Design awareness

Why is design awareness important?

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So you understand the difference between doing actually understanding what you are doing and just skimming the surface by asking other people to answer the questions for you.

I agree with @Sprout. This question is one you need to think through for yourself. Is awareness of design important to you? If so, why? If not, why not?

Good design and bad design affect everyone whether they’re specifically cognizant of the cause or not. Is it important for people to be aware of design’s impact on their lives? I have my opinions, but I think the question is for you to answer.

Honestly, I know I had just woken up, but really!! Bit of proof reading one’s own words might help every now and then.

I’ll help with this dumb answer—It’s because design is only “good” if it sells products, and a bad design is one that has been created only to win an award.

Can I add to that; if fulfils the brief. Not all design is commercial, for profit. For example – off the top of my head – something like road signage systems, etc, where profit isn’t the guiding factor, Clarity and legibility, combined with saving lives is. For me, it is about successfully responding to the problem at hand, whatever it may be.

Apologies; I am probably being a bit of a pedant here and stating the glaringly obvious. I am only doing so really to clarify for the OP, as he or she appears to be very new to the game.

I didn’t interpret the question as asking about the difference between good and bad design. I interpreted it as asking whether it’s important for people, in general, to be aware of design.

Of course, it was a five-word question with no clarifying explanation.

Of course. I think that was more of a tangential aside.

The original question was so open-ended that the possible answers to it are endless. However, for me, design awareness relates to ethics and its function in society – hopefully for its benefit as opposed to its detriment. I think, no matter how mundane the jobs most of us do most of the time, if you keep more lofty, utopian benchmarks in mind, it helps avoid the pitfalls of the potential negative effects of design. For me, you always need to try to add something to the world with what you do every day, rather than take away from it. That might even just come down to the work you choose to take on and where your red line is for work you simply refuse to engage with.

In fact, speaking of the ethics and function of design; for @arkkaun, one book that is worth your time to read – although decades old now, it is still relevant today (probably more so) – is Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek. It changed my very young thinking on what design actually is. It was a required text at university and to my mind should be for very young designer.

Here’s a quote from the second sentence of the preface. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the book.

I don’t know if I’d call it “phony.” It’s obviously effective. “There’s a sucker born every day” comes to mind as well.

There seem to be a few variations on that text now but I found one at least that perfectly matches:

Thanks for sharing!

Goes without saying, Sprout. In my history, the work I get paid for is virtually all commercial. I do the not-for-profit work pro-bono (non profit work does win a lot of awards, though.)
