Sharing Design Philosopy

I would like to interrupt my regularly scheduled THREAD to share a very interesting article from Fast Company, entitled "Pinterest's Founding Designer Shares His Dead-Simple Design Philosophy" by Sahil Lavingia.  I know this is not the post that I promised this week, however I believe that Lavingia's insights about design dovetail nicely with what we have been discussing the past few weeks.

Although my views are specific to interior design, and his come from a web design perspective, Lavingia hits several of the same points that I have been trying to convey about design in general.  You can read the whole article here (and I highly recommend that you do).

The following are snipets from the article that I consider most relevant to our discussion:

"Design shouldn't be designated a specific function or industry."

"Design is shrinking the gap between what a product does and why it exists."

"Stop thinking about design in terms of ...visual style; it is about the product as a whole.  Designing is figuring out the purpose of your product and how you orient everything else around it."

[For our purposes, the "product" is our interior space].

"Good design is using reason to make decisions and to solve problems."

"Every man-made object you use in real life is designed, from forks and desks to keyboards and grocery bags and are the culminations of many hours of thinking and many more hours of trial and error."

[Emphasis mine - Remember in my previous post I talked about design, as a verb, being a thoughtful (aka thinking) process which culminates in the design, as a noun, of a space].

There is also a really great point made in the "Comments" section below the article that states:

"Good design is something you don't see but miss when it's not there."  by Juleeane Zett

Well said...I couldn't agree more!

I hope you'll take the time to read the entire article for its really insightful perspective on design.  Next week I'll resume with our current THREAD and attemp to answer what's the difference between a designer and a decorator...I have a feeling I'll be referring to this article!