November 30, 2005
A New Type of Designer
I found this at Design Observer (the full article can be found here):
We used to know what designers did. They understood the relationships between form and function, aesthetics and usefulness. And they produced stuff. People who do something rather different are now being hailed as the coming thing. The new stars of design work on rather nebulous, intangible things such as services and business models. They collaborate, so it’s difficult to see where their authorship begins and ends. And their arrival has caused toxic shock to the design world, resulting in an awful lot of bad feeling.
Tomorrow, the Design Council will announce its biggest initiative to date: a 10-year project to design solutions to social problems in five regions of the country, starting in the North East. At the end of each two-year phase, the region concerned will be left with up to 10 new practical public projects. John Thackara, programme director, suggests one possible example as ‘a new way of getting fresh food into the city: a food-buying co op, or a school that is learning about nutrition and wants to team up with a grower. Or it might be a new way of doing the school run without cars. What we end up with may be both large and small, may involve building things or devising new ways of organising life.’