Design Matters

I formed Graven Images Limited, with two fellow students, while still in the School of Art. We came from different backgrounds, Ross from Architecture, Adele from Embroidered and Woven Textiles and me from Graphic Design, where I specialised in film and television. Ross and I already had the option of full-time employment in Los Angeles and London but decided to try and do something more interesting in Glasgow before getting a mortgage and a lifestyle we’d be reluctant to lose.

Starting a business was a relatively easy decision to make as we had no money and no commitments. We were both naive enough to believe we could pick up the threads of Glasgow’s design heritage and once again bring a European style of working to the city. We hoped we’d encourage other graduates to do the same and decided to give the project three years.

We’ve now been going for seven and a half years, although Adele left after the first year, and have settled with twelve staff, eight of whom are designers and seven of those are graduates. We are a multidisciplinary design consultancy and undertake a broad spectrum of work from architectural projects, interiors, products and graphics to exhibitions and television related work.

We have no formal structure within the office but tend to have informal teams which change according to the task at hand. Different personalities and skills are suited for different projects but we all offer criticism and informally contribute to each others work and learn from one another.

All designers are trained managers and expected to liaise with clients and sub-contractors, all designers are responsible for cost control and are supported by administrative and accounting staff. All designers are literate, numerate and Apple Mac literate. We all have to understand the technology related to any technical process we may use in order to exploit its potential.

I would like to put forward a definition of design which works. It came about through a series of joint lectures in conjunction with Dr Andy Lowe from the Department of International Marketing at the University of Strathclyde who undertakes research in the qualitative methodologies which underpin the design process.

Design Orders Chaos

What is Design? Design is about the controlled evolution of ideas.

The practice of design in all of its different disciplines is underpinned by a system which ensures the controlled evolution of ideas, what’s commonly known as ‘design process’. Peter Gorb, in a Design Council publication , defines design as “… the planning process for artifacts”. I would go further in that I believe that design is ‘the ultimate planning process’. Design is an analytical, rational process in which the production of artifacts may or may not play a part.

Design is about control. Fine art is also concerned with control, or as with design, a conscious lack of it. Fine art, design and architecture use technology and increasingly the same technology.

New York

The process of designing something requires that we control the evolution of ideas, creating order out of chaos, and presenting information in a structure which is meaningful. Design and fine art are also concerned with the ordering, interpretation and manipulation of ideas.

Designers and artists must be inventive and structured in their process, which is essentially inductive or logical. Identifying the fundamental and dynamic forces within an area of investigation and apparently bringing order out of chaos in a form which can be finally communicated.

It might be communicated as a clearly articulated problem or a problem resolved.

Map Slide

In the case of design or architecture a problem clearly articulated might also be communicated in the form of a brief. In the case of art it might be a piece of art which itself poses a question or is inconclusive.

Word Slide

Designers and fine artists communicate through a common language. This language isn’t concerned exclusively with the visual but with all of the human senses and utilises language, semiotics, myths, rituals and values in order to articulate culture. I call this language sensorial language.

Brochures + The Lounge

The tangible aspects of this language, those we can touch and see, might include written language and printed material, moving and still images, products and other artifacts, interiors spaces and architecture.

Clinio Castelli

The intangible aspects of this language, those we can’t touch or see, which are less obvious but much more potent, are smell, taste, sound and temperature. They frequently produce subliminal responses.

Artists, designers and architects are all educated to interpret and communicate various aspects of human culture and need.

In order to understand the importance of our role in the world and how universal and potent our language is we have first of all to understand the nature of culture.

Culture

Culture is one of those words which everyone uses but is rarely understood. Even academics have great difficulty in coming to terms with its definition. Because culture is largely intangible it can’t be measured, it can only be interpreted. Cultural traits are qualitative by nature, and as such need to be interpreted and explained in order to be understood. It is argued that culture should be seen as a set of solutions to the key problems of survival.

The core of any culture is its ideologies. These are the fundamental driving forces which impel people into action. Because culture is largely invisible, clues have to be discovered from tangible artifacts, then interpreted. These clues are like the layers of skin on an onion which hide and protect the ideologies. There are five layers through which one has to penetrate before an understanding of ideologies can be reached: language, semiotics, myths, rituals and values.

Language

Language is more than vocabulary, it is an enabling mechanism which explains why and how people behave.

Coke + The Herald

Semiotics

The language of signs has been described by Umberto Eco as comprising three main categories of sign: symbol, icon and index. This is an important distinction for all of us who use visual and sensorial language and we should be aware of the impact these three forms of sign can have.

Symbols

BR + Mercedes

These are abstract manifestations of a particular reality one may be trying to communicate. They are most useful in an international context when written language would not be understood.

Icons

Prudential + Herald

Normally these are representational and figurative in form. They tend to literally be a mirror image of the concept being communicated. Their particular power means that they can be easily remembered.

Indices

Mont Blanc + Tunnel

These are devices which engage in enigmatic surrealism. They are the most powerful of all the signs because they have the potential to penetrate our consciousness.

Myths

BCCI + Jaguar + BR

Claude Levi-Strauss (1945) declared that a myth is a universal primitive non-rational logic. Behind the stories embedded in myths are messages wrapped up in code. Myths are especially powerful because they don’t have to be true to be believed—Twin Peaks falls into this category. This is not lost by politicians, David Lynch or the music industry and has remained a powerful idea throughout the ages. Much medical clinical treatment works because the patient has the implicit belief that the doctor knows what he’s doing. Likewise industry and the economy base much of their speculation on myth—De Lorean sports cars in Ireland funded by the British taxpayers/ Jaguar (would have gone out of business on bumeric basis alone) and the flagging British car industry.

Rituals

Rituals are a necessary part of all human existence because they perform the vital role of dramatising order.

As humans we can not easily tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty for prolonged periods of time so we create systems of behaviour which will deliver an environment which provides predictability and stability.

Although rituals are potent they are usually enshrined in invisible social boundaries which are often only revealed to the outsider when they are violated.

Royalton

The hotel is a good example of how behaviour is ritualised. The hotel business is really an extension of show business. It gives big set piece performances in its restaurants three times a day and has a continuous performance in the front lobby. Architecture, design and art provide the theatrical backdrop for these performances and influence and control their shape.

Lobby + Dining Room

Values

All relationships are about values, business is about values. Values are concerned with the fundamental driving forces which impel people into action. All business relationships are value driven and research clearly shows that people do business with those they like rather than with those who only offer economic or technical effectiveness.

Heraldic (loyalty/history) + Railfreight

Designers, artists and architects control their creative output through the design process. Our education provides us with a mixture of analytical methodologies (a bit of philosophy, a bit of anthropology, a bit of psychology etc) all informing and enhancing our intuition.

The education of designers and architects has more emphasis on analytical method, the education of artists has perhaps more emphasis on intuition and less tightly structured research. All are inextricably linked through the sensorial language we use and the Mac-based technology we use.

Design in a multi-disciplinary activity

We must understand and communicate what it is we all do—develop, share and value our knowledge or other academics and professionals will take it from us.

As we move away from numerical and quantitative methods, towards interpretive, qualitative methods of evaluating the environment around us, we open up a myriad possibilities of understanding and enjoying the world, and making money through our pooled knowledge. We now have property, product and publishing.

Starck + Loewy + Mackintosh

New technology offers opportunities to work together across disciplines and continents—technical restraints seem paltry faced with the awesome task of designing and expressing a totally new reality, virtual reality, with all its problems such as how to deal with new perceptions of time. We are well equipped to interpret and design this new world.

This must encourage us to explore and promote our common process and dwell less on individual, technical and vocational activities.

If we continue to squander our energy pidgeonholing design into it’s technical specialisms. Separating out research and management components and marketing them all as separate little courses for short term financial gain, we will find that the core of our activity, the really powerful bit; the design process, has been hijacked by marketing and business studies, the sciences and social sciences. We will be confined to the role of social decorators.

The task ahead of all of us is truly gargantuan. Not only must we set our educational systems in order but also learn to communicate our expertise to the wider population. That they might consider value in terms other than the financial when making choices. We must also become an eloquent force in the media and local and national politics if we are to have all our good work put to its proper use—to bring about a sensorially literate society of caring and intelligent people who are equipped with the tools which allow them to understand and value the world around them.