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Design as Meaning and Form Making: An Introduction

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The In-Discipline of Design

Part of the book series: Design Research Foundations ((DERF))

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Abstract

This chapter presents the scope and ambition of the research: to produce a model of design that accounts for the practices of designers, artists, and researchers in engineering. The goal is to reveal what connects these practices while respecting their respective contributions to the challenge of invention. The main question is what does it take to produce an original work of science, art, or design? According to the author, the answer lies in the humanities, in particular the use of semiotics and media studies that help to understand and produce the autonomous poetic space of design.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Manovich (2002).

  2. 2.

    The Codesign lab of Telecom Paristech is a pluridisciplinary lab specialized in the analysis of design and its diversity of practices. I created it in 2000 with a collaboration of ENSCI (Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle) and the department of computer science of Telecom Paristech. It was developed with the help of Armand Hatchuel of Mines Paristech, another engineering school which has developed a groundbreaking research in design theory through the industrial chair “Theory and methods of design”.

  3. 3.

    Telecom Paristech is an engineering school in Paris founded in 1878 and specialized in communication and information technologies. http://www.telecom-paristech.fr/

  4. 4.

    Gentes (1996).

  5. 5.

    Davallon (2004).

  6. 6.

    Souchier et al. (2003).

  7. 7.

    Akrich (1990).

  8. 8.

    Akrich (1992).

  9. 9.

    Latour (1987).

  10. 10.

    Buchanan (2001).

  11. 11.

    Findeli and Coste (2007).

  12. 12.

    Hatchuel et al. (2012).

  13. 13.

    Norman (2002).

  14. 14.

    Cross (2011).

  15. 15.

    Dow et al. (2013).

  16. 16.

    Shank (2001).

  17. 17.

    Chow and Jonas (2010).

  18. 18.

    Jutant et al. (2013).

  19. 19.

    Simondon eand Hart (2001).

  20. 20.

    Simon (1996).

  21. 21.

    Leroi-Gourhan and White (1993).

  22. 22.

    Nelson and Stolterman (2012).

  23. 23.

    Benjamin (2010).

  24. 24.

    Buchanan (2001).

  25. 25.

    Foucault (1994).

  26. 26.

    In particular Crilly, Chow, Jonas.

  27. 27.

    Petitmengin (2003).

  28. 28.

    Agre (1997).

  29. 29.

    http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

    Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

    None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later.

  30. 30.

    Moggridge (2007).

  31. 31.

    Moggridge (2007).

  32. 32.

    Koskinen et al. (2011).

  33. 33.

    Kroes (2002).

  34. 34.

    Crilly et al. (2008).

  35. 35.

    Mitchell (2002).

  36. 36.

    Nelson and Stolterman (2002).

  37. 37.

    Coyne (1995).

  38. 38.

    Fallman (2008).

  39. 39.

    Gaver (2012).

  40. 40.

    Clément (2000–2001).

  41. 41.

    Aarseth (1997).

  42. 42.

    Garfinkel (1991).

  43. 43.

    Goffman (1959).

  44. 44.

    Button (2000).

  45. 45.

    Suchman (1987).

  46. 46.

    Here I would like to thank Alison Powell, Aude Guyot, Camille Jutant, Mathias Béjean, Tiphaine Kazi-Tani, and Cédric Mivieille who helped me build a proper theoretical framework.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Codesign Lab, I3, Telecom ParisTech, Paris, France

    Annie Gentes

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  1. Annie Gentes
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Gentes, A. (2017). Design as Meaning and Form Making: An Introduction. In: The In-Discipline of Design. Design Research Foundations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65984-8_1

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