Design is a word that seems to be associated with luxury, expensive, high-end… we talk about designer furniture, designer clothing… and when something is beautiful we say that we love its design. This is a limited and somewhat misleading way of understanding the discipline since design is precisely the sum of functionality and expressiveness. We are not talking about aesthetics or beauty. Design can be ugly or pretty, but it is still design if it makes us understand a message or connect with a series of data or functions.
And it is at this point that we can take design to all possible fields, democratizing a discipline that can make us feel empathy for a bag of cement or a box of food. Elements that we do not socially link to design and that undoubtedly someone, better or worse, has designed at some point.
Concrete bags for DITOP
The design is always there whether we want it or not. Everything we see is designed and, unless we are in a forest, design is the daily life of our eyes. On the screen of our mobile phone, on the streets of our towns and our pantries, kitchens and supermarkets. There is always design, although there is not always a designer. And this is when we lose the opportunity as a society to avoid visual noise, to enjoy a cultural heritage that describes us as a group since design collects trends and aesthetics, making them available to the message of companies and institutions.
And there is the design, as we understand it. A connector that, through metaphor and synthesis, can lend its benefits to a humble baker or a multinational.
There is no land arid enough
