What is Design?

Ever since history began people have been designing. Hieroglyphics, carvings, even how they placed the wood for the first fire; everything has been designed in one way or another. Today, design is more important that ever. It is how we communicate, how we learn, and how we express ourselves. Everything we see today has been designed by someone or something, whether they are a designer or not.

How do they think?
There are some people who are specifically “designers,” who devote their lives to the cause of beautiful advertisements and the abolition of ugly logo designs. The Princeton Review says about graphic designers: “[They] must be able to work in a variety of media and meet deadlines, sizing limits, and financial restrictions” (Princeton Review, Career: Graphic Designer). The text goes on to talk more about the technical and mechanical facts about a design job, but how to designers think and work? Everywhere they look they see good and bad design (Mainly bad design), constantly internalizing and taking in their inspiration, competition, and inferiors. Their eyes dance from letter to letter in a beautifully designed website than just scan for the information linked in between each curve of the characters. Designers see the potential in almost anything, which way the market will go and how to positively effect people within those limitations (Ruckers, How Good Designers Think). It all starts with a good idea and continues with designers not stopping until their idea is a reality.

Design versus Art
How I see it is that there is a spectrum between the two. All (good) design is art; slaved over and tweaked until it is lovely to look at and communicates a specific theme. All art is designed; well thought out paintings and drawings try to communicate a theme by their medium, colors, or composition which are all designed by the artist. Though some design is definitely more artistic than others and vice versa, there is still some of both in designs and pieces of art.

By knowing how designers think and exactly what they make we can know more about what design really is. Design is an intricate practice that produces great works and pieces ranging from a website to a desk chair and everything in between. Design is beauty. Design is everything around us.