John Heskett wants to transform the way we think about design by showing how integral it is to our daily lives, from the spoon we use to eat our breakfast cereal, and the car we drive to work in, to the medical equipment used to save lives. Design combines 'need' and 'desire' in the form of a practical object that can also reflect the user's identity and aspirations through its form and decoration. This concise guide to contemporary design goes beyond style and taste to look at how different cultures and individuals personalize objects. Heskett also reveals how simple objects, such as a toothpick, can have their design modified to suit the specific cultural behaviour in different countries. There are also fascinating insights into how major companies such as Nokia, Ford, and Sony approach design. Finally, the author gives us an exciting vision of what design can offer us in the future, showing in particular how it can humanize new technology.
[...]... human dilemmas represented in widely different sources, such as Greek tragedy or Norse sagas The evidence too is that the human capacity to design has remained constant, although its means and methods have altered, parallel to technological, organizational, and cultural changes The argument here, therefore, is that design, although a unique and unchanging human capability, has manifested itself in a. .. process of adaptation involves the capacity of the human brain to understand the relationship between forms and functions Another feature of much early innovation was the adaptation of techniques, forms, and patterns to new purposes and applications An example was seen in the discovery in 1993 at an archaeological dig at Cayonu, a prehistoric agricultural village site in southern Turkey, of what is believed... human life It affects everyone in every detail of every aspect of what they do throughout each day As such, it matters profoundly Very few aspects of the material environment are incapable of improvement in some significant way by greater attention being paid to their design Inadequate lighting, machines that are not user-friendly, badly formatted information, are just a few examples of bad design that... be adopted as a standard These in turn would be adapted to specific local circumstances In West Greenland, for example, each major Eskimo settlement had different versions of sea-going kayaks Emphasizing manual dexterity as a dominant feature of the crafts tends to underestimate two other developments crucial to enhancing human ability to transform an environment Each 10 represents a capacity to reach... French, and Italian respectively, all refer to the same physical reality of a human dwelling and take on meaning only by tacit agreement within their society The capacity to abstract into language, above all, allows ideas, knowledge, processes, and values to be accumulated, preserved, and transmitted to subsequent generations It is also an integral element in understanding any process of making In... From a broad range of early cultures, extending back to about a million years, natural objects began to be used as tools and implements to supplement or enhance the capacities of the hand For example, the hand is capable of clawing soil to dig out an edible root, but a digging stick or clam shell is also capable of being grasped to do the job more easily, in a sustainable manner, reducing damage to... in origin Abstraction enables capacities to be separated from specific problems, to be generalized, and flexibly adapted to other problems Perhaps the greatest example of abstraction is language Words 11 The historical evolution of design 1 Greenland Eskimo kayak Design have no innate meaning in themselves and are arbitrary in their application For example, the words house, maison, and casa, in English,... full of potential for adaptation to the solution of problems Once adapted, however, a further problem emerged, such as how to make a hoe more durable, less fragile, and less liable to fracture than a seashell Another dimension set in, beyond simply adapting what was available in ready-made form – that of transforming natural materials into forms without precedent in nature 9 The historical evolution... textile fragment extant, dating from around 7000 bc The fragment was of linen cloth woven from domesticated flax, and the weave was clearly an adaptation of pre-existing basket-weaving techniques Design Other continuities are also clearly evident Frequently, natural forms continued to be the ideal model for a particular purpose, with early artefacts made from metal or clay often shaped in forms identical to... confront us today To ancient crafts and forms that survive and adapt are continually added new competencies and applications A great deal of confusion in understanding design, therefore, stems from this pattern of historical evolution What is confusing, however, can also be regarded as a rich and adaptable resource, provided that a framework exists enabling the diversity to be comprehended A brief outline . PHILOSOPHY Julia Annas ANCIENT WARFARE Harry Sidebottom THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE John Blair ANIMAL RIGHTS David DeGrazia ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn ARCHITECTURE Andrew Ballantyne ARISTOTLE. Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay,