What is design?

Design (verb): To do something with a specific purpose in mind.

As Mike Monteiro says,

“Design is the solution to a problem with a set of constraints, and a designer is somebody who solves problems, given a set of constraints. That sounds so boring, but that’s the job!”

Victor Papanek called design,

“the conscious and intuitive effort to impose meaningful order”

I like to think of it as the practice of intuition with intent.

Without intent or purpose, it’s not meaningful. It will become an open-ended exploration without real impact on people or real contraints bounding the scope of solution.

Designers build an intuition over time. Web designers has an eye for beautiful digital experience. Architect have intuition about the utilization of 3-dimensional space. Graphic designers about communicating ideas. Engineers have the intuition to design software.

Intuition doesn’t mean “not applying” the rules. It often means knowing the rules really well to not look them up; maybe even breaking them like an artist.

Anyone who influences what the design becomes is a designer.

“All men [read human beings] are designers. All that we do, almost all the time, is design, for design is basic to all human activity. The planning and patterning of any act towards a desired, foreseeable end constitutes the design process. Any attempt to separate design, to make it a thing-by-itself, works counter to the fact that design is the primary underlying matrix of life. Design is composing an epic poem, executing a mural, painting a masterpiece, writing a concerto. But design is also cleaning and reorganizing a desk drawer, pulling an impacted tooth, baking an apple, choosing sides for a backlot baseball game, and educating a child” Papanek, 1985, p.3

I would argue that only those qualified to make such important decisions should take up the task of solving for problems that impact lives.