This one’s for Karl-Heinz*

The Evolution of Design

It’s always quite nice and entertaining when designers invent new definitions of what design is (powerpoint slides will have the heading: “Design is like …”, and what follows might range from kitchen appliances to desk items) or figure out that every human activity is in fact a design process (… and someday, brushing your teeth will be described as being creative, just wait and see!)

I went to a very finnish Design Course this summer and met a nice man named Karl-Heinz*, who was quite eager to tell us that, in his opinion, the design process first of all resembles a kind of sticky substance used to attach two papers to each other, and secondly, that good old evolution, is in fact a very basic design process and vice versa (constant refinement and improvement of a product through various ideas and new designs and manifestations may well be compared to the development of a life form).

And if that were not enough, I found a design theory book recently, with some kind of designer (unfortunately I remember neither the book or the designer) talking about “Intelligent Design” (which, according to the Discovery Institute, Center for Science and Culture, is the theory “that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.”)

Ok now. So evolution is like design; and design is like evolution; and intelligent design is kind of like evolution but more intelligent.

And unintelligent design would therefore be what? Mutations? Products that no one needs or that actually worsen the situation? Isn’t that “Planned Obsolescence”, a quite intelligent idea, at least in an economic sense? And if one sees design mostly as problem-solving, what is the problem evolution is trying to solve?

That should give at least a few people a headache. Too bad one cannot study “More Intelligent Graphic Design” or such… yet.

*name changed, in case this guy googles his own name.