Somebody stated that if a word blurs the difference between what it is and what we imagine, we should abandon the term.

The one.

I don’t know where this will lead me, but the thought is too interesting to let it go unexplored. If letters manage to fix one idea that I can’t even sketch, maybe I could find a way to organize other thoughts and project myself from there. If it’s true that we don’t think in series, but versions: v.2020-05-01 22:21:52 +7

I suppose everything needs to have a starting point; Mine revolves around the distinction between design and exploiting design. They are as similar to each other as a pencil to a mine. If they are not the same, we can’t practice them the same way.

With an open mind - or narrow, depending on the perspective - I’m more interested in the paths we open when formulating design from what it is rather than how we do it. Avoiding metaphors and agnostic to the format: A human capacity to relate things and meaning.

I believe, now more than ever, it is necessary to expand the conversation beyond a purely instrumental approach, confusing thinking with doing and the practice with a decision-making tool. Design does not exist until it happens.

Although someone told me that it looks more beautiful in a simple: First, we need to agree that design is design.

Then it will exist.

The other.

Finals always crystallize the problematic horizon, although problem, I don’t think design is solving any problem. Maybe it’s a matter of scale. To keep it simple, perhaps everything begins or finishes because we use the same word to express things completely different with different signification levels.

  • We use design to refer to the thing produced.
  • We use design to refer to the processes we run to produce things.
  • We use design to refer to the plan we follow.
  • We use design to refer to our human capacity to create meaning.

We use it as a verb, as a noun, as an attribute, you name it. But if everything is design, then nothing is design. Design designed the design.

Good thing is that, whatever it is, it exists because you and I agree that this ‘thing’ we’ve generated it’s designed the result of a process we did together. Whether it’s as tiny as an x or as big as a territory it requires at least two. Which it’s not a bad start, except for the artists. Design is not art.

From here, the mess gets more interesting to me. The thing is never aware of itself - try asking Siri - It needs the rest of the units of the system and other systems to be able to be defined. These systems are not unique to design, nor do we have any agency on them. Then, the thing is part of design, but it’s not design.

The process used to obtain that thing does not attempt to solve any problem different than to refine and optimize another system: production. When we manage to do something here, we mainly compose with pre-existing patterns confusing customizing with design. Production might be part of design, but it’s not design.

Before that, when there’s not a clear path, most of the times, the process we call design is just a vague interpretation of the scientific method — Great, but not design. Designers are not scientist.

The end begining.

The agreement - the disagreement - for this thing to be design, needs to happen simultaneously in two systems: the mental and the physical. And one can not be dettached from the other — design thinking without doing is just thinking, not design.

Unfortunately, an agreement on the result can not pre-exist the result itself; similarly, a consensus that something is designed can’t pre-exist that something.

Just a purely temporal constraint; the agreements happens in the future. Unless…. it already exists. But if it does - which is most often the case - it plausibly means that we already have that thing registered as a reference in our mental system and It will probably be more accurate to state that we are reproducing a copy of that reference — nothing to regret.

In the end, design is not that thing we call design, neither the processes, design systems are not such things and most of the things we produce are a copy; plus, we disagree on what the words means. Either we drop the differentiating factor of design either we make a conscious exercise of signifying what we really do rather than what we produce.

And if we can not apply our own theory to ourselves, it might be better to leave it behind.

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