In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Genesis 1:1 to 1: 4 New International Version

 

Leaving Eden

Look around you. Everything you see has been designed. The book, or tablet you’re holding. The table you’re sitting at. The chair you’re sitting on. The room, or the patio, or the cafe, you’re sitting in was conceived by someone before it was made just the way it is. Every little thing in it was designed – it’s purpose was considered. It’s function was contrived. It’s materials, colors and textures were composed. Was the tree you see through the window designed? With it’s majestic trunk, reaching branches, gnarly bark and chlorophyll green leaves? It may have been nature’s own at one time. But the hybrid species you see, where it was placed in the garden, and the garden it was placed in, was designed – a kaleidoscope of color or a drought tolerant homage to a planet heading into a warming trend. Your aging cat curled up at your feet? He was designed over generations of breeding, formed to be a domesticated companion, good for keeping mice under control and warm your lap on cold nights.

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 99% Invisible #69 – The Brief and Tumultuous Life of the New UC Logo (Link)

Listening to this podcast brought a smile to my face as I did my daily bike ride through Tilden Park this morning. It was a crisp, beautiful San Francisco spring day and I was feeling good because I just got the first section of my book on why design really matters off for review.

Lots of things matter. The built environment matters. Business matters. Education matters. Universal health coverage matters. Access to my favorite podcasts matters. But the way all these things are embodied in the world so that they are coherent, purposeful, useful, life affirming and have integrity and don’t cancel each other out – matters to me more than anything else. Coherent embodiment of ideas – that’s design.

So the reason the podcast about the design of the new University of California logo brought a smile to my face is because it affirmed this. Its a simple and well told story about the University of California’s attempt to introduce a logo representing the entire UC system – which it never had before. Yet it got caught up in a firestorm of public opinion that eventually resulted in it’s being withdrawn. The Lieutenant Governor of California, Gavin Newson even weighed in on making sure of that. You may say that a logo is a relatively trivial piece of the world, yet the passion with which people – proponents and detractors bring to it, is what makes me smile.

The possibility of having a public dialog that is directed at making each part of the world we make a little better is what makes me smile as I ride my bike. The possibility of raising our cultural awareness and engagement in design, and to improve the quality of this process of designing is what gets me up every morning.

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I’m fascinated by words. Word origins and derivations reveal an essential meaning often missed in common usage.

Take the word design.

I love design. What it is, how it is done, what it produces, and what it contributes. As a designer, the origins of the words design and designer tell me who I am.

Design first appeared as an English verb in the 1540s from Latin designare – meaning to designate, devise, appoint. The Latin designare is a mashup of signare  “to mark” with the prefix de, meaning “out.” Mark out.

Why did we only get a word for the way we create the world 500 years ago, when we’ve been doing it since the beginning of time. What does design have to do with designation and marking out? [Read more…]

This is the original version of the story of how I came to reframe the work I do from doing design to thinking about, writing about and teaching design consciousness – the internal structures of our mind and soul that compel us to create a layer of reality on top of what nature has managed to do on it’s own. As I prepare this website and blog for a series of essays and a book I plan to write I have rewritten and expanded this story – and put it on the “Who I Am” page to introduce visitors to my project – and me.

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