What Even is Design?
Well, Here’s What I Think Anyway...
Design is the physical manifestation of the limitlessness potential of the human imagination. Design makes reinvention possible, bringing ideas, desires and possibilities into reality. It’s a means to question, probe, discover, and contemplate. Design drives a cycle of investigation and discovery, revealing insights to an ever expanding world of possibilities that lie on the horizon. The essential building blocks of design for me are multipotentiality, makeability (more specifically the Dutch concept of Maakbaarheid1), emotion, meaning, and movement. Ideologically, my two guiding tenets, not only in design, but in life, are the concept of multipotentiality — the ability and preference of a person, particularly one of strong intellectual or artistic curiosity, to pursue and excel in different fields — and makeability (the Dutch ideology of Maakbaarheid) — the idea that the world around us is inherently shaped by humans, physically and psychologically, and design is the essential factor in that shaping. Philosophically, I adhere to the malleability of life, the idea that nothing is predetermined, everything is shaped by people, therefore everything can, and will, change, it’s simply a matter of how you choose to change it. These concepts remind me not to prejudge situations or people, but to see them as they are and look for the potential in all things, good and bad.
1 Ericson, Magnus. ‘Design and Ideology — Interview with Experimental Jetset Studio (Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen)’. Forms of Inquiry Catalog. September 15, 2008. https:// www.experimentaljetset.nl/archive/design-ideology.
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Bula Explain in Writing. Evoke Through Design