Simply resting your chin lightly on a desk makes the world look different. There are countless ways to see and feel things. Consciously reflecting these countless ways of seeing and feeling in everyday objects and communication is design.
This book is by Kenya Hara, Japan's famous graphic designer and art director, who many are familiar with as a MUJI designer. I was curious about what it means to "design design" and picked up this book thinking it would be a light read even without deep knowledge of design theory. Let me summarize some impressive passages.
According to MIT's John Maeda, computers are not "tools" but "materials." This expression suggests that rather than using computers by swallowing software whole, we need to think deeply about what kind of knowledge worlds we can pioneer through this new material built from numbers.
You can glimpse his important thoughts on redesign. How we can reinterpret existing things in daily life to create new value, and how this can lead to excellent design.
"You just need to carve a groove about 8 millimeters wide and 5 millimeters deep in the concrete floor about 15 centimeters away from the entrance wall. (omitted) Users might not even realize this is an umbrella stand. But as a result of unconscious behavior, umbrellas line up in an orderly fashion. Fukasawa says that design is already complete with just that."
It was also interesting how affordance, one of the important concepts in HCI, connects to Fukasawa's design approach of exploring unconscious human behavior. I learned about the attitude of comprehensively and objectively observing various environments and situations that can be connected to certain behaviors, and how affordance can be applied to overall design.
The level of market desire that becomes the foundation of products determines their success or failure in the global market. This is a problem that's hard to see. Thinking through such problems is "education of desire."
"Therefore, we now need to clearly be conscious of creating elegance as a mature cultural sphere by confronting the factors of 'foreign culture,' 'economy,' and 'technology' that have activated the world with the aesthetics and originality of our own culture."
"As human transportation and goods distribution became more active, exhibitions began to gradually lose their original significance and role. (omitted) If we seek significance appropriate for exhibitions today, it lies in presenting the most important themes of the near future and nurturing seeds of next-generation technology and thought. And creating information there that can only be experienced by deliberately moving your body to seek it out."
"Because 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 improve them? What should we do and how should we do it to lead them even one step in a desirable direction? I want design to function in concrete situations with such positive thinking and persistence."
"I want you to recall the communication environment around us. Movements to explore design possibilities in new media to keep pace with technological progress are very actively taking place. The interactive nature of digital media confuses the subjects of information reception and transmission, and the communication habits and manners that accompany this are also changing. (omitted) Modern people's lives, being manipulated by technology, are far from comfortable and rather more stressful. (omitted) Can't we hear voices yearning for stress-free, comfortable communication? We just need to find it. Design can find its role right there."
"If we assume information is a product, then just as an electric razor has quality, information also has quality. By improving this 'quality of information,' communication becomes efficient and emotion emerges. In other words, by controlling the 'quality of information,' isn't 'power' born there?"
"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 I think we're at a stage of dealing with the perspective of how far humans can extend their physicality and senses through the visuality expanded by computers and information technology. The perspective of exploring aspects of power generated by visually controlling information and operating those results to improve the quality of information transmission is visual communication design in the broad sense."
The author also addresses designers' awareness of 'information.'