Just by lightly resting your chin on your hand at the desk, the world looks different. There are countless ways to see and feel things. Design is about consciously reflecting those countless ways of seeing and feeling into everyday objects and communication.
A book by Kenya Hara, Japan's renowned graphic designer and art director, who is well known as MUJI's designer. I was curious about what it means to "design design" and picked up this book as it seemed like something I could read casually without deep knowledge of design theory. Let me summarize with a few impressive quotes.
According to MIT's John Maeda, computers are not 'tools' but 'materials.'
You can glimpse his important thoughts on redesign. How we can reinterpret existing things in daily life to create new value. And how that can lead to excellent design.
"All you need to do is carve a groove about 8 millimeters wide and 5 millimeters deep on the concrete floor surface, about 15 centimeters away from the wall in front of the entrance. Users might not even realize this is an umbrella stand."
It was also interesting to learn that affordance, which I studied in HCI, is how Fukasawa designs by exploring humans' unconscious behaviors. The attitude of comprehensively and objectively observing various environments and situations that can be connected to certain actions, and how affordance can be applied to overall design.
The level of market desire that becomes the foundation of a product determines its success or failure in the global market.
"Therefore, we need to clearly become conscious of creating elegance as a mature cultural sphere by dealing with the factors of 'foreign culture,' 'economy,' and 'technology' that have activated the world, along with the aesthetics and uniqueness of our own culture."
"Design is possible in situations where something is being planned. Whether it's environmental issues or problems with the harmful effects of globalization, how can we direct them toward improvement? What and how should we do to lead them even one step in a desirable direction? I want to make design function in concrete situations with such positive thinking and perseverance."
"I would like you to recall the communication environment around us. Movements to explore design possibilities in new media are very actively taking place to keep pace with technological progress."
"If we assume information is a product, then just as an electric razor has quality, information should also have quality. By improving this 'quality of information,' communication becomes efficient and emotion is generated."
"If we want to broadly address this field in relation to new technology, it doesn't mean visual design in the narrow sense that defines computers as expressive tools, but rather exploring the aspects of power generated by visually controlling information."
The author also addresses designers' perception of 'information.'