How do you define design?

Do you ever find yourself lying awake at night wondering what design really is? I do, but maybe that’s just me!

“To paraphrase David Burney in this video: Design is a way of life. Designers find solutions to the right problems through the balance of science, analytics, and math + art, spirit and intuition.”

What Is Design? from PermissionToSuck.com on Vimeo.

I subscribe to the idea of design as a process. For me, design is:

– problem-solving
– creating with purpose


Listen to more perspectives in the video above, if you haven’t already. Their “definitions” as presented in the video focus more on the act of designing than the actual designed elements that get produced by this thinking, which aligns with the current thinking about design throughout our industry.

These perspectives are something we should all be talking about. It’s something to embrace in our everyday practice as well as in the conversations with our clients.

So… how do you define design?

By Robin Tooms
Published August 28, 2010
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