Lecture 1: What is Design?

Hurricane - Jasmine Chen
(Permission to use)

Something I hadn't thought about until recently was that everything around us is a design, a concept brought out into the world through art, construction and many other outlets. It is something that I don't think registers into our minds when we look at, think about or talk about an object. Usually we would say something along the lines of "That looks amazing" or "This chair is comfortable", but not often do we hear someone say "this has been very well designed and has had a lot of thought put into creating it."

When I think of design, I usually think of a process or a method starting with an idea that then becomes a sketch or a model and finally an object with a form and structure; However, nature also has its designs. Trees, landscapes and animals (including humans) are all a part of nature's design. Through evolution, nature has slowly created organisms that adapt to they're surroundings while landscapes are always being shaped as well.

Photo by Myself

Every design is different though. Some designs are made to be functional (such as a basic chair), others are for aesthetics while some are just to express our inner emotions, such as Jasmine Chen's 'Hurricane'.

My main point is that no matter where we look there is a design. Everything we use or create is a design. The clothes we wear, the computers we type on, the photos we take, they are all designs that someone has thought up and created.

Anything and Everything is a Design, and its everywhere.