiners to serve as the subject of a verb, can be interpreted as singular or plural, can be replaced with a pronoun, and refer to an entity, quality, state, action, or concept.”
Merriam-Webster’s provides these short definitions of a verb: “a word (such as jump, think, happen, or exist ) that is usually one of the main parts of a sentence and that expresses an action, an occurrence, or a state of being” and “a word that characteristically is the grammatical center of a predicate and expresses an act, occurrence, or mode of being, that in various languages is inflected for agreement with the subject, for tense, for voice, for mood, or for aspect, and that typically has rather full descriptive meaning and characterizing quality but is sometimes nearly devoid of these especially when used as an auxiliary or linking verb.”
Determining whether the word “design” occurs more often in English over any historical period requires historical research.
It is a fact that the verb “to design” occurs first in the English language. The first use of the word “design” appears in written English in 1548 as a verb. The noun appears four decades later, in 1588.
The verb form takes historical precedence and it seems to occur more often in historical usage. Without doing a true study, there is no way to know, but Google Ngram shows many more occurrences for the term “to design” than for the term “a design.” Searching for occurrences of the words “designing” or “designs” would not be useful, as both words occur as verbs and nouns, depending on context. Both “to design” and “a design” seem to occur more often than the word “designer.” I would expect this, however, as people in many professions design, while the designated professional labelled as a designer is relatively recent in historical terms.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University Press | Launching in 2015
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook University | Townsville, Australia ||| Visiting Professor | UTS Business School | University of Technology Sydney University | Sydney, Australia
Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
Telephone: International +46 480 51514 — In Sweden (0) 480 51514 — iPhone: International +46 727 003 218 — In Sweden (0) 727 003 218
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