ABSTRACT
Today the designer is a cultural figure every bit as familiar as the artist. Designers such as Jonathan Ive and Phillipe Starck enjoy celebrity status on par with prominent artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. But what is design? In its most basic sense, “designing” refers to an activity: creating a plan or blueprint for something novel that will perform a desired task (Bamford 1991). This activity, however, is by no means peculiar to the figures we call designers. Craftswomen design custom furniture, scientists design theories to explain natural phenomena, engineers design electrical systems and so on. What is distinctive of designers is not that they design, but the special context in which they do so. Unlike the scientist who designs explanatory theories, the designer concocts artifacts for practical use. Unlike the engineer, who typically designs internal systems, the designer focuses on features that users can perceive and control. And unlike the traditional craftsman (the cabinetmaker, for instance), designers design but do not manufacture their goods by their own hand. Unlike these other professionals, the designer is a distinctly modern figure, playing a specialized role in the modern industrial system of mass production. As these systems have produced an ever wider and more affordable array of consumer goods, with an ever greater significance for contemporary life, the cultural influence of the designer has increased.
