Design – What does it mean?

Design is a creative activity often with an industrial or commercial vocation, which can also be oriented towards social, political, scientific and environmental circles. The aim of design is to invent, improve or facilitate the use or process of an element that has to interact with a being, whether it is a product or a material or virtual service.

The word design was used for the first time in the first issue of the Journal of Design and Manufacture and was introduced into the English language from the Latin term designare, “mark of a sign, to draw, to indicate”, which itself is formed from the preposition of and the name signum, “mark, sign, imprint”.

The Italian word disegno from the Renaissance evoked one of the major concepts of art theory. It meant both drawing and project. Later, in France, art theorists translated it as design and kept the double meaning, the idea and its representation.

In 1712, Shaftesbury introduced the concept of design in English art theory in the sense of disegno, which means drawing for drawing as plotting and design, meaning idea and its representation, project and its graphics.

Design, what does it mean? Generally speaking, design represents a construction, an object, aRare sont les personnes psystem or any other realization halfway between science and art aiming to meet specific human needs. From an artistic point of view, design is a work on forms, textures, space, graphics and interactivity. Even if at first sight design has an aesthetic goal, it must offer technical, ergonomic and functional attributes. It is present all around us: in the street, in the office, on the web or in our pocket. Indeed, a smartphone, for example, is a product with several design domains: its shape, its grip, its weight, its interface, its material, etc. are multiple elements forming a whole aiming at satisfying the consumer.

Although the term “design” was born more than three centuries ago, it has been subject to great evolution through the ages. Today, it is divided into several categories or disciplines: on the one hand, so-called “author’s” design, representing the work of highly qualified technicians or craftsmen in different sectors who produce a piece that would not have been possible without their specific know-how, and on the other hand, so-called “industrial” design, representing the design phase of a product with the aim of optimizing production costs and feasibility. Today it is an integral part of a large number of trades. Every day, we visit sites whose graphics and interactivity have been developed by web designers to improve our experience and satisfaction.

Although it is often thought that design objects are out of the ordinary and expensive, this is not necessarily the case. The PET water bottle on your desk is the result of a large number of prototypes and hours of reflection by highly qualified personnel. It is therefore important to remember that everything around us has been thought out and studied by specialists in order to best meet a large number of attributes such as: feasibility, ergonomics, aesthetics, resistance, safety, etc.