We decided to look at this question after watching a recent episode of “Design For Life” on BBC2_
“In an effort to find a new generation of British design talent, Philippe Starck, one of the world’s best-known product designers, invites 12 hopefuls to a school of design he has set up in Paris. Over coming weeks, he will whittle them down until one fortunate student wins the opportunity of a lifetime – to work alongside the master for six months at his agency in the French capital.”
One of the things we noticed was the lack of real problem solving_ Admittedly some of this is down to time and the speed at which answers are required without the lack of knowledge, curiosity or understanding the brief_
We also noticed a lot of information on design blogs and websites are not actually about “design” but rather how to use the tools to create design (graphics)_ Now this is, to a degree useful, but its not what makes the design successful_
To us, design has nothing to do with the software we use, but questioning the brief, then working in partnership with our clients to understand the problem and taking responsibility to solve it_
Usually in our line of work that problem for our client is they want more sales, or more people to respond, or more footfall etc_ So visual communication plays a huge part but even then the software plays the last small part, to us the first questions are about sustainability_ This is not to be confused with green issues but whether our solutions are timeless, we feel there is no point coming up with a solution that needs to be redone 6 months later_
Usability is extremely important and this is achieved by firstly considering how the things around us are or are not related to one another_
On the visual design we believe it should be aesthetically beautiful_ Its then about disciplines like proportions, space, typography, environmental or spatial exploration and also looking at a multi-sensory approach_
Tags: Design, ideas, problem solving
This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 5:14 pm and is filed under Business, Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
