We All Live in a Designed World!

We love to think about design all the time! But what is it good for? How does it work and where does it come from? This page will hopefully answer some of your basic questions and maybe encourage you to look a little deeper into the enormous field of human endeavour that is design.

"Many people still look at me in a rather puzzled way when I say that I am a designer - if I say I am a graphic designer or a web designer that does not present them with too much of a problem - they can get a handle on one of those. But I am neither and both at the same time - in my own mind I am simply a designer. It is bit like saying you are a scientist - scientists do lots of different things - maths, experiments, teach, build stuff and generally think about problems - and a great many people think they have no contact with them - that they don't live in the 'science world' - but we all take medicine when we are sick and send emails to our friends - we are part of the science world. And so it is with design - most people think that they don't live in a 'design world' - they forget how designed the world is and to how great an extent their decisions are influenced by design. I am first and foremost a designer - somebody who thinks about solving certain types of problems to do with the communication of ideas."

Creative Director, Twisted Tree Publishing

Lets start with a short list of things that are designed - give them some definitions! These are the types of design areas that we usually have to deal with for our clients:

We can also split the design process up into a series of steps - good companies integrate this process into their business model so that they can constantly improve the results achieved from the investments made in design.

Typical stages of the design process include:

Pre-production design

Design during production

Post-production design

Redesign - any or all stages in the design process repeated (with corrections made) at any time before, during, or after production.

Always Think about Scope and Available Resources

General Remarks: Design and Production

The relationship between design and production is one of planning and executing. In theory, the plan should anticipate and compensate for potential problems in the execution process. Design involves problem-solving and creativity. In contrast, production involves a routine or pre-planned process. A design may also be a mere plan that does not include a production or engineering process, although a working knowledge of such processes is usually expected of designers. In some cases, it may be unnecessary and/or impractical to expect a designer with a broad multidisciplinary knowledge required for such designs to also have a detailed knowledge of how to produce the product.

Design and production are intertwined in many creative professional careers, meaning problem-solving is part of execution and the reverse. As the cost of rearrangement increases, the need for separating design from production increases as well. For example, a high-budget project, such as a skyscraper, requires separating (design) architecture from (production) construction. A Low-budget project, such as a locally printed office party invitation flyer, can be rearranged and printed dozens of times at the low cost of a few sheets of paper, a few drops of ink, and less than one hour's pay of a desktop publisher.

This is not to say that production never involves problem-solving or creativity, nor design always involves creativity. Designs are rarely perfect and are sometimes repetitive. The imperfection of a design may task a production position (e.g. production artist, construction worker) with utilising creativity or problem-solving skills to compensate for what was overlooked in the design process. Likewise, a design may be a simple repetition (copy) of a known preexisting solution, requiring minimal, if any, creativity or problem-solving skills from the designer.