Full Text: Open Debate

We don't need to send our children offshore to learn how to be among the best in design, we need to start making it part of our everyday life and more important in our culture. If we do, the broad spectrum of design disciplines will be practiced at the highest level right here at home.

We'll make design part of everyday life and therefore more important in our culture if the general public gets involved in it and learns to understand its importance. The design "democracy" that you refer to as "an ugly spectacle" is actually the first important step in that process. Will it all be pretty? Hell no… but beauty is only apparent at the top of any human endeavor. All we need is recognition and respect for that beauty and a public that has the desire to strive for it.

By the way, the IPod was designed by Jonathon Ive, an Englishman.

Keen: I'm still not convinced. "Making design part of everyday life" sounds so utopian, so open to ridicule, so Ministry of Truth-ish. It's the equivalent of saying we want to make "creativity" or "spirituality" or "meaning" central to existence. Please give me two concrete examples of how you would actually make design part of everyday life.

Duffy: Well Andrew, I can give you many more than two examples but this debate seems to be wearing on, so here's just a couple:

Business -- it's already happening with examples like Target bringing much better designed, affordable products to the masses and succeeding in the marketplace by doing so.

Also, here's a quote that you might find interesting from the chairman of the largest packaged goods manufacturer in the world:

Design can unlock the technological performance we build into the product and help the consumer see it, touch it. I'm not doing this because I'm a frustrated Liberal Arts major. Good design is serious business."
--A.G. Lafley, Chairman, Proctor & Gamble

So, example one is to point to successful American business leaders who "get design" as examples of how American business can lead the world in innovation, something this magazine has been doing for quite some time now.

Education -- If we can agree that design is an important factor for success in American business, example two would be to introduce it to our children at an an earlier age. How about making it part of a high school curriculum, at the very least, as an elective?

Do either of these sound at all "utopian"?

Keen: Again, both your examples seem to support my argument that design is a sophisticated craft that requires serious training and intellectual engagement.

I strongly agree with your education initiative. I would like professionally trained educators to teach design in schools. Then let's turn the most talented kids into professional designers. Rather than open-source design, this is a design meritocracy.

On your Target example, bringing better designed products for the "masses" is not the same as turning the masses into designers. I am all in favor of better designed products in Target. I just don't want the untrained Target customer designing her own products.

I agree too with Lafley's remark that good design is serious business. So let me end by reversing his wisdom: Bad design is bad business.

Duffy: The broader the participation in design, the more enthusiasm, understanding and demand for great design.

Because I played baseball as a kid I understand, love and follow the game today. That doesn't mean I've ever thought that I could compete with Derek Jeter for the starting shortstop position on the Yankees. Knowing what it takes to play at that level, through active participation, brings respect, admiration and a willingness to pay big bucks to bring my family out to the old ballgame.

Will everyone participate in design? No. But for all those who want to, it should be open to them. Would you want or even appreciate the loft that I created with the help of an architect or the running shoes I customized with a Nike designer's help on nike.com? Probably not, but I didn't do either for you. The many people who participate in any design experience like these want what no one else can have: their own means of expressing who they are and the opportunity to help create the way they want to live their life.

I'm a designer. I'm not after more competitors. I'm simply after broader understanding and appreciation for what designers do and what it can do for others. I believe that this will come from more people getting actively involved in design.